Web Developer at KSL.Com
I currently work for KSL.Com, which is the Internet division of KSL-TV Channel 5 and KSL Radio 1160, both based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. I began there in January 2000, and have worked on several projects. A brief synopsis of some of the more interesting projects follows.
Web Sites
Please note that I did not create the graphical look of any of the following sites; I wrote the back-end scripts and programs which make up the 'engine' of these web pages.
Microcast
This is a weather system which can tell you the current conditions (such as current temperature and daily rainfall) for any city in Utah. You can also see some of the images that KSL-TV creates every night for the newscast (such as the forecast and the almanac).
The weather system is made up of all sorts of programs, all of which I wrote. There are back-end scripts in Perl, front-end pages in PHP, images processed by a Gimp Server, a daemon written in C that handles the National Weather Service weather wire... it goes on and on.
Days of '47 KSL Parade
Every July 24th, Utah has a parade to celebrate the arrival of the first settlers. The system which I created uses a relational database to store the information about every single float, and allows users to review each float and vote on their favorite. It is not terribly complex, but it serves its purpose nicely.
Events Calendar
This events calendar application shows what's going on in Utah. Users can search for events by date, category, or area and can submit new events through an easy-to-use form. It has actually turned out quite well, in terms of popularity, given that it has received little to no promotion.
This is yet another PHP/database program.
KSL Radio Movie Show
Another system which uses PHP and a relational database.
Traffic Link
KSL was quick to adopt the web-cam idea by placing pictures from cameras along Salt Lake's freeways on the Internet. The system has now been mostly outstripped by much larger versions offered by other entities (such as CommuterLink by UDOT), but KSL's cameras still offer some nice images of traffic flow.
On the technical side of things, the images are processed every two minutes by a Gimp server, which crops the pictures and adds a timestamp.
Publishing System Sites
The following are sites that I created using Bonneville International's proprietary web publishing system. Again, I did not create the "look" of these sites, I simply programmed the engines (though to a lesser degree than the above sites). All of these sites are based on PHP, XML, and a relational database.
Deseret Management Corporation
This is the parent company of KSL's parent company (Bonneville International). It is the business arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
KSL 2002 Olympic News Coverage
KSL Radio Travel Show
SportsWest
Systems
The following is a list of some of the systems that I either set up or was extensively involved in the set up.
Classified Ads
This is a piece of software from Hagan Software which we purchased. I did make a few modifications to the code, so as to better suit our needs, but nothing very complicated. Once again, this is something which turned out to be quite a success (especially since it's free to place ads). There are now several other local web sites that offer classified ads, but they aren't nearly as good (at least in MY opinion).
Web Server Log Reports
I configured and maintain our WebTrends reporting system, which runs every night on lots and lots of different log files. It was quite the chore to coordinate the logs, but everything worked out great.
Search Engine
This was perhaps the most painless installation of software that I've ever experienced. We used the ht://dig engine, and it works like a dream. It indexes the entire site every night and allows users to perform searches of the KSL.Com website.
Gimp Server
This system creates or processes several images for the web site, including the traffic cameras, the TV weather forecasts, and recipes.