About the website
ShinyShell (shinyshell.net) is the headquarters, testing grounds and continuous coding project of me, Electron. Having written many scripts and little components, designed sites and so forth, it occured to me that it would be an exceptionally good idea to start my own site which could be my headquarters, from where I could publish ideas and scripts, and also that it would be fun to build a site of my own which I could make from scratch and chisel to perfection. And thus Electron spoke: "Let there be a website like this", and the website came to be. Founded in September 2006, and originally called "Electron", only several individuals knew of it's existance. It was short lived, and disappeared from the Internet before Christmas (though it had about 3 pages). However, the site's "version 2.0" was by now being worked on in the secret directories of my personal development server. I coded a mass of features into what came to be the most advanced web site I had ever made up until then, in both design and server-side coding. It was worked on for almost a year, and then maybe a month before planned release, it just so happened I scrapped the project in favour of a complete rewrite in a different scripting language. That's where the current version - v3 comes in. Version three does not have the sheer amount of features the previous version had: with this version I hoped to just have a simpler, glossier layout and a greater focus on the content - presented within what is at least an aesthetically pleasing if not phantasmagorical design solution - with the traditional Electronian emphasis on the harmonious conjunction of clear blue and white (I eventually moved to other colours, for a little fun), only that time around the design lost some of the artic chill of v2 and gained more warmth and light thanks to the introduction of pale brown/grey, and more use of white.Now I've weakened you with website history one out of a hundred visitors will find interesting, it's time to finish you off with website aims.
Shinyshell aims to be useful to it's visitors by providing various stuff that might be useful, or interesting to some people. This site does not promise to deliver a particular thing, or guarantee anything. Among the highlights, there are articles covering various web development and design topics, but also a variety of different subjects, such as lucid dreaming, art, music and films. Some articles will be intended as tutorials of a kind, whereas others may be reviews, pointers, rants, the author's own personal experiences with something or some such. It is also intended as a mini-community site based around a custom-written forum, and of course Electron's headquarters and sandbox. Also, any "products" I make will be published here. Shinyshell is still a fresh site, so you can expect it to deal with other things too in the future, such as free layouts and music I make.
...or so I think. Whatever Shinyshell used to be, it's morphed over the years and I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be right now. This means it's highly unlikely you'll ever find anything here that will interest you long-term, but perhaps you'll like some of the features here.
Technical details... if anyone wants to know
This website was designed entirely using a text editor and Macromedia Flash (I use it for drawing). The markup is XHTML, and validates as 1.0 Strict, although it was originally written to be compatible with the XHTML 1.1 specification (later downgraded because of the annoying removal of entity codes like from the specification - though a lot of the site might still validate as 1.1). The server-side is coded in Python running via FastCGI, using my own custom framework.Code coloring on this website is achieved with the wonderful Pygments.
Exhaustive list of current and former staff and contributors
In order of having been added to this list.
marin staff
Marin R.
Founder, administrator and designer/coder. Owns an expensive fountain pen.
Founder, administrator and designer/coder. Owns an expensive fountain pen.
Kthar contributor
Matej G.
Marketing manager. Is known for his ability to end a heated discussion with a single post.
Marketing manager. Is known for his ability to end a heated discussion with a single post.
Navarr contributor
Navarr B.
Testing & appearing in ShinyShell comics. Loves tea, anime and structured semantic markup.
Testing & appearing in ShinyShell comics. Loves tea, anime and structured semantic markup.
Kat contributor
Katie K.
Website host. Has kittens in her hair (disregard the provided picture).
Website host. Has kittens in her hair (disregard the provided picture).
Nick contributor
Nick O.
Administrator, project consultant and likely a coder on the Lamplight project.
Administrator, project consultant and likely a coder on the Lamplight project.
KasaiKitsune staff
Cynthia M.
Doesn't really work here. But she's on this list, so ph33r her.
Doesn't really work here. But she's on this list, so ph33r her.
Šumska Mišica staff
Ivana T.
Probably the only person to actually use this site anymore...
Probably the only person to actually use this site anymore...
About the webmaster
It all started in 2003, when I picked up my first C++ book, wanting to unravel some of the mysteries of how applications worked. I immediately liked programming and though I learned only basic C++, I moved to HTML next year when I wanted to build my own website. Having picked up an ancient 400+ page tome "The U.K. internet starter kit, 1998 edition" (the purpose of which was to teach absolute beginners about the internet), I read and re-read the basic HTML guide that was included and learned how the language functioned.
My experiences with web development started when I came across a PHP script for the first time ever. I believe it was around 2005 that this happened. I tried to open it like you would a HTML page, by double clicking on it, and was surprised when I saw complicated-looking code instead of a web page. Motivated by the ugliness of PHP's superglobal variables like $_SERVER, I printed a hundred-page PHP guide out and read through the night. Even though no one really explained to me how CGI and web serving and databases worked, I spent the next few months reading code and trying to understand it. Because I had picked a really good piece of software to learn from, the security pracitces of escaping, htmlspecialchar-ing and understanding php_magic_quotes were with me from the beginning, so the first sites I built were quite robust.
While I was still on the rise as a PHP developer, I came across the then-Eevee's Headquarters (which was still in its version 2), a web site that impressed me more than any other I had seen in the "Pokémon community". The webmistress, Kat, was looking for people to help with the site (luckily for me) and so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work there, even for a while. I sent Kat an example BB code parser I had spent months writing, and I was in! This happened in April or May, and I spent the whole summer after that planning and coding the website (during this time I also got acquainted with Navarr). Even though I'm only passively coding for EHQ these days (now Route 50), the experience I received there (working with other coders on the same project) was very beneficial. I also had lots of fun and made loads of new friends.
In 2009 or earlier, I picked up Python in a few days (awed by its simplicity) and made a website with it. Even though the design and content has changed, that same code is what has generated this page for you. Working on Shinyshell was another exciting moment of my coding history and though that too has dwindled, I still sometimes work on exciting things here, though you don't really see that much of it. For example, my map tools project for PDoA is hosted on Shinyshell.
Operating systems and other choices. In the past I used Windows 98, XP, 7, Solaris, OpenSolaris and Linux Suse, Ubuntu and in particular Fedora. I currently run Fedora 12 on my laptop, which I can't upgrade because I broke my display and have to use an external monitor. Even though the joke is old and no longer relevant, in conversations prior to late 2009 I used to insist that Windows Vista™ is an obscure type of window cleaning fluid.
My academic interests include systems theory, cybernetics, algorithms and data structures, though I never limit myself with just that. In my spare time, I enjoy playing the piano (classical compositions, movie themes and my own work mostly - but also occassionally covers of songs, Evanescence, etc.), drawing (not so much because I don't have the time), eating pears, japanese cinema of the 1950-s, limited amounts of anime, watching Stargate and computer programming of course.
I love animals. Among my very favourite are snakes, turtles, giraffes, lizards, penguins, hedgehogs and octopuses.
My dream? I one day want to move to Lapland, the north of Finland. It's beautiful, it's often bitterly cold, and it's isolated. I'll save up some money, and move there (possibly with my girlfriend xD) to lead a simple life with the only extra items being a piano, some books, a large supply of films and series to watch and an even larger supply of English tea.
You may find my official portfolio here
