Visual Lizard

Ross McDowall

Dwarf

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.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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Authored by Ross on Jul 23, 2007

Categorized as Arts and Entertainment

Tagged as harry, potter, 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 any spoilers here because I feel that the best part about stories is that you have to discover them for yourself. I personally feel that the story had a good ending. I’m 35 years old and I’ll tell you that there were times in this book where I was laughing out loud or on the verge of te... giant lump in the throat.

There are points where you want to cheer, and others where you wish you could put the book down and hope what you’re reading isn’t going to happen. I think its a great story. But don’t take my word for it. If you haven’t read the Harry Potter series, do so. I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

Comments

Comment by D2 on Aug 03, 2007

Yeah, it was worth the read. I hope Rowling doesn't cave to pressure and write another sequel because Harry's story has been told. It will be interesting to see if she comes up with another different, original series.

Comment by Julian on Aug 27, 2007