Random Gift Exchange Java Program

This is something fun that I wrote that I wanted to share. My wife and I celebrated Christmas at her parents' house. Since the family is all moved out and is continually growing, we each buy one gift for another person.

I thought it would be cool to create a quick program that makes random assignations. I wrote it in Java, and made it runnable via Eclipse or the Command Line. If I wanted to elaborate on it more, I would have gotten user input for the names instead hard-coding it in. I would have made it a web app with a nice interface. I also would make it not assign immediate family members. (ie child won't have to get present for adult parent or fellow child sibling)

 Here's my source code, enjoy!

Website Revamp!

I've finished school, and just got a new job, so it was time to revamp my website! I spent a lot on my old design, but it was lacking in some areas, and had too much irrelevant information in others. The central message of my old design was, "I'm almost done with college, I coded a lot of cool projects in school, I have lots of internship experience, hire me!" I tried to minimalize personal details about my life to focus on relevant info that might get me hired.


I love my new job, and I anticipate on staying there for a while (there's so much to learn). So I wanted to make my new design say, "I am a professional, I'm involved in some cool projects, I do fun things outside of work, and you should hire me to be your freelancer/consultant."

Initially I wanted it to be very minimalist, but give it a more personal flair. Maybe a picture of myself, a quick blurb, and a couple of links. But, after rummaging through dozens of designs, there were too many features lacking in all the examples that I saw, many were focused towards web designers. While I enjoy web design, and I have pretty good experience, I'm not an expert, and I don't have any glitzy projects in my repertoire. In the end I decided to just keep the same layout, but modify the content, and move around some things.

I updated which projects that I wanted to promote in my portfolio. I included a Fantom and SkySpark project for the first time in my portfolio. I've become quite good in the past 3+ years in ETC Group in SkySpark related technologies, and I want to continue to specialize in that area.

I also included a comprehensive of my personal sites in my personal section.

Give it a look and let me know what you think!

http://darylbennett.net/

Attempting to barter web design services for guitar repair services

I had a guitar that needed a minor repair, and I wanted to take it to a local Guitar Shop, House of Guitars. They do awesome work and I trust them a lot. They have one of the best ratings in the Salt Lake for repairs. They also have one of the worst websites I've ever seen.

                                                           http://www.guitarzip.com/

The background isn't aligned, there's a "Click here to add text" line on the top right, and it looks something straight out of the 90's.

So I took an hour, and I created a simple mock-up to present to the store owner to see if we could barter my website design for the guitar repair.

                                       http://www.eighthdayslc.com/houseOfGuitarsDemo/

I tried to make it responsive, I added a Google maps widget, which displayed their awesome 4.9 review rating.

I was so nervous asking the store owner, because this was so out of the ordinary, to try to barter web design services for guitar repair. He was very cordial, and respectful. I presented the website on my laptop, and explained why a better website would help his business.

I thought that I good job on the design on my mock-up, and my presentation wasn't bad, but in the end the store owner didn't see the value in modernizing his website, because his business was so successful. He said that he'd invest in his website if business was down, but they were getting an increasing amount of business, and they were having a hard time to meet all the orders.

In the end, it was a good experience.