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With over ten year's experience advising, coding and consulting online, Frank O'Connor provides solutions to the toughest of today's coding problems. He uses object oriented PHP code, databases, A.P.I.'s, C.M.S (Wordpress in particular), payment systems, e-commerce systems, Photoshop and Javascript. Frank also consults on every aspect of site design, including S.E.O., marketing considerations, usability and upgrades. |
Christmas quiet
Christmas is, in my experience, a quiet time for the freelancer. Projects, unlike presents, are wrapped up early. Nothing new or urgent need be embarked on until the new year. It is tempting, then, to while away the time decorating one's own site in the grand old Google style. I suspect, however, that idea that has almost seen its day. Discretion is advised. Hence the snowman, peeking around the corner of the site title, and the tiny, almost invisible, decoration on the RSS icon. And that's it. Hibernation now until things warm up, in every way, in January.
Freelancer Frank's Portfolio: Medieval Tours
The site:
Medieval Tours is a brochure site for a Romanian company that specialises in custom itineries for all areas and sites in Romania.
http://www.medievaltours.com
Features:
- Custom template
- Custom photography
- Online payment
- Inline promotional movies
Freelance Frank's role:
Frank has consulted with the Romanian owners from the start about designing the site and content to appeal to foreign clients. To this end he has translated content from the original Romanian and has improved on supplied English translations. He has also supplied the site's tagline 'Romania. It's Yours' and some of the photographs used. Frank is engaged on a weekly basis in updating all the site content.
Tools:- Wordpress
- Custom PHP
- Movies (Flash and Youtube)
The optimal way to set images in a post
The Baby Diaries are an annual feature at Vivid Magazine, a glossy pub for ex-pats in the country that I designed the web site for. The conceit, babies talking as if they were adults, is not my favorite but I was able to contribute something to the site by ensuring the baby images were lined up with the text so that the little creature's eyelines went towards the text, where possible. If a baby is looking to the left, then the image is right aligned, and vice versa. This is something I have been doing intuitively since I created the site. An image can be put to good use leading the eye of the reader into the text of an article - especially if it is otherwise of low quality ,as in the example here. The human gaze is best for this - or else a face looking to the left or right. Failing that, the composition of the image should be your guide. Wherever the composition leads the eye, then the image should be aligned accordingly.
While I am writing about Vivid, I ought to briefly mention the nifty jQuery vertical scroller that I have installed on the right hand side column for the front page of the site. The editor has long wanted to show off the covers of all past issues, and I thought this was the most economical and user-friendly way to do it. I also linked each cover to the subscriptions page on the site, because it's always worth getting the best economical advantage out of any addition.
Freelance Frank’s Portfolio: Seaborg Open Space Fund
The Site: seaborgfund.org is the web site of the Seaborg Open Space Fund. The fund was founded for open space advocacy by David Seaborg in honor of his father Glenn T. Seaborg, UC Chancellor and discoverer of Plutonium. The fund began as a tribute to the elder Seaborg, a Nobel Laureate and UC Berkeley professor. As a Lafayette, CA. resident, Glen was involved in the identification of 10 elements — including plutonium, berkelium and, naturally, seaborgium — and worked on the Manhattan Project developing the first atomic bomb.
http://www.seaborgfund.org/
Features:
- Twitter social media integration
- Facebook social media integration
- Gallery
- Original design
Freelance Frank's role:
Frank has been involved with the conception and design of the site from the beginning, with a special emphasis placed on SEO and social media integration. Frank also provides written content for the site, including a white paper of the purpose and role of the fund.
Tools:- Wordpress
- Custom theming
Freelance Frank’s Portfolio: Children’s House Montessori
The site: Children's House Montessori is a school based in Rapid City, South Dakota.
http://www.chkids.net/
Features:
- Custom Thesis template design and coding
- Events calendar
- Image gallery
Freelance Frank's role:
Frank re-designed the previous site completely and ported most of the pre-existing content to a new Wordpress set up with a custom made Thesis theme. He also set up a calendar and image gallery.
Tools:- Wordpress
- Custom PHP
- Thesis
- Thesis Open Hook
jQuery and Quadratic Functions
As x changes in value, the quadratic function: f(x) = ax2+bx+c describes a parabola - an arc through space - in terms of a two dimensional axis where x describes the vertical and f(x) describes the horizontal points at intervals. [caption id="attachment_167" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="The graphic result of a quadratic function"]
[/caption]
Quadratic functions also allow for a fun afternoon combining the jQuery form plugin with the jpgraph PHP library. I started out with a simple PHP function to produce a range of f(x) values for any set of values x. I then built a form to allow any value for a, b and c to be input as well as the maximum and minimum for x and the steps that x takes. Once that was working, I passed the results into two arrays and passed those to jpgraph which produces a graphical image on the fly and stores it on the server. Finally, to avoid page refreshes, I wrapped the form around the jQuery 'plugin' (can these properly be called plugins? I suppose so...) The result is a simple and relatively intuitive visual demonstration of the relationship between mathematics and geometry. In fact, expanding that out, the relationship is actually between mathematical logic, computation and optics - but that gets us into a kind of crazy Turing territory and lines have to be drawn somewhere.
Try it out here
For the future, I would like to be able to produce more accurate and extensible graphs for larger number ranges, and to plug the whole thing into calculus, to really push the spatial theme. But this is something of a start and it is perhaps the simplest demonstration of the more general relationship. Read More
Frank is highly professional, consciencious, dependable and committed. He went beyond the call of duty to ensure a sucessful outcome. I have no hesitation in recommending Frank or using his services again. 
Max: 29C (84) F
Max: 19C (66) F
Max: 34C (93) F