The Man and his dog Blog.
deanjrobinson.com is unsurprisingly, the internet abode of me, Dean Robinson, a quarter century young web developer and designer. You can find out more about me over here… or at least you will be able to once I get around to finishing it. In the meantime you can just stalk me on one of the many social networks I don’t use.
The Machine.
From day 0 this site has been powered by the greatest blogging platform of them all, WordPress. In addition to the custom code I hide deep inside my custom themes, there are also a bunch of plugins that make things happen on this site. They are: insert list here.
All this lives on Dreamhost which is unmatched as far as dirt cheap hosting goes. All the sites I run (except Hahlo.com) live on my Dreamhost account, with unlimited domains/subdomains, unlimited mysql databases and more storage and bandwidth than you could poke a forest at. The only thing I don’t like is their stupid monthly emails (they think they’re funny. they’re not).
The Tools.
TextMate — WYSIWYG is for wimps. Everything from the original HTML mockups, to the WordPress theme, the CSS, the javascript, even the posts (like this one), everything is written in TextMate. Best. Text Editor. Ever.
Fireworks — Despite the fact that every time I’ve redesigned my site in the last 2 years I’ve ended up using less graphic elements, there is still the need for a graphics program to create what I need. For this purpose I use Fireworks. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. Photoshop is hideous overkill in 90% of web situations, not too mention it takes three times longer to load and crews more ram and cpu resources. Plus it is called Photoshop not WebGraphicShop after all.
Hands — Both TextMate and Fireworks would be nothing without the presence of my hands and the 10 digits which reside on them. Excessive use of the above has probably caused my apparent RSI. poo.
The Technology.
Apple MacBook Pro and 24-inch LED Cinema Display — You only have to travel back to June 2006 and I was still very much an avid Windows user and hater of all things Mac. Scarred by being forced to use slow, under powered, under featured rubbish Mac boxes throughout high school had severely tarnished my view of the Cupertino fruit. Then I got a job, and along with that came an Intel-powered MacBook Pro, my aging AMD-powered PC suddenly took the back seat in this show, so much so that I packed it up nearly two years ago and its still sitting in a box next to my desk at home.
I guess you could say I’m now an Apple person (and I can blame Tony for that), with my MBP, my Cinema Display (if you don’t have one you are missing out of 24-inches of awesome), my iPhone, …and my iPod Touch …and my color iPod — both which live, no longer used, in my desk drawer. My other peripherals are minimal, a Logitech VX Nano mouse and my 1TB Western Digital external hard drive is pretty much it. Given my equipment is relatively minimal, why is my desk just a filthy mess.
The Standards.
My standard of writing may not be super awesome, but that doesn’t bother me, nor does the fact that my Mother points out my numerous spelling mistakes (thanks Mum). As for the code behind all the shininess its constructed in standard HTML (newer bits in HTML5, older bits in HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0), it’s made pretty with valid CSS (with the possible exception of some dirty IE hack. IE I hate you.)
The Web-Siblings.
While this site is my primary outlet, I have a bad habit of starting other sites as well. For example, I’m kind of obsessed with LOST, its awesome and if you disagree I don’t want to hear about it, so obsessed am I that I started a LOST-based blog just so that I didn’t fill this site up with LOST related postings. I’ve got several blogs for various purposes, some which get a lot more love than others. Then there are my other sites, my projects, things like Hahlo, tveet and istwitternotreallydowndownbutjustallfuckedupdown (which was inspired by this tweet from Mr Daring Fireball himself @gruber).