Software - Photography by Kieran Simkin

Software development is what comes naturally to me. Since the days of BASIC, through Perl, Pascal, C and assembler to the languages I'm using these days; PHP, C#, C++, Java and Python - if it can be programmed; I will have a damn good go at programming it.

jQuery.ui.FadeOver

One effect I use a lot in web development is what I call 'FadeOver'. By this, I mean that when you put your mouse over something, it shouldn't just suddenly change colour - it should fade to a new colour - it just looks cooler. Since I'm now moving to jQuery, I've thought it wise to make this effect into a jQuery UI widget and release it as opensource.

The gallery browser with the sliding thumbnail strip that you see in the gallery section of my website is now available for you to use in the form of a jQuery UI widget. Simply specify the media items in your gallery via XML or JSON, or read the images directly from a Flickr feed - adding the control to your page is one simple line of JavaScript.

jquery.ui.mediaslide

textfrag.php

Textfrag is a simple PHP script that will take any piece of text and create a GIF image containing the text in your chosen font. Textfrag allows you to have text rendered on the server-side and sent to the browser as images, this means there's no requirement for your choice of font to be installed on the client's computer; you're no longer limited to a short list of web-safe fonts - you can design your site using any font you choose.

When I approach a new graphics API or programming language, one of the first programs that I write in order to hone my skills is a 1-dimensional cellular automaton. This is sort of like my "Hello World" program for graphics systems. Here you can find my cellular automaton implementation in C with the OpenGL graphics API.

1D Cellular Automation

PocIRC

I'm about half way through writing a complete chat client for Windows Mobile - due to uncertainties about the future of the platform, development on this project is currently stalled while I decide whether to port to the Google phone or stick with the Windows Mobile.

This is a Javascript controller for a Flash media player. To me the standard embedable Flash media players are all a little too generic and boring. It's also not particularly easy to skin a Flash media player. I would love to be able to write a media player entirely in Javascript, and perhaps with HTML 5 and some newer browsers that will become more feasible. However, for now the only sensible way to get sound out of a web browser is to use Flash. The approach I've used

JSPlay

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jQuery.ui.MediaSlide - jQuery.ui.FadeOver

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