tim-ryan.com
This is the website of Tim Ryan, a programmer, web designer, and artist from the Boston area. Being a student (and broke), I'm up for any and all kinds of commission work. Interested? You can reach me at tim@tim-ryan.com.
June 8, 2009 @ 3:37 PM
Olin has a homegrown variant of The Game called the "Olin Challenge", whereby you lose if you see an Olin student or alumni outside of the campus. Living in Boston, this is easily done; in other states or countries, losing is few and far between, considering the small number of actual alumni yet. The only time I've personally run into an alum (a recent graduate) was at the Museum of Science. No wonder; when I graduate, I'll be only the seventh(!) graduating class.
In other news, Subversion is old hat and Git is the new hotness. Moving to GitHub en masse, redesigning the site, recording music, and perpetually open to commission work during the lengthy, poor summer days.
May 26, 2009 @ 11:29 PM
Decimating your "Add/Remove Programs" list in Windows is therapeutic.March 15, 2009 @ 7:02 AM
Olin's candidate's weekend was splendid! There were design projects, glider building, puzzle-guided tours (!), and plenty of free snacks. FWOP's performance of Lend Me a Tenor was hilarious, and the Olin campus is much prettier (and bigger than I thought) at night. Apparently, they even have an OLPC club. I find out about my acceptance the weekend of March 20th; I'm hoping for the best.
I'm also anticipating the days until vacation. I have some programming projects which have been on the backburner for months, which I can't wait to complete.
I may be nearing the end of my senior year, but not regretfully.
February 14, 2009 @ 9:22 AM
Since I last updated:
- Danny and I have both earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
- I've been selected as an Olin candidate. (Attending the Candidate's weekend on March 6–7, 2009)
- My two teammates and I will be participating in Moody's Mega Math Challenge the next day, March 8, in an all-day math competition where we'll eat junk food and integrate national oil consumption for some reason.
- I've been cast as one of the leads in our next (original) play, Father's Day, which we'll be taking to DramaFest this year.
- The other lead, Steve, suffered an absurd snowboarding accident! (Get well soon buddy, you'll be back in snow time)
- It's almost spring.
I'm also eagerly looking forward to the day when all I have left is AP classes... thus giving me my first two free periods of the year.
January 1, 2009 @ 11:46 AM
So this is the new year.
Almost. I'm still in the midst of finishing college applications and finalizing my Eagle Scout project. At this rate, I think I can sleep by the time I'm 18 (just two weeks now), but January is sparse for days off and doubtlessly, third quarter will pick up my workload right where my other obligations left off.
Although I don't have a "writing" section of this site, I'll post some of my fonder college essays once they're completed. (Nothing like forced narcissism in essay form.) I just hope college admissions are understanding of my necessity to steer every writing opportunity into a narrative. I'm not sure if "Why does computer science interest you?" necessarily needs rising action and a climax, but it got one.
December 12, 2008 @ 7:28 PM
Eagle Scout project in T-minus 15 hours.
It's amazing how that which causes six months of stress will spring up on you like a thief in the night.
November 27, 2008 @ 8:08 PM
Not to imply that this be an actual blog (and certainly not to return to the anarchy that existed freshman year), but I've enabled comments.
November 2, 2008 @ 9:39 PM
Senior year is a panic. I've narrowed down my college choices to the following:
- Olin College
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Rice University
- Rensselaer Polytech Institute
- Harvey Mudd College
- MIT
- WPI
- UMass Amherst
Roughly in order of desire/research. I'm thinking of majoring in computer science/engineering, minoring in architecture, which I could do at Rice/RPI/Carnegie Mellon/MIT. But I also want a school with an entrepreneur focus, like Olin. WPI and UMass Amherst are just novelties. (Harvey Mudd is for its unicycles.)
It's nice to have goals. Even unattainable ones.
August 16, 2008 @ 2:10 PM
Flexify 1.0 has been released. This version includes a clean API, faster rendering, and compatibility with most of the leading browsers (including IE6, miraculously).
I think this may be the first 1.0 release I've ever done. But considering I've spent far longer on what amounts to a hobby project than I ever intended, it's nice to have something to show for it.
July 24, 2008 @ 6:35 PM
In the interest of separation of concerns (and hoping people will be less scared away from it than Chowdah), I've branched the HTTP library from Chowdah into its own project, HTTP-PHP. This was always the most well-developed part of Chowdah, and its scope can go well beyond simply running a REST server (for instance, it could be a client, too!).July 23, 2008 @ 8:48 PM
Inspired by a proposal on www-style and my own previous experiments, I've created a plugin for jQuery called Flexify which allows you to specify CSS dimensions in terms of available free space, making flexible, fluid website layouts ridiculously simple.
I can only hope they decide to add it to the CSS3 spec; but for now, my quirky implementation will have to suffice.
July 6, 2008 @ 1:50 AM
Chowdah 0.8.5 has been released. It includes two sample applications I whipped up for the occasion, Server (which replicates the functionality of your web server, but... worse), and Quiki: the Littlest Wiki. Neither of these are particularly RESTful, but I've started using build scripts, so it makes me feel important anyway.
It's amazing what you can (and can't) accomplish when you don't actually have a job to speak of.
June 26, 2008 @ 8:11 AM
I've released the first version of my Processing interpreter for Flash. Basically on par with John Resig's Processing.js, except not using nearly as cool technology. (On the plus side, I'm a virtual expert now in writing parsers for languages-that-almost-look-like-JavaScript-but-not-quite.) You can try it out in the test suite.
With any luck, this will be able to supersede Disarm in its entirety—or at the very least, it's terrible proprietaritude.
I saw Dave Matthews Band live last night. We got to the show an hour and a half late; it was a two hour wait to get out of the parking lot after the show; but hearing Two Step played with electric guitar made up for it in spades.
April 24, 2008 @ 3:03 PM
So I put up posters saying "I CAN HAS UR VOTE?" and "DO A BARRELL ROLL!", Rickrolled and made the entire school lose the game in my speech, and still managed to win the
om-nom-nomination for Student Council.I'm pretty content with my high school career.
February 21, 2008 @ 12:56 AM
Two months and a week! Regular updates are totally facticious.
I've released the first version of Chowdah (v0.8). I've spent nearly three years (next month) developing it, so I hope you'll enjoy the pittance I have to show for my efforts.
December 14, 2007 @ 1:43 AM
I'm fancying a snow day tomorrow?
I've set up links to creative works on the left. My next goal, to create the content to fill them!
November 30, 2007 @ 5:58 PM
I won't lie, I'm sick of my school's Administration and I don't care who knows it.October 21, 2007 @ 3:37 PM
Progress is being made, slowly.
There's about a year's worth of photos I need to put online. Eventually.
October 6, 2007 @ 11:28 AM
The fact that I can think of nothing to put on this site is more of a reflection of its owner than I care to admit.September 9, 2007 @ 10:35 AM
I've made available all my schoolwork from grade 10 at http://tim-ryan.com/edu/. If you can make use of it, feel free; it's not doing me any good sitting on my hard drive.
It's only fitting that one of the best summers of my life will be succeeded by the worst school year of my life.
And I'm dying for it to start snowing.
July 5, 2007 @ 4:59 PM
No, of course I didn't redesign the site.
You must be seeing things.
June 2, 2007 @ 9:54 AM
I realize, it's hardly economical to be throwing photos and videos onto YouTube and Flickr simultaneously, when Facebook allows me to do all that and more. Basically, this site has been all but superseded by my Facebook profile.
Where that leaves this site, I don't know, since at the moment it's on par with a low-quality blog. I know what the right tool for the job is, but. It just seems like a waste.
They say that summer vacation's started, but it doesn't feel that way.
May 12, 2007 @ 10:36 AM
So, I made it out of the AP test alive. I'm expecting a score of about 3±2.
Meanwhile, my grades seem to be dropping in Spanish and AP Euro. It sounds crazy, but I think I might actually start working harder towards the end of the year, if it's not too late to still get Headmaster's. (And start exercising. ...yeah, this isn't gonna last.)
But right now, I'm just glad I can sleep again. With the test out of the way, I guess I can actually focus on having a life now.
PS: This comic is love. http://www.threepanelsoul.com/
May 5, 2007 @ 11:59 PM
I realize the futility of updating this page in the long run, since what I write is unremarkable and uninteresting.
Then again, so am I, and it evens out.
Plus, I find such a blank page charming. I had intended to do a massive redesign, but I'm half-considering scrapping it for the sake of simplicity. (read: I'm lazy as hell.)
Good news on that front, though. Clue went swimmingly, best play I've ever done (or at least on par with Ollie's), and I can now say my favorite movie is also my favorite play. Then, the month-overdue newspaper is set to be shipped Tuesday, once I finish it. All that leaves is the AP Euro test come Friday, and my hell will finally have frozen over.
I won't know what to do with myself.
April 25, 2007 @ 2:18 AM
I saw a Guster concert this past Saturday, also featuring The Format and Bob Saget. I think he was as surprised he was there as we were.
I have a double lab to do that I haven't even started yet.
I want chips.