Clayton McIlrath » News

Steve Jobs Dies vs Dennis Ritchie Dies

Clay McIlrath — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:36:54 +0000

Last week, Steve Jobs, an amazing many and revolutionary in design and technology, passed away and many in the nation mourned. This week an equally great man, Dennis Ritchie, passed away and not enough people are talking about it.

Before I get into this article, understand that I respect both men and would be happy to accomplish even a tenth of the success and ingenuity in my lifetime. My bias and opinion stems from my roots in computer science, and a deep understanding of technology and it’s history. With that said, I’m sad on both accounts, and whether you agree or not, the world lost two of the best tech innovators of the decade.

At least 75% of the web as you know it (60% Server Share, 13% client share, 93% of web servers), is powered by the developments of Dennis Ritchie over his lifetime. Apple, the World Wide Web, and iPhone probably wouldn’t even exist had Dennis never invented C programming language (which since stemmed PHP and C++) and the contribution to Unix. So why is it that the brain and code of Dennis which exists in almost ALL our lives is so less noticed at the end of their life? My guess is simply publicity. For example: I’d bet far more people can name actors vs producers in hollywood.

You can read all about Dennis Ritchie on your own time, as the goal of this post is not to sum up his biography, but to instead instill awareness and appropriate memorial to him through social media. Please feel free to use and copy as much as you’d like and repost. Help honor the man, legend and revolutionary that was Dennis Ritchie.

The best project: Mugshots, Jail Photos, Inmates, White Trash Americans

Clay McIlrath — Mon, 23 May 2011 22:48:57 +0000

I’ve been building websites for a long time, and at some point, doing what you love (my passion is code and business) can still become mundane. In the past couple months however, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a client that has rekindled my love for technology, giving me the opportunity to grow and do new things in the development space that also makes looking at the same page for hours on end quite enjoyable.

If the title didn’t give it away, let me elaborate as to what it is that I love doing lately: building apps for Busted Paper. We start with public records from various counties around the country, we scrape the Mugshots and Inmate Information and save the data to our server, where we later serve it up to the next bored and interested user.

So why do I love this client? The question is best answered with another question, why do so many americans love watching the show COPS? It’s simple really, we all love watching white trash television, and now internet will slowly destroy television as we all begin to read articles or watch webcasts and socially interact about these wonderful offenders.

With that, keep an eye on Mugshot Junkie which offers filtering by state, and will soon feature a mobile and social app, which will let you search and see if your friends or family exist in our records among other features.

Setting Goals: Bucket List

Clay McIlrath — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:42:33 +0000

A long time ago, I came across a list of lists which inspired me to create my own bucket list of goals and things to do before I die. It’s since migrated from journal to journal and blog to blog, and as of now, lives here. My list is constantly evolving, and I regret that in the past that I simply removed the items that I completed or decided not to do.. but I think from this point on, I will just mark them as complete or strike through them.

The completed list:

Learn: skateboard, guitar, tattoo
Program: PHP, C++, front-end, Ruby
Develop: mobile app, websites, web app, crack, JS based app
Start: a business
Buy: a nice camera, a soda from an old vending machine
Read: Screwtape Letters, Bible
Climb: 14′ers in Colorado, bouldering, top rope, hike a mountain
Travel: Canada, Colorado, California
Tattoo: needle, razor, coil gun
Family: have kids
Yet to be accomplished
- Develop: a large desktop app, a robust keygen
- Catch: scorpion, sun spider, black widow, all the snakes in CO/MI
- Start: a band
- Skate: big spin, spine transfer, ollie down 6+ stairs
- Program: Perl, Python, ~~.NET, Java, FORTRAN~~
- Become: a certified minister, a millionaire
- Travel: kayak trip, Amazon, overseas, Mexico
- Family: adopt kids, grow old with my wife
- Buy: a gorgeous house with lots of property, a sword
- Live: Florida, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico
- Tattoo: bone and hammer, pneumatic gun
- Learn: to airbrush
- Build: a house, my own car, custom computer, flip a house
- Speak: Spanish, Latin, Japanese
- Own: a Boa Constrictor
- Read: every Stephen King book
- Lead: youth or young adult ministry
- Try: skydiving, kite boarding, mountain boarding, bmx

Magento Imagine 2011

Clay McIlrath — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:06:10 +0000

As we approach the time for the next Magento Conference, I decided to take the Magento Challenge and submit a few entries to try and get a sponsored trip to the conference. There’s only a few days left in the challenge, but I will be trying my best to come up with some original and awesome videos and photos to submit.

Magento Wallpaper

Click the image to view full-size and download this fiery hot Magento Wallpaper.

jQuery Lightbox / Modal Plugin

Clay McIlrath — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 20:17:51 +0000

There are SO MANY different types of lightbox scripts in the wild, and while most of them are absolutely fantastic (shadowbox being one of my favorites) most of them are very limited in the control that they give you over the style, function and code. To make things worse, most of these lightbox scripts are also 5k or bigger, which is 5k more than you need sometimes. If you’re like me, and you do a lot of customization or want to tweak your code to be as fast as possible, then you’ll want this simple little jquery lightbox plugin. Style your lightbox exactly how you’d like and then simple invoke the modal() function and you’ll be able to trigger the lightbox.

jQuery.fn.modal = function() {
	return this.each(function(){
	var ah = $(this).height();
        var wh = $(window).height();
        var nh = (wh/2) - (ah/2);
 
        var aw = $(this).width();
        var ww = $(window).width();
        var nw = (ww/2) - (aw/2);
 
        // Trim body height, append overlay, and disable scrolling (this can be undone with a custom close button)
        $("body").height(wh).css('overflow','hidden').append('<\/div>');
        $(".overlay").fadeTo("slow", .8);
        $(this).css({'top':nh, 'left':nw}).fadeIn("slow");
	});
};

This code is what i use for the overlay, you can customize as you’d like. The actual div is appended to the body with JavaScript.

.overlay {
	display: block;
	position: absolute;
	top: 0%;
	left: 0%;
	width: 100%;
	height: 110%;
	background-color: black;
	z-index:1001;
	-moz-opacity: 0.8;
	opacity:.8;
	filter: alpha(opacity=80);
}

This is an example of a modal/lightbox i did using this plugin. Very simple CSS:

.modal {
	background: #00121b;
	min-height: 54.5em;
	width: 56.5em;
	border: 1px solid #111e24;
	box-shadow: 0 0 1em #000;
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 0 1em #000;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 1em #000;
	display: none;
	position: absolute;
	z-index: 1002;
}

Bordo Bello 2010

Clay McIlrath — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 07:37:45 +0000

Last night, my buddy Nick Hemstreet and I volunteered at Bordo Bello and it was far more fun than I had initially anticipated. There were really awesome boards (this came home with us)

and some of them sold at $300 or more such as this custom design (all done in pen mind you).

There were hundreds of people in and out all night, creating so much opportunity to network with other creatives in the Denver area. Nick and I happened to be at the event as volunteers, but we had so much fun, I wouldn’t even consider it work. We were assigned the role of outdoor security and setup which meant we helped setup ramps and lights for the Yellow Designs Stunt Team, and I also took a ton of pictures.

Overall, Nick and I made some new friends at Yellow Designs and managed to even make a few business contacts unintentionally. You can see the rest of the night was just goofing off, as the last performance was finished and we were wrapping up the night. Can’t wait to get involved with Bordo Bello again next year!

Expression Engine Camp: Denver

Clay McIlrath — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:56:52 +0000

ExpressionEngine is hands down, one of the greatest platforms to work with as a web designer or developer.. it has a powerful templating engine that lets front-end developers build powerful dynamic websites without knowing back-end programming. I’ve used all the major Content Management Systems, and I’ve never seen a system that was easier to learn and work with than ExpressionEngine.

If you’re in the Denver area (or heck, anywhere in Colorado) I suggest you to check out EE Camp, which is a local meet-up that aims to share and teach about ExpressionEngine at a very awesome price. It’s open to the public to participate and volunteer, and ticket price covers food and happy hour as well as insane amounts of learning and networking.

How to start a successful blog

Clay McIlrath — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:35:40 +0000

It’s been a year and a half since i started this blog, and it’s amazing to look at how far I’ve come. This blog started out as a playground, where my best designs were wallpapers and my experience with development was limited to mostly front-end. In those days, I was proud of my average of 30-40 hits per day, and now I’m surprised if my traffic falls below 250 in a single day. The point I’m coming to is this.. blogging takes time, effort and consistency all of which make a three-legged stool. The stool cannot stand if all three legs aren’t relatively even, and as a tribute to the wisdom and knowledge I’ve retained from the past year; I’d like to share some key points on starting/maintaining a successful blog.

Doing your time

Regardless of having one writer or multiple writers for a blog, it’s going to take a hefty amount of effort and time to build up your blogs content and traffic. One of the areas I attribute a lot of the success of this blog to is the time dedication I’ve had. I dropped other hobbies like playing guitar and watching TV to start blogging and reading more. This has been the key to my growth as a person and having one leg of my stool strong as steel. To make sure you put in the right amount of time, trying pacing yourself, or joining in a group like project 52, where you dedicate to writing one post per week. Just remember one important rule.. too much will cause readers to flee and too little will fail to attract them. I think once a week is a good frequency for a new blog.

Putting in the effort

You may be thinking, “isn’t putting in time the same as putting in effort?” .. and the answer is NO. Putting in effort usually means research, capital, and marketing. To run a successful blog, you need a few ingredients to help you along the way such as a professional design, an understanding of SEO, and the right marketing tools such as twitter and facebook. Putting in effort is somewhat misleading, because some of the effort is external, but it all comes back to you. Any money or learning you put into your blog is an effort that will help you keep this leg balanced. As I mentioned with time.. a weekly schedule to teach yourself something new will really help you along.

Remaining Consistent

I see two very common mistakes relating to consistency:

Scenario A involves traffic, a blogger (whether new or veteran) sees the blog as a failure because traffic is low and doesn’t seem to be climbing. The worst thing you could do in Scenario A is give up on it. Think of a blog as real estate or stock.. it’s value may fluctuate significantly, but if you look at the course and direction of the internet as a whole, it’s value is always increasing. If you look at the short term, you’ll see failure, but dedication and consistency will almost always prove successful (combine that with a good exit strategy and you have yourself a business plan).

Hype is like dessert: most of the time it’s incredible, but too much will make you sick

Scenario B involves lack of time or effort. Yes, I’m aware I’ve already mentioned these two points, but bare with me. If you’re putting a lot of time into your blog and it’s not growing you may be focusing on the wrong areas. I see lots of blog focus on social media or spend loads of money on advertising, and they feel highly successful because they see their numbers jump.. for a while. The problem is people get bored with hype, it’s like dessert: really great, but too much or too often will make you sick of it. People need meat and potatoes in their diet. Many loyal readers will favor quality over quantity. My site for example rivals others that have 300+ posts and write daily.. yet it only has around 60 posts.

Put it all together

The last piece is a not-so-secret ingredient, and doesn’t need a paragraph to explain.. you have to be passionate about what you share. Blogs can definitely be profitable, but if you content doesn’t communicate passion and true interest, people aren’t going to be interested in what you have to say. Write to share about what you love, not to make money. Once you’ve built up a successful blog of loyal readers, then try and strategize the financial successes. I’m sure other bloggers would tell you differently, but I’m telling you from my experience that heart has more value than profits. If you enjoy what you do, there’s no price that can replace that.

Site Redesign of Chosen Development

Clay McIlrath — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:18:09 +0000

Love it or hate it, I re-designed the Chosen Development website. I was growing tired of the Organic theme that I had developed for it originally. Even though it was highly creative and artistic, it was too busy and the colors were too bleh. I decided to go with a VERY simple layout, color scheme and dark, web 2.0 style. This a typical style for me, but I’m proud of that. Chosen development consists mostly of the work of myself and my business partner, Shane and he loves the new design as well. I’ve also integrated our new Creative Brief Interview so that we can automate the initial research and gathering phase.

So check it out, and give me some feedback either way!

iPhone App Organizer

Clay McIlrath — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:54:30 +0000

I saw this concept originally on Veronica’s blog, and think it’s definitely worth spreading. If enough people like it and show support, maybe apple will catch on and make it happen..

So blog this if you like it and support it, and give some credit to the maker of this video, svdomer09.