Thomas Ballard's - Personal Website

Ugh, Jigsaw Puzzles - So I thought I hated Jigsaw puzzles, I was wrong. Funny story, I have friends (...lol, oh wait, that's not the funny part) friends, that love to send around email threads with large "inspirational" pictures. Frequently they just consume mailbox space. So, what to do, just sit and take it? Nah. I knew about a cool flash app that could jigsaw-puzzle-ize photos. Turns out some pictures make better puzzles than others. Try some of these out and see what you think!

• http://www.mavenspun.com/jigsaw-puzzles/index.htm

Revisiting Hangman - Lately I've been revisiting a hangman game engine I wrote long ago. It's was written using front-end JavaScript and some client-side game programming techniques. The front door for the project is here: Play Hangman Game. Here are some popular customized variations. Check a few out to see the differences. Grab the link code for your own site if you like it.

• Play 50 US States List Hangman
• Play Resume Glossary Hangman
• Play Health Insurance Glossary Hangman
• Play Statistics Glossary Hangman
• Play Popular Tourist Vacation Destinations Hangman
• Play Bible Study Hangman
• Play Real Estate Glossary Hangman

Latest Favorite Books and Movies - I love reading. While my preference is non-fiction, I also enjoy ...surprise, science fiction, and occasionally fantasy novels. Movies are also a great escape, (...sometimes waking consciousness, and the messes we make during it. :-) Here are some of my latest favorites. If you have an opinion, be sure to leave your review!

• Star Trek (Three-Disc Edition) [Blu-ray]
• District 9 [Blu-ray]
• Up (4 Disc Combo Pack with Digital Copy and DVD) [Blu-ray]
• By Schism Rent Asunder - Weber, David
• Anderson, Kevin J.

Music Widget - Who can argue that MP3 music beats the old model? Remember driving to the store to buy an entire album just to get the one or two songs you wanted? Digital music and ITunes changed all of that. Except, now you're stuck in ITunes annoying DRM-ridden silo--unable to play your .99 songs in anything but one of your 5 registered ITunes instances, right? (Who thinks this crap up?) Amazon is better. The interface is simple, the music is cheap, and the audio files play in all of the MP3 players I use--as well as in ITunes. So, unless you love vinyl and can't be parted with the superior experience of analog, check this out and learn to love music again.

Personal Website Housekeeping - Just a quick summary of my goals for this site. (1) Maintain a semblance of permanence on the web. Hopefully you can always find me here--even after projects culminate, or connections atrophy. (2) Provide a home for my resume, samples, documentation, contributions and so on. (3) Experiment, and remind myself why I love (and hate) being a professional web developer.

Resume - Using the web for my resume seems like it would be pretty straight forward, but here's what I think is different about keeping a resume online. A site gives you an address where someone can obtain your resume without all the stringency of old school synchronicity. For example, you can still send your resume, or you can say, my resume is at such and such address on the web. True, if the address involves dots, dashes, and other web/url related ASCII madness this could be problematic. Which is why you should grab an inexpensive domain with your name in it (like thomas.ballard.ws for example :-). Or, if you value intelligence in a potential employer--it could also be a litmus test. I'm just saying, sometimes when interviewing a company it can be tough to ascertain whether that technical film-i-ness is really just a corporate facade or regurgitated academia. (...er, unless you are anticipating hiring me, then I'm sure it's a deep commitment to technology and scientific advancement, ...go good us'es! ;-)

More than a place to live, the web offers technology to enhance your resume. In past lives, when I've managed hiring, stacks of paper resumes get boring. My suspicion (and I'd argue my own experience) is that given the dynamism of web technologies, a resume can point (or link) to samples which have a more profound and immediate capability to "jump off the page". If this means a competitive advantage for you, then mission accomplished.

For modern professionals--those of us that create and maintain a resume using MS Word for example, we can also benefit from open technology standards. I know, it's another of those fine lines, but proprietary formats are cages, the keys to which eventually are lost. No? I have a few copies of various resumes in an old Word Perfect format. Guess what, I can't open them anymore, they are completely useless to me. That's not to say HTML and other web markup languages will enjoy immortality, but such publicly shared interests seem positioned well against corporate property interests and all of the pressures and shifting priorities that accompany them.

Ultimately I'm just suggesting that something as simple as a resume is benefited by an augmentation on the web: 24/7 accessibility, asynchronicity, open standards, enhanced media, and dynamism all add up to a potential for serious competitive advantage for you.

Samples, Documentation, Contributions - Everything said about a resume applies doubly for your portfolio of work samples, documentation that you may generate, or collaborative contributions you make. Whether you are an artist, illustrator, poet, animator, game programmer, musician, film maker, or just about anything else that yields tangible output, I think having a personal website to showcase your efforts is helpful.

In my case, while I aspire to many of the skill sets named, it's mostly designs, sites, tools, games, how-to examples, informational structures, and programming techniques that occupy my focus.

Experiments - There are always those interests that don't necessarily align to your traditional pursuits. Unless and until these hobby-like interests graduate into something else, they need their own shoebox on a shelf to live in.

My Links

• Contact Information for Thomas Ballard

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• Resume for Thomas Ballard

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• References for Thomas Ballard

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• Code Samples by Thomas Ballard

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• Web Design Samples by Thomas Ballard

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• Music by Thomas Ballard

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More Projects and Favorites

• Recommended Web Development Tools

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• Ballard Family Website

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• My 1973 Saab 99e

  - Click to read about a former pet project