Zach Inglis

• I have been very busy with clients. At London Made we have taken on our biggest client yet and are currently working on that. Keep an eye on my portfolio to see it when it’s done.
• I have been updating tl;dr. My tumblog. With…
  
  1. My photos.
  2. Funny work-related images.
  3. iPad apps.
  4. Interesting reblogs from colleagues.
• I have been photographing lots. To show a few…
  
• I have created some new Flickr Groups…
  1. Photo In A Photo. Pictures conttaining a photograph element with another. Such as iPhone photos or polaroids within our photo.
  2. World Wide Photo Walks. A collection for all Scott Kelby’s WWPW photos.
  3. Pictures Of Photographers In Action. Photos of photographers, photographing or setting up lights.
  4. London Film & ComicCon’s. A collection for all London ComicCon photos.

My initial thoughts of the iPad were merely of Apple over-hype. I thought it was on over-priced and over-sized iPod Touch. After some time I eventually realized that there was a few ways it could make me money, and would eventually pay for itself.

One of my greatest luxuries I partake in is spending countless hours in the bath. I sometimes chatted to friends on my laptop outside the bath, but the logistics were complicated and painful. When my waterproof case arrives, I’ll be able to wireframe, blog and write. Where better to solve the problems that a website may face when you have a completely clear mind in the bath.

I spend extra money to live in Central London but I do not get to see it enough due to work. Now I have the iPad I can go to the park. Not only is this an enjoyable experience but it is very pro-creative.

Another productive experience is to compartmentalize. Keeping chat and email on my iPad means i don’t get distracted and lose my concentration.  

I enjoy the Kindle/iBooks application but i would suggest it is easier to read on the Kindle than on the iPad. If that is your main reason for considering purchasing your iPad, then the price, battery, free 3G and such should sway you onto the Kindle.

One hidden fee of the iPad is the applications. I paid $175 extra in apps trying to get the iPad to a more functional state. 

So in conclusion:
The iPad is a great device. A bit limited and a lot of sparkle, but ultimately for the right person it can be a useful appliance. However, at the price I would not say it is fully worth it for your average home user.

I’ve started more of a proper tumblog here.

I recently finished initial “look and feel” work for Mogotest.

Mogotest is a suite of tools to help you test your website and to advise you on how to improve and make it more accessible to everyone. Which in turn, helps you achieve your website’s goals better

It competes with a few websites but I believe will provide more value than its competitors as it has a slightly different focus.

They hired me because the site contains a large amount of statistics and could likely be overwhelming to the users. I created a unique work-flow that I believed would be natural and obvious to their clientele.

It is most rewarding when you help develop a site that you know you will use.

Mogo will be launching within the next month hopefully.

Testimonials from the clients:

• “Zach is the oddball designer who doubles as a capable developer. Or maybe he’s an effective developer who also has serious design chops and a love of typography. Honestly I’m not sure which of those descriptions fits better. But what I do know is that it’s a pleasure to work with someone who can not only deliver a slick user interface but also bring it to life.” — Nick Plante, Co-founder
  
• “Zach did excellent work on mogotest.com, driving much of the site design. His experience with Rails allowed him to get going with our codebase quickly and work directly on the views without needing an intermediary engineer. Great stuff all around.”  — Kevin Menard, Co-founder

I am currently accepting new clients!

[from my flickr]

It’s been a month since I moved back to London.

I am currently consulting and booked solid for at least this month. Looking very forward to when I can announce said projects.

marco:

• Factory.

Ooh; a game.

• Stability

:D

Factories are quite a useful tool with tests I must say. Considering how many finickity bugs do pop up on Tumblr; I could not expect there to be any tests. Granted that the major bugs seem like server load, there are so many tiny ones that I could only imagine would be bypassed by decent test coverage.

I hardly think Tumblr is the right company to preach on HOW to code, though? Especially when the server outages and bugs are getting more often and worse. If anything; you saying shows the reason to use Factories.

Dear Marco et al,

I have just been alerted to your new ‘Ask’ feature, which gives you exactly the same featureset as Formspring.me. I appreciate the fact you are trying to satisfy the Tumblrverse, but everyone would of been quite happy if you hadn’t. There was nothing broken, so nothing needed fixing on that front.

However; Tumblr is probably THE buggiest website I have ever used. Including Twitter. Everything is broken in some way or another and the website can not stay up for more than 50 minutes. As someone who likes to Tumbl and has a few Tumblogs (some with 1100 followers, some with 2600 followers), it frustrates me no end.

Everyone knows the core principles of a successful web application is keeping your feature-set clean, relevant and to do as little things as possible; as good as possible. This is just an un-needed.

Tumblr is a great place, with a great community but having watched quite a few people leave it because of the lack of visible care going into this place, I wonder what really is happening behind the scenes.

Please can you focus on what makes this website great? And less about random new toy features.

Cheers very much,

Zach

flavors.me/zachinglis

I just built this in about 5 minutes. Great service for those wanting to create a quick portal page.

clientsfromhell:

After having a quite pleasant phone conversation with a client and discussing a proposed strategy for moving forward, they told me they hope I was not homosexual, because my site looked a “bit gay” with the pink.

I wrote off the hour and a half on the phone and did not proceed with any more negotiations.

My submission got through!

This happened to me a few years ago. I had a lot of comments to me over the years on the pink of my portfolio (I only have a dash at the moment; I need to add more) but I never felt so insulted. It was partly to do with the tone.

Taking portraits is a very popular way to use a camera. However, everyone can be sensitive about having themeslves photographed. As with the whole of photography; it is our job as photographers to get the best result we can and hopefully this tutorial will help with that. Every subject is different (be it face shape, skin colour, hair colour, etc).

Read more on Compose, Focus & Click!

Crummy, the simple and tasty way to add breadcrumbs to your Rails applications is now on GemCutter.

Thanks to netzpiraten for getting this started.

Many times in my years as an entrepreneur and networker, I have raised the question of best organizational practices. I am constantly looking for quick tips to create a better and more productive me. One of the most vital tools, especially for the forgetful, is a pocket book.

Throughout mine you can find random questions and thoughts. The image above shows one task page list. Other items in the book consist of thoughts like “Best Wacom to get?”, “Do I want to go to Ruby Manor 2?” and “Price for 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens”. Some of which I may have forgot.

While a phone could be a good replacement, I don’t have to worry about eating into my battery which I would possibly need later.

The book I use, as shown above is called WhiteLines* which is only $3 and lovely and minimalist.

* The link goes to Amazon.com and has my affiliate code attached.

Redesigned Portfolio

I have just redesigned my portfolio. I try to keep my portfolio a proper reflection of my skills.

Click to see. Please enjoy :)

My resume is now online! I am available for permanent and contract work and am more than willing to relocate.

This is just a note to say that I am still here. I have been working on some personal stuff including bettering my photography. Above is one of my pictures :)

Below are some links to find me…

• Facebook
• Flickr
• Twitter
• Last.fm
• My Portfolio

Twitter - Smart Captcha

When signing up, if you enter the captcha correctly but there is an error on the form, you do not need to enter it again.

I lost my feed when MediaTemple rudely shut my blog down and I moved to Tumblr. I have just managed to claim my Feedburner URL again, so thanks to the few that stuck around.

I was randomly assigned a group of Rails Rumble entries to judge this year. I’d like to call out my favourites of the ones I’ve judged. I’m looking forward to seeing the full list after I judge.

In no perticular order, my favourites are:

• Tablesurfing
• Bartender Cocktail Recipies
• omnominator
• Heart On