The title of ‘Projects’ for this page makes it sound rather grander than it is, but it fitted in nicely alphabetically across the top at the time, so I decided to stick with it. I’ve already admitted to being a bit of a geek in my spare time (see ‘about me‘). Sometimes that just means I’ll buy magazines in WHSmith that you hide in a rucksack as quick as you can before scurrying away to read them, (no, not them, think less photography and more screen grabs) – and sometimes it means I’ll spend hours on a weekend doing work related stuff to learn something new or just prove a point to someone who won’t admit that someone else might know more about something than they do. If that sounds like a grating nerve you’d be right… Long story…
Anyway, the below are all examples of the above. I’m not saying they’re all works of technical genius, but they all worked at the time for what I needed – and I’m rather proud of them for that reason.
SmartForm Demo - Oct 2005
This is the very origin of the whole prove a point thing. I’d been saying for ages ‘we should do this online’ they’d been saying for ages ‘we’ve asked and it can’t be done’. I had no idea how but I knew it could be done, so I bought a book and did it. There’s no better way to stick two fingers up to people who piss you off than to prove them wrong (Miss Ritchie – A Level Psychology – are you listening??!!).
This is a standard HTML form using some very basic PHP (which I still can’t write properly but I’m getting better at editing other people’s) to do the variable passing, so the input at one end comes out in a different format. Splendid.
Team Card - Christmas 2006
A team of 20 odd people need to wish a happy Christmas to getting on for 200 different customer groups, without overloading their rather plop email system. The answer? The whole team draws their own message, take a photo, create an image map with a bit of javascript for rollover effects, publish it, send a link. Job’s a gooden. Happy customers and brownie points from the management.
Team Quiz - July 2008
Bit random admittedly, it wasn’t my idea but it was a useful thing to try and do. The challenge – ‘can we do an online quiz where you have to match the baby photo to the current staff photo’. Me – ‘Er, I’d imagine it can be done with Flash, but I can’t use Flash’. The response – ‘Great, go away and learn and show me what you’ve done in a fortnight’. Marvellous. Did it though, drag and drop quiz using the standard actionScript template provided in Flash MX 2004. Kept me entertained anyway.