I've taken the time to re-architect my 3-year-old online video poker machine. The old one used tables throughout, images for cards, and looked terrible.

  I've modularized everything in a complete re-write, using HTML5 and CSS3 for the display, including cards, and Mootools for the game engine and logic.

  The engine now supports multiple games and decks of cards, among other improvements, and loads lightning fast. Oh, it also plays well on iPod/iPhone, and I can add new games ( 3 so far... ) in a matter of hours.

  You can play for free here: Video Poker

Lately, I've been working on a RIA that allows data mining and viewing neat things about my apache webserver logs. Before you start screaming at your monitor in horror, I KNOW there's already about a bizzilion free open source ways to munch on apache access and error log data. I like writing software, and love a challenge, and regardless of how you feel about re-inventing the wheel, it so happens that I want a special kind of wheel, one that doesn't exist yet, so here we are.

  During developement, I've of course been neck deep in apache logs, and one thing immediately grabbed my attention. About 20% of the total traffic I get are requests from mobile devices. I don't own such a device yet, although I plan on getting one ( hopefully ), but depending on my circumstances, maybe two in the near future. The devices I'm interested in are the iPhone, and something based on Android... i.e. Mac and PC. That aside, I realized that this website was probably looking pretty horrible on a mobile device, and so YAY!... a new project :)

  So just a heads-up that I'll be adding some new CSS to support the smaller size of these devices ( 320-pixel-wide on average ). Hopefully, only the mobile device users notice the change ( that's the whole point really ), but if you do see something strange, please feel free to drop me an email ( the address is on my contact page ).

I've created a new RIA as my 1st foray into the world of the twitter API. It periodically grabs public tweets and displays them with the newest at the top of the page.

  I'm not done with it yet, but it's a good start. I'll try to add new features as I get time.

  An explanation of some of the design decisions around the HTML and CSS is here.

  I really enjoyed designing and coding the application. I was able to learn new things along the way, including my first encounter with the twitter API, and my first encounter with an obscure bug in IE8 DOM manipulation that prevented me from using <P> tags in the tweet layout. It involved quite a bit of research, and a lot of debugging, but was worth encountering, just for the feeling of satisfaction I got when I found and fixed the "problem".

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After 10 years engineering websites as an employee of various businesses, I've finally got some time off. I'm not talking about a vacation either, this is real time off, i.e unemployment®.

  For the 1st time in a decade I find myself wondering what I should work on next. There's no impending deadline to beat. There's no tangled code base to refactor. My calendar is open, and there's nothing to do but look for a job.

  Which brings me full circle and to the web site you're now viewing. Apparently, when you apply for employment and claim to have 10 years experience engineering websites, people want to see an online portfolio with some examples of your work... who knew? Unfortunately, in my case, it's not as easy as putting up some pretty pictures of all the sites I've worked on.

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