Called OGPlanet.com.
I love the job I'm doing. I'm an assistant web programmer, and that's basically what I do all
day.
Code websites all day. It's awesome. I've been dreaming about this kind of lifestyle - the life
of a coder - since the last few months of my last year at UCLA as undergrad.
Let me tell what I do:
Designers design the websites, and based on the producer's intention I have to follow through
and convert the stoic, PSD based files into websites.
Moreover, I get to code/learn Javascript and CSS.
Sure I don't get paid much($30,000 a year), but I'm actually doing what I wanted to do.
I've coded so much CSS styles that now I'm getting better and better at making neat,readable
stylesheets. I pretty much memorized hacks for FF, IE6, and IE7 and use them. I know,
I should create code that shouldn't use hacks. But I'm thinking I'm getting better at it.
I got to know jQuery - the best duct tape tool for Javascript. It makes coding in Javascript
what Ruby does to scripting languages - super easy, focus on logic rather than syntax.
... aside from assignments, I have a lot of time for idle developments, and this is what
is best about this job! I normally get around a day a week of nothing to do except acting busy.
So since this is my first job, I never would allow myself to actually do NOTHING. I took upon
myself to enforce a habit of coding - you know, like the policy they have at Google, where
you are required to use 20% of work time for research/project of your own.
Here are some of the little side projects I've made so far:
- In our company we send newsletters weekly to the registered users that play our games. So, the designers always send me little zipped files to process. Without going into details, I made a Visual C# Windows application that would automatically process the files, upload it to the server, and open up the browser for me to check. I'm sure this will be beneficial to the designers and also it'll free up my time considerably - in the area of 20 minutes.
- Anyone know Processing? It's a language used by media artists for artsy projects using databases. Sort of a visualization language for Java applets. Well, I overheard a PM (Project Manager) wishing there would be a real-time sales display of sales made in games, like in a bar chart that is constantly updating. I've made the thing using Eclipse and Processing - where it would function both using logged sales history and also in realtime. It is really nice - nice colored bar chart that moves every second, and basic graphical aesthetics (jittering, zooming, color fading, alpha blending) for cool effects. It's like a prototype for the big display-based system I'm having in mind. Since Applets can increase in size by setting window dimensions, a 42" display on a plasma screen is plausible.
- I've noticed the company manages a lot of game sites - a game site would have from 20 to 30 pages. Every week there are 4,5 image/flash files that need to be uploaded to the static file server and sometimes links should be changed to the javascript that handles menus. I've made a Visual C# Windows app where I can drag the file to upload, select which of our sites it belongs to, which context it is - eg) left_ad_banner - and the filename should one want to change the default filename. I press upload, and voila! It shortened the task which took around 20 minute down to 2 minutes and relieved me of the anxiety of manual uploading which is possible to make mistakes due to high freedom of access.
- Each Visual C# apps are password protected, and object-oriented - meaning I made classes that are in namespaces so if I want to make more company-related apps, I can easily inject the inner workings of access - since it's already object oriented.
1. Music Album via Buzz and Linux based Music Studio(UbuntuStudio)
2. Team-based employment site
3. Stock - related research
God I love my life!
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