The Wilson Project Blog of UX/Front-End Developer Ivan Wilson

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  • And Now This Message From The Author…

    Sorry for the three month delay. Usually reasons: work, personal, and fencing. I would say that nothing has changed but that would be a bold-faced lie. As a matter of fact, more things will be changing in the next six months than the last year.

    Writing

    • Finally starting work on The Information Layer, with the first part ready Saturday, August 6th.
    • Writing a few more blog entries for CDG, one this month
    • One very important blog entry for TWP this month, currently writing now

    Conferences

    Going to a number of events during the last couple of months of this year. Two of the most important are in the month of October:

    Exhibitions

    In short, been really too busy to go any art exhibitions in the last couple of months. However, there are a few that I am trying to get to before they close in September.

    Work

    As I mentioned before, many things will change. How much/what kind will be detailed more in the next TWP blog entry, called “A Love Letter.”

    Indirectly, eventhough Project Charles ended in April, the Delta version of this site will be completed by the end of the year (if nothing else drops from the sky…).

    Fencing

    Well, fencing will be…fencing. Practice three times per week, one competition per month. Still working out the schedule for 2011-2012 season.

    Music

    Due to my work schedule, missed out on attending Met’s performance of Berg’s Wozzeck. However, looking at the 2011-2012 schedule, will be marking my calendar for the following operas:

    • Satyagraha – Philip Glass opera about Ganhdi (November 2011)
    • The Makropulos Case – Leoš Janáček opera, based on a story by Karel Čapek (May 2012)

    Apart from the classical scene – Elbow comes to DC in September (Yeah!!!)

    That is that I have for the next couple of months…

    And yes, I will be taking a vacation. Back to the PNW (Portland, OR/Vancouver, Canada) for my birthday.

    What’s that sound? That’s the sound of my Google Calendar crying like a baby…

  • Endgame

    After two years this month, I have decided to end Project Charles in April. This will also mark the 10th anniversary of The Wilson Project.

    @iwilsonjr (4:59 PM · Mar 14, 2011) – https://twitter.com/iwilsonjr/status/47401561944637440

    Depending on the ever changing schedule, Project Charles will be ending this year, if not sooner. After a long two years, I should be happy.

    I'm exhausted.

    I've carried this thing around, weathering all the stuff that gets thrown at me in the course of human life. This project became the internal motor of change, reflection, and experimentation. And a number of people have really benefitted from the results.

    The basis of Project Charles was redesigning The Wilson Project with the state of the art techniques in front-end development. No, we are not talking about the dazzling canvas experiments and all the fireworks. It was about learning all this new stuff to be able, like an experienced chef, to use this wider pallette to improve their work. Well, I'm still doing that. But Project Charles brought about an urgency to the process.

    Well, that urgency has come full circle. It's at a point where this project needs to end in order to go further on with other things. And since The Wilson Project Site is a working blog (and soon-to-be) portfolio site, I needed to end this thing to start doing new projects. And basically, I just need this monkey off my back. So why am I writing this blog entry?

    Because I feel that the need to apologize [to myself].

    This project was started with the idea of using XSLT via Symphony CMS. It's a very interesting application that I am sure will grow and improve. The cast of characters over there are currently working on the third version as I am writing this.

    Now, I'm in a time crunch. I cannot, at this time, learn XSLT and learn a new CMS without some focused time and effort. Unfortunately, considering the numerous hiatus periods in this project, that will never happen. So I took the hard choice and decided to move the project back to WordPress to speed up completion. I'm relieved at be removed of this burden. But I also feel sad, as I made some sort of bad compromised to complete this project. I know I shouldn't, but I'll live. I may feel bad for not completing the project in the way that I wanted fully but I have to move on.

    The other reason for Project Charles was conceptual. The "residue" of studying and observing the work around me of interaction design and front-end development. Yes, I have a few ideas that I've squirrel away.

    It's called The Information Layer.

    Ideally, Charles would have been the best demo, especially with Symphony/XSLT. But with the external changes of the last two years, there is a real need to share something now and not wait further down the road for an actual demo model.

    So, I'm shipping now. Everything can wait.

    I need my life back.

  • EOY

    Early morning from hotel window, Vancouver, Canada - 12/31/2010

    As I am writing this, I am looking at a fabulous view from my hotel room in what some of my friends call my second home of Vancouver, Canada. Part of me needed to get away to here do some end-of-the-year evaluation and some focused thinking about 2011. Then again, I allowed myself to relax a bit during these last days of 2010 (and I watched the Canucks beat the Flyers 6-2 Tuesday night at the home area…)

    But there are some things that occurred during the year that I need to mention before the final ball drop closes the year 2010:

    Fencing

    If you had asked me at the start of the year if I was going to start fencing again, it would have been a firm “NO.” There was no motivation to start again and no one was really asking to do so. And all the focus that I had with fencing went into my work, which paid off big. Irony, the only people who ever asked about me starting up again were my co-workers at CDG.

    Well, after two years, I decided to try fencing again. It has been the only sport that I have some liking to. Not to mention, the least likely to get bored at.

    Another bit of irony is that I restarted with Olde Town Fencing, the club I left almost four years ago. Despite that, the warming response made the comeback easier. Definitely a reminder of why I fence in the first place.

    Despite dealing with various injuries the last month, I am determined to continue my progress and actually compete again after a 2+ year absence.

    Travel

    This year:

    • Savannah, Georgia (IxDA Interaction 10)
    • NYC for opera (The Nose and Lulu) and design (Cooper-Hewitt)
    • Seattle/Canada (Victoria and Vancouver I)
    • For my first time, travel outside the Americas with FOWA/London
    • Of course, Vancouver for end-of-the-year

    For next year:

    • Boulder, Colorado for IxDA Interaction 11 (February 9-12, 2011)
    • NYC for opera with Nixon in China (Adams) and Wozzeck (Berg)

    Project Charles

    Basically, stops and starts. At one point, it was dead in the water. At one point, I almost considered ending the project. However, I caught a break (and some motivation from Tame Impala’s InnerSpeaker album) and did the complete site mockups. Started to work on the HTML templates but delayed due to technical review from the last two conferences I went to. Both made me think about what I was doing and in the end, the decision to make some more substantial changes in my work.

    Restarting work on templates in early 2011 and hopefully finishing the new site by The Wilson Project’s 10th anniversary in April.

    Work

    High point was three conferences:

    • IxDA Interaction 10 in Savannah, Georgia
    • An Event Apart a few blocks from my office in Washington, DC
    • FOWA in London, UK

    Lots of work, punctuated with four blog entries and some other minor additions to the blog.

    However, lots of reflection on my work process, especially considering many of the changes that affected my position as a UI/Front-end developer.

    But more about that in the next entry in this blog…

    Epilogue

    In the end, I remember about ten years ago that I started what would become a 20-month unemployment period. Now, at the end of 2010, thing have changed so much. A number of things that I first experimented with such as XHTML and building pages without table layouts are now not only accepted; they have become the gold standard.

    Now, with Project Charles heading for the finish line (?) in April 2011, more changes are in the pipeline for the next couple of years. Hopefully, 2011 will be a good one, not only for me, but for my family, friends, and especially my co-workers at CDG.

    Happy New Year 2011 from Vancouver, Canada!

  • Call Me Regent (or What’s In A Name?)

    Next week, I am going to move this site to Linux server.

    Not a hard process – its just a little more complex in my case since it will involve domain(s) names, file transfers, and dealing with Linux/Window server (well if you dealt with both you know what I mean). But since I am here and I made an important decisions two weeks ago, I might as well talk about it.

    The “it” being…what’s up with the name “Charles”?

    The Wilson Project/Site Versions

    The name Charles refers to Charles Darwin, whose bicentennial was in 2009, the same year the project started in March. It also added some inspiration because of the introduction of new ideas and concepts that slowly gestated and altered during the course of the project.

    But the best thing about working on these projects is that it is sort of like my own research lab. It is where I get to try out new ideas before doing in the real world.

    One part research scientist, one part Olympic athlete.

    As for this version, I decided two weeks ago to name this version “Regent” because of its transitory nature. Unlike “H3”, it was never meant to be a final version and was always going to be more of a functional placeholder for the upcoming Charles.

    And there it is.

  • Mental Steeplechase / Hurdle IA

    Charles - Home Page (w/ site revisions)

    After a some thought and some revisions, I decided that the homepage will take on the blog lister template. This caused the following changes in the primary navigation:

    1. Changed primary navigation with addition of “Home” link
    2. Changed “Information” with “About”
    3. Replacement of “Blog” (main blog page) with “Blog Links” (gray section below containing Blogroll, Archives, and Meta)
    4. Switched order of “Social Media” and “Blog Links”

    An additional change was the addition of the site byline to the header.

    As of today, this was the final substantial change to the look and feel of the Charles site. After almost a year and three concepts, Charles has its look and now I can move forward toward Charles’ completion in 1/1/2011.

    Next steps:

    1. Complete HTML5 code templates
    2. Move TWP site from Windows to Linux server
    3. Start initial steps/planning for CMS configuration

  • Back from Vacation

    NightScene_052910_008

    Re-entered the country on Memorial Day, after some relaxing (and wet) days in Vancouver, Canada.

    Before falling back into the daily schedule, I took some concrete steps in completing Charles by building out of the first templates. A few more steps will be taken this month, leading to end of Project Charles by January 1st, 2011 (upcoming blog entry).

    Besides Charles, there will be more changes during the later half of this year.

    Later.