19:47:26 | 5/6/2007
Disclaimer: Many of these pages are old and do not properly reflect my experience. I've worked 3 years in web software development; in 2008 I moved into the the field of SEO (search engine optimization). The majority of the content here dates before either occupation.

Some Web Sites.

Web Design

p o r t f o l i o

www.the-elite.net
the-elite.net
This site is my greatest accomplish for what it has become for "the Elite", a community of gamers who call www.the-elite.net their home. At 1+ million visits, I've built something that many people appreciate on a daily basis. The page is the home of a community that competes actively on a few notable Nintendo 64 games. The site's greatest distinction (and lure) is the hosting of hundreds of video clips displaying world-class ability on some popular gaming titles. The site is widely believed to be the home of the best GoldenEye and Perfect Dark players in the world, with active rankings and video-enforced proof policies. Much of the site's popularity can be attributed to its role in a ring of competitive gaming sites across which many of the world's most skilled console gamers participate. The-elite.net's distinction has always been its community and the relative informality of the site and its offshoots (e.g. ngc-elites.net).

The site was designed (graphics included by me) but hasn't received graphical or structural updates since 2004 (when my involvement in the community began to decline). The site implements blogging software called Greymatter for its blog (home page). The forum, which is hosted remotely, is home to 1700+ users. The site is technically antiquated, otherwise; there are no user accounts or ad campaigns (the community has made many generous donations to me over the years).

Notable accomplishments
  • In 2004 my site made a front-page appearance on slashdot.org, nerd supersite. (server = destroyed)
  • Around the same time, FilePlanet started hosting our fastest Goldeneye videos (60+), courtesy of The Speed Demo Archives at planetquake.com.
  • Received mention in Edge Magazine (UK) during an interview with Super Monkey Ball expert Matt "packattack" Flees.
  • One of the page's hosted on our site (Logan West's "NEC") appeared in a European gaming magazine.
  • Received "shout-out" on a college radio station in Seattle, courtesy of Thomas Andrews.
  • September 2006: One million hits and counting
  • Early 2007: Sister site the NGC-Elites now hosted on ngc.the-elite.net.
  • Major League Gaming mentions the-elite.net in an article about competitive play on Goldeneye 007. Article here, page 3.
WordSmith
the-elite.net
WordSmith is the name of a Scrabble Engine I designed as part of of my Honors College thesis at the University of South Florida. It is also the name of the ASP .NET web application that allows web users to play against the engine. The application was a solo effort with mentoring from Dr. Rollins Turner of USF. WordSmith looks at millions of possible moves each turn, guided by my knowledge about the game (semi-pro-ish). WordSmith's algorithms are guided by a variety of heuristics that factor in conditional circumstances, too many to list here (the project was heavily researched before being designed). Full project specification and evaluation is available in the written thesis:

Download Thesis (1.5 MB)

For the amount of research and theory that went into WordSmith's design, this is the most involved web project I've undergone (omitting collaborative projects at the workplace).

Scrabble Players: The game is entirely consistent with (Hasbro's) Scrabble except for the omission of (2) wild tiles. The dictionary in use is the "SOWPODS" dictionary, the broadest of Scrabble dictionaries used in tournament play (larger than the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary). Be prepared for unusual 2-letter words. The program performs pretty well, fairly merciful about brute-forcing bingos. WordSmith only has a few known defeats, each from reputable Scrabble players. Highest known scores: 520 game, 101 turn. I encourage you to email me with any interesting game stories!

Known Bugs: Some 1-tile placements by WordSmith do not properly detect words formed incidentally (WordSmith rarely chooses 1-tile plays, however). Also, a JavaScript error can emerge when letters are moved back and forth too much (from the rack to the board); electing to pass, then canceling will restore the rack. Game displays properly for FF2+ and IE7. IE6 and Safari users, I apologize; I'm lazy about CSS. The integrity of the game engine was the real passion here.
Sample Database Interface
Sample database interface
This site came about as part of a course project at USF. There was added incentive to do a good job, so I went beyond the call of duty with both the design and the features. This site is the only one here that I'm proud of on the merit of its code. The site is written in JSP, with ADO to communicate with an Oracle back end. There's a considerable amount of CSS, considerable given that it was completely unrequired. Some javascript in there, too. The site consists primarily of 3 JSP files, the index, report.jsp, and form.jsp. Form.jsp handles drawing the correct form in the right panel, and report.jsp creates and executes the proper SQL query with respect to the form post. There are also JSP pages corresponding to each searchable item (students, courses, advisors, etc), which are dynamically included depending on the request. The novelty that set it apart from many of the other course projects was that users could make dynamic searches and updates. That is, the user could search based on a random and variable set of parameters. For updates, the user could update a variable amount of fields for all records matching a variable amount of parameters. In other words, it emulated the manner of sites that are actually user-friendly (gasp)

The data is meaningless, so feel free to log in and observe the functionality: admin/password will get you in. The site does not guard against SQL injection, simply because the data is meaningless and I didn't feel like parsing strings for sport.

Update: Table data no longer accessible. This page is hosted on USF servers, and at some point the table space that was allocated got flushed (or disabled?). I'd run the creation script again but I'm guessing the tables will be dumped every semester.

This page is not affiliated with the University of South Florida.
Brasky.org Brasky.org Right now (May 2007) this page is just a placeholder for future endeavors. Still stylin'.
Gage Brasky.org Gage is my alias as a musician; this is the home page for my compositions. Have a listen!

Please visit my MySpace page for Gage, if only to check out the styles I injected.
Dark Nephews
Dark Nephews
This is the home for the music project of myself and friend Aaron Rogge. The page, while simple, is probably the most aesthetically inspired page I've done in the last few years (well, not including stuff done at work).
Random Story Generator Random Story Generator By is one of my most comprehensive JS works so far, with a lengthy script. The majority of that is a 1200 word dictionary that is randomly indexed during runtime (a dictionary that I built one word at a time to meet my desires, haha). This program was a great opportunity to combine my writing abilities with my programming abilities, so I'm satisfied with the effort. For more information on the program, click the "about this program" link once you're there.

I plan to release a new version of this eventually, one that actually creates the sentences and paragraphs dynamically, not just the words and phrases.
The Bungalow Zone Dogs vs. Cats: Combat Simulator This page was thrown together in a day as part of some first week assignment in a programming languages survey course. It's kinda goofy because there were a bunch of HTML requirements (e.g., anchored links and frames). I saw this as an opportunity to publicize the splendor of cat bungalows.

...you just gotta click to understand (though, you still won't).
JavaScript Game JavaScript Game This was part of a project for some silly web programming class I took for fun. The highest first-try score so far is 94, by Lillian Torelli (who emailed me a screenshot). Email me if you get higher. (I wrote it on one shot in IE, later to learn that the script bombs on FF; to hell with it.)
Donnie Darko Page Donnie Dark Page I felt inspired to share my interpretations after discovering information about the back story for Donnie Darko. Keep an eye out for some fun with JavaScript mouseovers. I designed the graphics.

Update: I'm getting frequent emails with questions about this movie. I've seen the movie twice, but the Internet would regard me as an authority at this point..
Dogs vs. Cats: Combat Simulator Dogs vs. Cats: Combat Simulator This started as a project for a Web Design course, but quickly became a little more. This definitely is my most advanced creation, with in-line CSS formatting and my elaborate JavaScript function that does the "simulations". The design is kinda goofy, however. It's just for fun. (Same deal with me coding this in IE at the time... works fine but doesn't look as sharp in FireFox. Also note, images are hotlinked, so some are dead.)
www.endfloridaforeclosure.com www.endfloridaforeclosure.com This domain expired and our client didn't renew
I helped my roommate build this site. I designed the header and footer for the site (the parts that appear on every single page for easy navigation), as well as the ani-gif advertising the site. First time I earned money with web design, pretty cool.
GE World Records Page GE World Records Page Before the-elite.net, there was the "GEWR". This was my first serious Web site creation, which earned me much of my popularity among the Elite. It was the reputation I built from running this page that gave me the authority and inspiration to create www.the-elite.net. The page is horribly antiquated HTML, but surprisingly sharp looking (I barely could code tables back then!)
Shady Key West 2005 Random Story Generator Here's my latest creation. I went to Key West with 6 other guys for Spring Break this year. We had something like 100+ pictures when we returned, many of them being instant classics. I got the idea to put some of the good ones online... and, as it tends to happen, it turned into a full-fledged web programming project. Remarkably, it only took two days to build. I used a surprising amount of CSS for this one; clean code all the way through. This one's pretty ripe with humor, right down to the images' alternate text....

WARNING: This page may be offensive to some viewers.

Other Sites

                    C o n t e n t   N o v e l t y   O n l y

My Yahoo! Literati Achievements My Yahoo! Literati Achievements For those who don't know, Yahoo! Literati is basically just Scrabble, with the bonus tiles arranged a little differently. Those who know me know that Literati is a major hobby of mine. This page documents some of my favorite plays, high scores, achievements, and strategy. The page could use some design help, admittedly.
8 Phases of Goatse 8 Phases of Goatse People familiar with the internet phenomenon of "goatse" (1/3 of the "holy trinity") should definitely enjoy this. People who haven't seen it probabily will, too. This page appeared ALL OVER the Internet, thanks to appearing as high as 4th on Google for the search query "goatse". This page does not have a counter, but analyzing the monthly traffic it receives (through my hosting service) suggests that this is, by FAR most heavily-visited page I've ever made. Go figure; out of every page here it is the least inspired and most low tech, lol. I guess it's funnier than I ever gave it credit for. [profanity warning]
Myspace Profile Myspace Profile Well, here's the obligatory Myspace; I finally got around to formatting it's appearance. I was alarmed to discover that not only are the tables not classed, but there are actually blatant HTML errors in the profile template (like, tables with instances of rows with an insufficient amount of columns!). It ended up taking some CSS acrobats to make the page look decent. Take this:
table {background-color:cccc99; padding-right:12px;}
table table {background-color:cccc99; padding:0px;}
table table table {width:100%; background-color:ffffff; border-width: 5 5 5 5;}
div table {background:transparent;visibility:collapse;}
table tr {background:transparent}
table div {visibility:collapse;}
table table table table table td {visibility:visible;}
table table table table table div {visibility:visible;}
table td {border:0px;background:transparent;}
table table td {border:0px;background:transparent;}
table table table table {border:0px;background:transparent;}
      
         
And that's just to get the tables under control, though, it's inclusive of code that hides the myspace banner and footer, hehe. I'd worry about getting my account deleted, but I'm sure they're more interested in getting uptime up to 90%, and/or deleting the spam accounts that make up 50% the network.

Footnote: My page probably looks nothing like the thumbnail, depending on whether or not I feel like updating this page any time soon.
HTML/CSS 101 USF Computer Science: Graduation Requirements Meh, this was the first assignment in the same course that prompted the cats vs. dogs site and the JS game. The requirement was to include a bulleted list and a bold tag or something... my teacher kept me after class, accused me of cheating, then made me code some CSS as she watched. pffft, nice.
Comical Self-ridicule Comical Self-Ridicule A few friends of mine thought it was funny to make pages talking about how irresistible they were to women. It was only in my nature to answer their pages by making one that talked about how resistible I was.
Game Rage! Game Rage! I created this page for the-elite.net. This page has become very popular. It contains stories I've collected from gamers (and pictures, too) accounting insane stories of game-related rage and the carnage it has caused. Some of the stories/pictures will blow you away....
Live Journal Live Journal Even livejournal.com's free accounts allow some intensive formatting if you're ambitious enough. I used some basic CSS to sharpen the page's appearance. Go here if you want to witness the death of my dreams.

Gaming

        P r o f i l e s               

My Gaming Profile (media down) My Gaming Profile About 2 years ago I created one page to host accounts of all my gaming accomplishments. It to also would serve to function as a source for all the videos and images I have to document my feats (hundreds of them). The media files are currently unavailable through the page, but it's still a good place to visit to learn my history with gaming and read about some of notable accomplishments. If you want any of the media files, contact me.
My GoldenEye 007 Profile (old) My GoldenEye 007 Profile I accomplished more on this game than any other. I peaked as high as 4th on the world rankings on this game, #1 in the US. I've been inactive for 2 years and I've dropped to around 12th or something (as of July 2004).
My Mario Kart 64 Profile (very old) My Mario Kart 64 Profile This is where it all started for me. My passion for Mario Kart 64 led me to discover the world of online competition for console games. I had just turned 16 when I joined the MK64 Player's Page. I only got up to 28th on those rankings, but because of my high debut and strong rise I won Best Player Winter 2001 and Best Player 4th quarter 2000. I swear it looked fine on my computer back then...hehe. I knew nothing of good programming practice. You can see the potential, though.
My Mario Kart Double Dash Profile My Mario Kart Double Dash Profile I've played a very limited amount of this game, but I have very competitive times considering. I probably could've been a real contender on this game, but it's hard to commit the time necessary to get site records when you're dealing with work and school. Very fun game, though.
My Mario Golf WR My Mario Golf WR I had been borrowing this game for a while, getting pretty good, when one day I had a dream run on "speed golf", breaking the standing world record out of nowhere! I shot (-18) playing as fast as possible, using topspin to reduce airtime and stuff...it was crazy.

Other

            G a m e - r e l a t e d   S i t e s

Illinois 2002 (pics up, vids down) Illinois 2002 In the summer of 2002 there was an epic meeting of some of the greatest console gamers in the United States, including myself. I made page documenting our ...interesting, week.
Team Florida (media down) Team Florida Before "Ill2k2" there was the "Team Florida" meeting. This is when one of my best gaming friends of whom I befriended online, Ben "ParagonX9" Gorman, came down to visit for a few days. He happened to be the #1 Perfect Dark player in the world, so it was definitely a treat to see his skills firsthand. I rented a big-screen TV for the weekend, so we definitely had a good time. Come meet Team Florida!
Mario Kart Double Dash Player's Page (me = staffer) Mario Kart Double Dash Player's Page This page is a karter's dream. It's loaded with information to track your scores relative to everyone else on the page. It's self-updating, so the database is updated daily. Given my reputation at the-elite.net, Mark Jones (creator of the site and also a good friend online) asked me to help out. I'm currently in charge of proof on the site (contacting players and giving them instructions on what they need to tape and where they need to mail it in order to become validated). Our page is the only page with proven players and claims, and is clearly unrivaled at this point. (Note: I'm only on the staff, I did not help build the site)


derekclark@gmail.com
Updated 5/19/2007


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