Cory Collier

I just got back from FOWA Miami 2009. The event was awesome and I met tons of amazing folks (including the amazing Gary Vaynerchuk). There were plenty of amazing tech revelations at the event, and more talk about business and marketing. The latter was more relevant for me.

While there was definitely a lot of good talks during FOWA, a few really stood out for me: Jason Fried, Joel Spolsky, and Gary Vaynerchuck. Since I was recently laid off, I’ve been looking for some guidance in how I’m going to approach working independently. The take away from those three speakers was: Don’t learn from failure, but success, eliminate distractions when working on code, and ‘Care’. Continue reading »

A few months ago, I started working at Hydra Studio. The experience has certainly been the most challenging in my life. At the same time, it’s arguably one of the more rewarding jobs I’ve ever had. I’ve worked on some amazing stuff at Hydra. I’ve learned a whole lot and met some awesome people. One of those people is Michael Parler.

I was looking for a picture of Mike, and I think this one does him justice : 

To look at Mike, the word ‘professional’ doesn’t immediately come to mind. The cliche rings true however. Mike is easily the most professional person I have ever met. Mike’s attention to detail and ability to create interfaces that are completely seamless is incredible.

You wouldn’t know it to look at his website, but Mike is an awesome designer / developer.

I can’t speak publicly about the projects we’re working on at Hydra. However, I will say that when they’re done, they will realize some of the best UI I’ve ever seen. The credit for that lies heavily with Mike. 

Adding to why Mike is awesome: the most mundane of things don’t bore him. How many times have you worked on a project, and just glossed over some of the mundane details. Yeah, you probably don’t want to admit how many times.

Mike has some serious OCD, and leaves nothing to chance. I’ll admit, sometimes he’s a bit of a pain in the ass. However, for the company, and for the rest of us, his attention to detail is a lifesaver. 

I’ve been meaning to write about some awesome folks in my life lately, and Mike gets to be the first. He’s a really cool guy, and I appreciate what he does a lot.

Part of my transition to independent web developer, is to put on a hat I’ve gotten used to letting someone else take care of. That would be the designer hat.

:/

I’ve done some massive modifications of some of the older sites I’ve built in the past. Those sites, oconnorandtaylor.com, socons.com, and tradeproconstructionservices.com (go ahead and catch your breath), have taken up a substantial part of my life in the last couple weeks.

There’s not much coding going on in those sites. I built them on Drupal, so most of my work revolved around configuring the CMS, and getting everything setup in remote subversion. The task consuming all my time though, is the designing.

When I design a site, especially one that I’m getting paid a nominal fee for, I usually base the design off of some template, or theme to one of the more popular CMS packages. I know Drupal pretty well, so It’s not too much to hack a Wordpress or Joomla theme and make it work for Drupal.

The interesting thing about all of this however, is my keen interest in Flash. It’s funny to me, since I’ve been pretty anti-flash for a while. Actionscript 3 really provides a framework that I can get comfy in. I’ve yet to actually put anything out there that uses some of the more OO type patterns (observer being a quite common implementation). I suspect I will in the coming months though.

Anyways, I’m not a designer, so I’d like any feedback on the sites mentioned above. Some of y’all are pretty good at that kind of thing, and I could use the advice.

Thanks in advance.

Dr. Doom.