Rillaith's Website Portfolio

My Website

I have been "on the web" since about October 1994. I started off with a much worse version of this site (all one the one page, for starters), and it has gradually grown over the years. My own site has always been designed with the Lynx user very firmly in mind, and therefore tends away from frames, javascript, or anything else flashy. All my images have ALT tags, too (Pet hate of mine...).

Although my site still uses images which are not my own, I decided to create a set of linking images for use on my website to give it more of a consistent feel (Another pet hate of mine.) and look. For simplicity, all the images I have created for the site can be seen lower down this page. My site uses just pure HTML.

The Harem

I also maintain the Harem website, and created all the images for that, too. (The Dragon was originally drawn by somone else - I tidied away her background, and gave her a change of clothes.) The silk effect I use was originally someone else's not-quite seamless background, with the colour changed, and converted into an edge effect background image. This site uses a lot of Server Side Includes, but beyond that it uses only pure HTML.

There is an awful lot more on the Harem site in the Private section, including a variety of CGI scripts in action. If you would like to see examples of this work, then you will have to contact me with your request. I am also in the process of designing an update to much of the site to make it more dynamic, and to allow individual haremites to change their own settings. This will be done with another member of the group, Newt, and the primary tools used will be php and perl.

Snowplains

Moving on chronologically, the next site which I have had something of a hand in creating and (mostly) maintaining/updating is the Snowplains website. Most of the funky stuff has been done by other people - I've mostly been a code monkey.

CeNeS Pharmaceuticals

In March 1998, I became the Webmaster (supposedly part-time; the rest of the time I'm a Software Engineer) of CeNeS Limited. I inherited this site, but have endeavoured to make it some aspects of it easier to navigate than the original version (in my opinion!). There are various CGI scripts in use on the site - a search engine, a redirector (to direct internal employees to the internal website), and several based around the form-mailing concept.

Most recently added to this site is a discussion forum for users of our software. As with all my CGI scripts to date, I have used perl. Although I seemed to be reinventing the wheel (again), this wheel had different shapes and numbers of spokes to any other I found on the web. It is basically a standard style discussion forum, where users have to log in, and will be able to set up profiles containing all sorts of useful bits of information about themselves and their research. Several people who helped me to try breaking this have asked me for permission to use the forum on their own websites. None as yet have been implemented.

Javascript has also been used in places on the site; for form verification, a highlighting menu bar, and in once instance, a calculator for an online conference booking form. The site also uses frames and Cascading Style Sheets.

I have also developed a fairly extensive intranet for the company, which is constantly evolving. Although it has been an uphill battle to get employees to use it, the more "technically minded" have been very positive about it. Changing "Outlook Today" company-wise to a customised CeNeS version with the company calendar etc has been a big step in converting the rest of the technophiles.

I am currently redesigning the site, for which I had to provide several different designs for consideration. The final design choices are now available, and I will include the original style ideas at some point in the future, if I can still find them!

I no longer work for CeNeS, having left before the new website was fully functional.

St Mark's

My next website chronologically, is that of my home parish of St Mark's. I inherited this website from our Deacon when he left to become ordained a priest in May 1998. Since then, I have given the site a complete face-lift (which sadly, it needed, again in my opinion.), including creating all the images used (except the flag and coats of arms.) This site is a particularly good example of the careful use of fonts to make a good website, and personally, I'm really proud of the new look. It has a seasonal theme, and I have created a full set of images for each: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Now all that is needed is a total content upheaval. This site uses frames, javascript (including a javascript diary, which I have had to bug fix and make Millenium-compliant), and Cascading Style Sheets.

I have since handed the webmastership of this site on to the Chairman of the Parish Council, who is in a much better position to keep it up to date!

Arsespike Cottage

"Arsespike Cottage" belongs to one of my co-workers. Although I have absolutely nothing to do with the actual website, I did help to create a "mood" for it. The theme was "tedium", suggested by another of our co-workers, and I set out to create an image as a background to illustrate this. The final result can be seen here, which is a copy of the main page of the Arsepike Homepage which may or may not be suffering from tedium currently.

Albatross

Albatross is Snowplains' linux server, which we have hosted for us. I created the graphics for the placeholder style webpage on the server, which serves as a jumping point toservices' and users' homepages which are hosted there. The content had already been written by Jarel, and he was also involved in choosing between various designs for each of the images used.

Tim Gurney's Website

Tim is my dear husband, who asked me if I would "throw a base for a website together" for him, given a list of the sections he wanted. I found a photograph of a grey wolf howling, which he particularly liked, and set about creating a website around it. All the images used on the site were created by me (apart from the photographs and wolf collection, although I did manipulate the photos to suit in respect of size and dimensions). I found a line drawing of a genuine wolf forepaw print, which was used to create the light and dark blueish grey, red, and green paw print icons. The site uses Javascript for the mouseover button changes. Tim has written all the content, although I have helped with the HTML for the layout in some places.

The Discworld Talker

Tim's new talker had a very plain website, which he asked me to re-do for him. It's currently mid-construction, although all the graphics have been done. What is there looks fantastic in IE4/5, and not bad in NS4.5, but there is still a lot of work to be done to make it accessible to all browsers. You can see what has been done so far at http://www.discworld.org.uk/.

Greywolf.org.uk

Tim liked my design for his website so much he asked me to use it as a base to create another basic website, this time for a greywolf resource website which he has been wanting to put together for years. The original wolf photo was thrown, and instead I used a photo of "Little John", the poster wolf for Wolf Haven International. He is the eyes peering out of the splash screen, and the wolf face behind the titles used. This site is still under construction, and more work will be done in the not-too distant future.

G.N.A.T. Talker Base

Yet another website for Tim! His current project is a new talker base with more bells and whistles and a lot less badly written code. The ultimate aim is for this to be a semi-open source project, with developers invited to join in, and hence the website has to take this into account. This is another website very much under construction at the moment, but can be seen in all its incomplete glory here.

Claws For Thought

Having 5 cats who like to join us while we are at our comptuers, Tim and I decided they needed their own site. The basic design took me a short two hours to prepare, however, like most of my own sites, this one again is in need of an update. The site uses very simple graphics, and was my first one designed using a fixed-width table; however vociferous complaints from my housemate (No Images! No Style Sheets! Nothing more than Plain Text, Please!) caused me to remove the fixed width . The site copes well enough without it, and I have plans to do another site layout using that style. This site also only uses HTML and CSS. Visit Claws For Thought.

Our Wedding Site

Our wedding website was knocked together in a similarly short period of time, and has not yet been updated since our wedding. (Still, one month late is better than the rest of my sites...) It has a javascript countdown which now lists the time SINCE the wedding started! The styles used were some little experiments, like changing links to be larger than normal text but otherwise entirely the same.. Interesting, but will probably be tweaked when I next update the site. This was purely put up so I could stop emailing a dozen copies of photos around. Had I done this more than a month before the wedding, it would almost certainly have been in a much better state. It is due for a complete revamp, once I have prepared the photos I intend to include.

ICE

A complete site I put together in two days for Tim. Very simple, based on the style of the G.N.A.T. website. This is a project currently in progress.

nGame Ltd

I now work for nGame Ltd as their web designer. In my first week, I redid the corporate website to an existing design idea, which just needed new graphics for the menu, as the logo had been updated and the colours had changed. I had to edit virtually all the graphics, as well as the HTML, to make this layout nicely both in all browsers we have to hand, as well as on DITV (digital interactive television). We now also have a WAP site; a combination of perl and php scripts redirect WAP-enabled browsers to the WAPsite, and HTML-browsers to the website.The site uses javascript, SSIs and plain HTML.

In my second week, I collaborated with Green Cathedral to produce a new website for our first launched game, Al;ien Fish Exchange. I did not produce this site, but the final look and feel is heavily influenced by me. It loks quite different from their first suggestion! I have also written perl scripts to download, update and convert the "breeder board" and breeder's guide, which i also created to match the rest of the site.

In my third week, I really shot myself in the foot - I created a third website, for an upcoming game, DataClash. This has had several (dozen) revisions, as the logo has been under constant revision; I think we have finally reached a verdict. This site is currently just a placeholder, but I am very proud of the circuitry background image! This game will be on WAP, DITV, and the Web, so I am involved in creation of the graphics and HTML for the gmae itself, as well as for the website.

And the website for my fourth week? The WAPsite ... I'm going to run out of websites to produce at this rate!

My Icons and Other Graphics

Apart from creating all the graphics for this site, I've done plenty for other people or sites for a variety of reasons.. competitons, by request, and all sorts of other things. I'm always quite happy to create images, buttons or banners (etc) for other people, so if you'd like something in particular, please feel free to get in touch. To save this page from taking forever to download, though, I'm put my icons and other graphics on a seperate page.