Timothy's Blog

So I recently became disenchanted with web development (serious web development) and wanted to find something more visual/creative to do. Not that web development doesn’t take creativity. I had tried to get accepted as a stock photographer to istockphoto.com years ago, in which you have to submit a few images so they can evaluate if you’re good enough and if your’re images are the type they want. So I decided to apply again because I thought my photography had probably improved and lo and behold, I was accepted!

So this is a new way to make money for me; I’m simply adding it to the other ways I make money (which currently consist of web design and doing yard work for neighbors). I’m hoping to pursue a career in photography so I’m not just interested in stock photography, but it’s a great way to make money sometimes (if you have a really good image that stands above the rest you take).

I decided I needed a website for my pursuit of this career so I created one yesterday and today that you can see at photography.timothygrindall.com (notice this blog is at wordpress.timothygrindall.com). It’s not a perfect or necessarily complete design but I can always change it. If you’re interested in seeing some of my best photography, check out the site!

I’d also love to get into portrait photography but I have plenty to keep me busy (though not to fill my days necessarily). I love taking pictures of people but I don’t get to do it so often because people are so camera shy (and so am I)!

I’m also hoping to get into filmmaking as part of my career. I own my own businesses so there’s no reason not to do more than one of them. I’m currently looking for clients who would like me to make advertising films/videos for free (just for the experience). So I have some ideas of what I want but other than that, I’m leaving it up to God. Worry about one’s future does no good.

I think getting a driver’s license will be a top priority so I can drive around Washington/Oregon/California to different places where I can take pictures. Also that will allow me to visit clients for webdesign and filmmaking jobs (and would really open things up for me).

So I’ve been learning ReactJS which is a Javascript library/framework which allows you to easily create modular apps/websites using Javascript (which is a language I’m good at). So far I’ve created three apps (though one is more of a static clone of Twitter) which I’m pretty proud of.

The first project I did was a Twitter clone which I created just as a simple exercise in applying what I’d learned by reading the ReactJS book I have called “React Quickly” by Azat Mardan. I started out just by creating one card (for a tweet) and then using the Array.map() function to create a list of these cards using static data I had prepared ahead of time.

Overall, the book was pretty complicated and I understood the first parts, but it was written for somebody who can take in a lot of information and understand complicated topics easily. But I didn’t give up and I was finally able to write my first React app. And I went on to write more.

The next app I created was a weather app which uses the API of OpenWeatherMap.org to make requests to their server and get the weather for a particular city. I used some free icons I found on FlatIcon.com which worked pretty well and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. You can see the app live at http://weather-app.timothygrindall.com.

My next app was even more of a challenge which used the API of hn.algolia.com to basically create a working clone of the site. The API functionality was very similar to the weather app but had some differences. You can see the app at https://algolia-hacker-news.timothygrindall.com and you can see the original site at https://hn.algolia.com/. Overall I think I got it pretty close.

I started in basic web design so I’m pretty good at styling pages (or at least using CSS). I think that is not one of my weaknesses.

For you coders out there, if you want to see my code for these projects you can see it at my Github page at https://github.com/timgrindall. Repositories are:

1. algolia-hacker-news-app
2. weather-app
3. react-social-app

Now I’m kinda out of ideas for what to do next but I think I’d like to learn to use Redux which is a pretty cool technology (it works with ReactJS). Anyways, if you enjoyed this post let me know in the comments and I will try to get to your comment and approve it so it turns up.