Visual Lizard
Ross McDowall
Ross is a senior web developer for Visual Lizard. In working for the company for the past 9 years he has steadily upgraded his skills. Both the best and worst thing about this industry is how fast things change. It is great finding new ways to do things, but in finding the new process, it sometimes means having to go back and redo all of the programming that was done the old way. Thus, he fears change... but since the world is always changing, he nevertheless changes with it. He enjoys working for the company as the small staff doesn’t allow for office politics. The office environment allows for independence, creativity, and quick access to a fairly substantial knowledge base.
Ross enjoys roleplaying games, science fiction and fantasy books, and movies. He has his own website which he uses as a place to experiment with his programming skills from time to time. He has done substantial work on the majority of the sites developed at Visual Lizard, with particular pride in working on Destination Winnipeg, The Forks, IMAX Winnipeg, Folklorama and the Winnipeg Airports Authority.
Ross is learning more about developing online web applications including a more comprehensive version of his own diabetes blood sugar testing recorder. He has honed his skills in both PHP and MySQL as these are the primary tools of his trade. His latest goal is becoming fully familiar with the CAKE framework (not easy as I am not good with change *harrumph harrumph*).
In our industry, the concept of standards for web and browser development should be at the forefront. Competition between browsers should not affect how the viewer sees the product which is being developed. It is up to the web developer to determine how a site should look. The browser should just be the platform to view the site, and should not interpret how to display what is written. Unfortunately the browsers are not quite to that stage yet, so for now we have to make the odd piece of non-compliant code to accommodate those browsers. One day soon maybe we will see all browsers following standards. Cross your fingers.
On My Radar
Nov 11, 2008
Rememberance Day
Flash, CSS z-index and Internet Explorer
The newest browsers understand how to combine flash and css. The issue of flash always rendering on the top level has been addressed sufficiently, and can now be displayed like any other element by using proper css code. Except for Internet Explorer. We came across an issue where our HTML / CSS...
iPhone Comes to Lizard HQ
Earlier this week we called the only provider of iPhones in Canada. After some haggling over plans Julian found a plan that made it worth the switch. Once he had his plan, one by one we continued with the same sales person and proceeded to order a total of three iPhones. There was a fourth but our...
Paypal Increases Security
This week Paypal announced that it will no longer process transactions that come from deprecated browsers. In this BBC news article a Paypal representative noted that there are still a significant number of people using very old deprecated browsers that do not carry the appropriate level of...
Blog Action Day: The Price of Doing Nothing about Climate Change
For those of you who haven’t seen the news over the last couple of years, it would appear that our planet is heating up. It’s not just that the overall temperature of the planet is increasing, it’s increasing at an alarming rate. That temperature change of 1 or 2 degrees average...
The Social Gamer
The stereotype of the gamer being a practical troglodyte sitting in the dark glued to his computer monitor embedded firmly in a virtual world may not be completely accurate. In this BBC editorial, Margaret Robertson states that while the stereotype is generally correct, it is incomplete and...
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The question people are asking is; did it live up to the hype? In my opinion the story was everything we’ve come to expect about the stories of this young Wizard. Although at times the pace seemed to drag, in a sense it was appropriate for the character development. I am not going to provide...
From The Web
Aug 18, 2008
Moisture Vaporators: Moisture Vaporators Spotted In Buenos Aires
Linked by Ross
Jun 16, 2008
The Ancient Romans Were d20 Gamers
Linked by Ross
Jun 12, 2008
Wind Power: Modular Turbines for Urban Environments
Linked by Ross
Jun 11, 2008
New Lithium-Ion Chemistry means more Power?
Linked by Ross
May 23, 2008
'Tunnel' links New York to London
Linked by Ross
Mar 13, 2008
Zombies - Be Prepared
Linked by Ross
Mar 11, 2008
Geek Jewelry: Rings on the Periodic Table
Linked by Ross
Feb 13, 2008
Russia proposes space arms treaty
Linked by Ross