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

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  • To All My Co-Workers And Clients:

    I want to apologize for all the bad coding decisions that I have made during the last couple of years. A number of decisions were made with ignorance as the impact they may have made in terms of performance. Some of those decisions may have been made without consideration for the user.

    If I seem out of sort during the last couple of week, it was simply because the changes I need to make will require changing not just code but a mental process. Like anything, this will take more than a fortnight to change. It is a process of renewal and making mistakes and just throwing stuff into the trash bin.

    What I need is some understanding and some patience while this process works itself out.

    Sincerely,
    Ivan Wilson
    Front-End/UI Developer

  • 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.

  • London and Back

    _DSC1607

    Just re-entered the country, after a week in London for the last FOWA (Future of Web Apps) conference for 2010. Take a while to settle down (not to mention get back to a regular sleep schedule). Spending a week going through all the notes and ideas from the conference. However, all this information will be slowly integrated for the remainder of this year. I was able to get some sightseeing, as well as going to The National Theatre (Hamlet) and a concert (BBC Symphony @ Barbican).

    Now, going home to DC to a stack full of work at CDG.

    Later.

  • 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.

  • UI or UN? The Life of a Front-End Developer…The Lecture???

    No. Really.

    Basically, it originally started as an idea for me to do something close to work but outside the office.  However, there are a number of ideas that need fleshing out. Not just about work (dealing with bad HTML code) but also about ideas about Charles, TWP, front-end developement, and IxD.

    And linguistics.

    More news to come.