Web Design and Photography
I’ve been doing web design and photography for a few years now. Much of my web work has fallen into the ethers of the web. Sites come and go, but few remain.
Web Design & Web Services
Many people need a new website or need their existing website to look better or work better. I can provide that. I’m constantly learning new techniques and perfecting my work as time goes on. Some of the most experimental things I do will be shown through this website.
- Design using web standards such as XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0. I attempt to make every web page as compliant as possible.
- Currently learning AJAX and CSS 3.0.
- Website backbones running PHP and MySQL.
Photography
I mostly do photography as a hobby, but am willing to do photography for events, passports, and commissions.
Though reading this page, if you desire to request my services, send me an email at john (at) systemanomaly.com. We’ll discuss the terms of service, price, and a time-line.
The few live examples of my handiwork are all personal projects of mine.
System Anomaly and The Photoblog
This is the page your own. It’s my own personal website/blog/photoblog/whatever. I’ve been running it for around three years now. It’s had the same basic format for several years. The design has gone through two iterations. It started off as a lime-green design. Then in 2009, I changed it to a format that is close to what you see now. After the passing of my grandfather, it temporarily went dark and greyscale. Some of the color returned, but the side bar remained grey instead of skintone. With the last two iterations, the footer had a unique feature of being time sensitive. A user that visits the site at a certain time will see a day scene and when the user returns that evening, the scene in the footer becomes a night scene.
The Photoblog is spin off of the main website. The design is similar to the main website, but differentiates itself with a smaller footprint and static footer that is inverted from the main website’s. The website is meant to not distract from the photographs showcased on the website. It is a showcase of my favorites as I take photographs. The photographs have subjects ranging from inanimate objects to my best friends. Some of my favorite and remarkable photos are those of the More Than The Camera series. These photos were taken using cameras that are low in quality such as a camera phone. They are improved using digital tools. It is an example of making the best of limited equipment and resources.
My Life Is Pirate
This is an experimental site that spawned from the idea and request of a friend. It keep it up and open to the public and, surprisingly, it receives quite a bit of traffic. Based on the same concept as FMyLife and Texts From Last Night, it is a website that is based solely on the readers submitting their own content. Like Reddit or Digg, the content submitted is voted on by the readers themselves. Those that are accepted by the readers as “Pirate” get their submission on the front page.
I created the pirate logo and the header image from scratch, quickly set up the site for deployment, and make sure that the site continues to run. It is an ongoing project that is subject to evolution as time goes on. It has potential.
I have a few previous things that have died off or is now managed by somebody else.
Primo Gaming
In the late 90′s, my father gave me some web space on a web server he was running. I began posting game news and became a fairly active file archive for a computer game called Midtown Madness. Though community connections, I created a forum to go with this website around 2000 to accept members of the Midtown Madness community that were leaving a former large website dedicated to this video game. The other site shut down around 2001. In 2004, I received a domain and web site for free from a member of the old community. This was when the site began to expand its focus on all video games rather than just a single game. The archive was eliminated and focus was put on the forum (MM Archive became a version of this archive that is preserving the thousands of community generated modifications for both Midtown Madness and Midtown Madness 2. I do not run that site, but do host it.). In 2005, I began to run a video game news opinion blog. As web traffic and interest quickly grew, a new web server was purchased and I received control of the domain name in 2006. Interest in the website began to wane as users dwindled in number. In 2008, I finally shut down the website due to the lack of time and interest. The website as of today is a placeholder with my message to those who remained and links to all of the websites I currently host under the domain name or other names.
FBC Biloxi Youth Group
As part of the youth group in 2004 through 2006, I was the web administrator for the website. The old site had a simple HTML design that was refreshed several times over the span of time I was there. When I left the youth group in 2006, the youth group reallocated the job to another student and eventually to a third-party. The website as it stands today is not even at the same domain name was when I was working on it. It is also far from the design principles I have always stood by.
Gamer Andy
The website is no longer active, but before 2007, it was a very active and professionally done website. It was even recognized by Microsoft as legitimate journalism. In early 2007, I assumed the position of general article poster and web administrator. The forum at the time was not well integrated into the website and the bookmark icon didn’t match the site. I integrated the forum, which used a totally different system as the main page, into the website. It took design cues from the main site and blended in very well. The bookmark icon was a scaled down and squared up version of the main logo. It was a simple blue background with the corner snipped. In the field was the two letters “GA”.
Because of the limitations of the hosting company, the website was unable to provide consistent service due to bandwidth overages and overworking the server. The decision was made to outsource the hosting to a larger website and “www.gamerandy.com” was abandoned.
