Ryan

Hire Me

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:44:31 GMT

With thirteen years of coding experience and a recent emphasis on web applications, I can help you analyze, design, and code up your next web application. Whether it's creating a custom blogging experience or building the next social media application, I can help you ...

Identify the best technologies to use
Estimate what skills you will need
Develop a plan of action that includes everything you need and nothing you don't

And then I can either teach you how you can code the idea yourself or code it for you, working with you each step of the way.

As I see it, the biggest obstacles to taking an idea from nothing to done are ...

Lack of creative freedom
Over-planning
Poor choice of technologies
Unreasonable expectations
Inexperience

Let me help you complete a compelling web application by offering my experience and knowledge of web technologies so you can be confident your project will succeed.

How can I help you?

Email me and let me know. My email is ryan [at] ryandscott.com. You can also find me on Twitter, @ryandscott.

BlogBiscuits

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:33:45 GMT

BlogBiscuits arose out of my dislike for monthly hosting fees. Google App Engine had recently been released and it appeared to be an almost ideal platform to build a blog on. And it was free. Of course, I would have to program my own blogging system, but that turned out to be less complicated than I thought.

BlogBiscuits sports a very flexible layout system allowing me to do pretty much anything I want with it. I created a hook system much like that of WordPress so I can insert code and text virtually anywhere without much trouble.

Next on the list of basic blog functionality was the posting system, then RSS feed generation. After that, it was all tweaking and tinkering to create a blog engine custom to my needs and simple enough to change whenever I felt the need ... and I feel the need a lot.

Although it can run an infinite amount of blogs under the one installation, I haven't developed the security necessary to trust other people to blog with it yet. This, of course, would be a future dream of mine. Watch out WordPress!

All of my blogs now run on BlogBiscuits, including this website.

Claptastic

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:20:50 GMT

In the world of blogging, comments are standard. But what about those people who don't comment, don't like to comment, or just don't have anything to say? I created Claptastic to solve the problem for those people. Claptastic is based on a simple button you put on your blog that people can click to show they liked or appreciated what you wrote. There is no signup, registration, or complicated code-wrangling. If you have WordPress, it's a simple plugin; if you blog on another platform it's one line of code to put wherever you want the button to show up.

In addition to the button, I created the Claptastic website which tracks all the claps going on around the web. I setup algorithms to track the most popular and trending content in the Claptastic universe.

I guess you could say it's the more easy-going, uncomplicated, unassuming cousin to Digg.

Clear here to see it in action.

Oktober5 Game

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:04:05 GMT

Oktober5 is my toe-dipping into the world of online multiplayer games. Ever since I started programming on the Commodore 64, I've been creating space combat, space exploration, and galactic conquest games. Oktober5 is me stepping back in time and it's a lot of fun.

I initially wrote the game in Python on Google App Engine. My wife created the graphics and some of the more complex math algorithms. The first iteration leaned heavily on jQuery, a JavaScript library I had never used before. While proving useful in simplifying JavaScript tasks, my heavy use of jQuery ultimately bloated the code and bogged down the browser and user experience.

I'm now rewriting the game in Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Java; so, while it will all be JavaScript in the end, it will be more optimized and I'll take more care not to overdo it.

Click here to play the old python version of the game.