Site Information - kris.nelson
September 2008
Technologies
Static HTML with CSS and JavaScript.
Animation with script.aluco.us
Combined RSS feed with Yahoo Pipes
Google AJAX Feed API
Google Custom Site Search
Custom XML with Twitter API
About kris.nelson
kris.nelson is just a simple one page site with all the functionality built in a single place. The tagline is "My Life Online", which sort of has a double meaning. The first meaning is as it sounds, it showcases all the different aspects of my life and where they reside online. The other meaning, which is much more subtle, refers to how I've spent much of my life the past few years. That is, building these websites and living a techie life on the web.
This site puts all my other sites in context. They are all personal sites, and for one reason or another, I created them as part of what's important in my life. The concept of the site is much different than anything else I've done so far, and I'm pretty happy with it.
How It Started
It might not be as cliche as it was a few years ago to own your name as a domain, but I figured what the heck. I was actually working on the photonelly.com website during lunch while spending my lunch break at Starbucks (I guess that's two cliches) when I got the idea to build the site. I bought the domain right then and went on working on the other site.
On the way home from work that day, I spent most of the time sitting in traffic and thinking what I was going to do with it. I had a few creative ideas, and this one was just the better of them. Played with the logo that night, and slept on it. Spent the next afternoon playing around with script.aculo.us to come up with the menu control and the rest just filled in by itself.
History
This was another fun one to create because I got to play with a few technologies that I haven't been able to use on the other sites. The first of which was script.aculo.us, which is a robust JavaScript library that gives developers the ability to dynamic and advanced animations to their websites without using Flash like in the past.
Other technologies new to me were the Google AJAX Feed API and the Twitter API, the latter which I actually played around with before for my Maui Twitter. I also built a new RSS feed for upcoming events from The Ciolinos website and also added Google Custom Search for searching all my websites in one place.
Features
While only being a one page site, it is broken out into different parts of my life online. The features listed here match up with those different parts of my life and has it's own little feel to it.
Web Developer - this panel features the list of my websites and links to more information about each.
Photographer - here you can see my different sites that feature my photos as well as the latest photos I've added to Flickr.
Maui Enthusiast - seems like one of the bigger parts of my life these days, here you can view my Maui websites and see a list of our past trips.
Blogger - with multiple blogs serving different purposes, this panel features links to each of my blogs and the most recent topics I've blogged about.
Grandson - a panel referencing the Ciolinos website and offers a view into upcoming birthdays and anniversaries in the family, courtesy of a new RSS feed.
Life Broadcaster - a peak at my latest status updates from Twitter, utilizing the Twitter API.
Search Engine - a single point to search all of my websites for anything you like. Built with Google Custom Search and using the Search API to customize and display the results.
What's Next
A few sections don't have additional panels when viewed, so as I think of what to do with them and I have time, I'll probably fill those in. Also, as parts of my life get their own websites (bunnies?) those will probably be added here, too. I signed up on Facebook this summer, and still looking for a good way to integrate the two as well.
Besides that, it will probably stay as is.