Amphibian » Status

Building better cities.

Derek — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:55:59 +0000

Six weeks of intensive work culminated yesterday in the launch of the new Next American City online presence. The launch coincides with the first issue of their completely-redesigned magazine and fresh new identity (courtesy of art director Keith Webb.) This was one of the more comprehensive sites I’ve been charged with as of late –– involving lots of data migration, a whole new CMS, an ad server, and more — and I’m very happy with the results. They’ve moved from using a barely-working, “custom-built” content management system with an appended WordPress blog, to a unified, extensible publishing system using ExpressionEngine that will serve the magazine well into the future. Good times were had, and they are a fine bunch. Go subscribe.

Other stuff that’s been keeping me busy …

still working on honing and improving GigPress (my WordPress plugin for bands — though it seems people are using it for comedy troups, booking agencies, record labels, events management, and even online training schedules);
launched the Alice’s Drive promotional site;
launched band sites for Greg MacPherson (Winnipeg, MB) and Spencer Jo (Calgary, AB);
built the HTML/CSS and completed the CMS setup for the new Art City web site (a great organization for inner-city kids in Winnipeg, MB);

I’m wrapping up my first winter in Halifax after enduring my previous 29 in Winnipeg, and my eyelashes have not once become interlocked with ice pellets. Who knew life could be so sweet?

GigPress 1.0

Derek — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:57:13 +0000

Given that I’ve been steeped, as it were, in the world of independent music for most of my life — both in playing in bands and being part of an independent record label — much of my design work has traditionally been centred in this world. Over the past five years I’ve probably designed and built a dozen or so web sites for touring bands, and the one knife in my brain every time is finding an easy-to-implement, easy-to-use system for managing shows and tours on these sites.

Since WordPress runs most of these sites, I’d always hoped that some kind, dorky programmer would come along and release a plugin that would address this exact need, in much the same way that other kind, dorky programmers have released hundreds of plugins addressing hundreds of other needs. There are a lot of small, no-budget touring bands out there. “Surely someone will heed this silent cry,” I thought. But the silent cry continued, with no solution to cork the collective cry-hole.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I would fill it (the need that is) myself, and set out to create the exact plugin that I always wanted to use. Being my first WordPress plugin — and being that I’m not really a PHP programmer — it wasn’t without its challenges, but yesterday, I officially released GigPress 1.0 to the world. It’s a free download, released under the GPL, in the spirit of WordPress and its excellent developer community. May many mediocre bands use it to post their tour dates! (And perhaps some really good ones will use it as well.)

Errata update.

Derek — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:15:45 +0000

In addition to the new round of work I’ve added to the site in the overhaul, I’ve been busying myself with other projects big and small. In an effort to fill space, I will mention a few of them.

Looking back to the spring, for the third year in a row I was responsible for the printed materials for the Run for Rights (which I unfortunately had to miss participating in), a 10 kilometre fund-raising run held in Winnipeg every June. It was this run last year that got me interested in running on regular basis. Ruth bought me a nice pair of New Balance’s for my birthday, and I bought some track pants. That was June of 2006. Last week I used them for the first time – 30 minutes first thing in the morning. I came home feeling like death and my legs were wrecked for days.

2007 Run for Rights promotional poster

Who’s to blame here? Me, for running too far, too early, while out of shape? The Run for Rights as an organization for giving me the idea that running recreationally was a smart thing to do? Unfortunately we’ll never know. But I digress.

In May I created the tour poster for Propagandhi’s Midwestern tour of the United States. I never thought I’d find myself buying a stock illustration of a young boy riding an eagle, but this is why life stays interesting. (Yes, the poster is intentional irony.)

Propagandhi’s May 2007 Midwestern-US tour poster

Two under-the-hood overhauls as of late have been on The Next American City and Inn at the Forks web sites. Both were originally built with bloated, non-validating markup and performed poorly for people browsing using assistive technology or on mobile devices. I rewrote both from scratch, making some small tweaks to the design of both at the same time. The Next American City also gained a Wordpress-powered blog to post their commentary and news updates.

One larger site redesign that I invested a lot of time in this summer is currently in the hands of other developers who are working on behind-the-scenes magic. When they’re done I’ll have more interface stuff to do, but I hope we’ll have it live in the next month or so.

So yeah. Lots of exciting stuff coming up. It should be a fun winter. Unfortunately I’ll have a lot of work to do! Har har … har … errhhh, ahem.

The more things change.

Derek — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:16:31 +0000

The last version of this web site came into being just over two years ago. I was really very happy with it at the time. It featured a picture of myself wearing a chicken mask, so it was hard not to love. But before long, the chicken mask was the only piece of this tiny corner of the internet that kept me smiling. This is a field of work where one’s sensibilities and expertise develop and grow daily, and mine quickly outgrew what stood before. I’m no painter, but I hear their houses look like shit. (Cue Neil Hamburger cough.)

October 2005 – October 2007, the chicken-man incarnation of amphibian.info. Preserved in this thumbnail for posterity.

In June I moved 4000 kilometres east, from Winnipeg to Halifax, to be with my partner while she finishes school. One of the things I promised myself I’d do after settling in was finally overhaul this web site. I got started on it in July, and worked on it sporadically until it was nearly finished in mid-August. I had all of the content written, and most all of the pages designed, coded, and nit-picked over. In early September I went camping — very nice, lots of fun, stunning vistas, etc (really!) — and when I came back I was ready to load it up into a CMS and take it live.

The completed-then-rejected redesign.

But suddenly it looked … different. It looked like something someone else made. Someone who was not me. Frustrated, I walked away from it and busied myself with other projects. I fired it up again a couple of weeks later, and this time it looked … worse.

So I decided to throw it out and start from scratch, which was hard as I’d invested a lot of time and mental energy into that particular vision. But the right decision is most often the most difficult one to make (I believe someone said, once, somewhere.) Having figured out what I didn’t want to do, I could take the few things I liked and incorporate them into what I realized I did want to do. So I did that. And here it is.

Dig it. (Not Digg it.)