Show HN: Made Personal Site Last Night (For YC App)

http://christopherbiscardi.github.com/

by biscarch • 14 years ago

12 29 14 years ago

christopherbiscardi.github.com

biscarch14• 14 years ago

If anyone takes a look I'd love to hear some feedback.

I'm trying to get into YC this year (with my co-founder) and I didn't have a personal page... so I made one.

danso2• 14 years ago

Why did you choose to put skill bars at the top that have no frame of reference rather than a listing of actual accomplishments? Your skill bars for node.js and mongo are at expert levels...what have you made with them?

* There are a lot of design issues with this but the main problem is how you prioritize your weakest qualities...the Education heading is the most obvious one. If you have nothing to list than just remove it. It's obvious YC type people don't require that someone graduate from Harvard in order to be successful. As it is now, it at best makes it look like youve submitted a draft resume. At worst, it shows that you can't break out of the conventional mindset, such as the one thinking that Education must always be at the top of a resume

biscarch14• 14 years ago

I've been working with node since v0.2.x Mostly JSON API's. I wrote an oauth library awhile back from spec to talk to the tumblr api. Recently I've been moving away from node for API's and towards Clojure, but that's a different issue.

As for Mongo, I've set up sharded, replicated deployments for clients to run node API's off of. Typically on AWS. I've also worked with GridFS for image/metadata storage and retrieval.

I was hesitant to put it so high because I am not intimately familiar with the gritty plumbing of Mongo, which lends strength to your point that skill bars are pretty subjective.

In the end, I made the skill bars as a way of saying "I'm competent to work with these technologies" and as a comparison between the various tech I have listed.

You are correct though. A frame of reference is important. I do plan to place aside information either in popovers or attached sidebars.

edit: That's an interesting comment about the education space. I placed it highly because I actually dropped out of college to start my own consulting business. In that way it would not represent the traditional model of a Harvard education representing the top of the chain and would add more to the story of how I became who I am, and how I can drive a company forward.

edit2: Thank you for making me look at the Education section again. I now understand why you think I'm still in school, awaiting a degree. Changing the wording now.

Wintamute• 14 years ago

I think the idea of using skill bars to describe tech experience is interesting, but it's information overload at the moment.

biscarch14• 14 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

Perhaps an accordion would serve to condense the information into a more manageable space... or maybe displaying them in a different chart style. I'll have to put some thought into it.

HyprMusic2• 14 years ago

Agreed, ccuracy of skill isn't really important since you're trying to show your ability to learn, adapt and solve problems. Language isn't as important as a good engineer and/or entrepreneur (I'd except YC are very language agnostic). As suggested elsewhere, maybe list the language and then some very brief descriptions of projects.

cocoflunchy• 14 years ago

You switch several time between the first and the third person to talk about yourself:

Christopher Biscardi is a polyglot engineer specializing...

Vim is my primary editor.

I was also a part of the track team in college.

Chris also played the drums and owns 4 bass guitars today

Chris took up Juggling in middle school

You should choose one and stick to it.

biscarch14• 14 years ago

Agreed. Thank you for the feedback.

edit: should be fixed.

hluska2• 14 years ago

I checked your source (I'm like that) and found this at the top of your stylesheet:

/* otay. I bootstrapped it. Can I Haz Startup Now?*/

When I was in my mid 20s, I would have loved that. Now that I'm in my mid 30s, I admire the courage, but wonder if it might be safer to remove? Sort of the 'best foot forward' principle...

biscarch14• 14 years ago

You have a point.

Originally this was just a side project to develop something other than the product for a night. It then grew into a personal site to be used on a YC application.

I appreciate the viewpoint, and since I know not what PG & co are actually like IRL, it may be wise to remove the comments.

hluska2• 14 years ago

You've got a good looking site - best of luck on your application!

calgaryeng• 14 years ago

How is this on the front page of HN. I have seen far more interesting things on the second page, and I have submitted posts with useful information!

biscarch14• 14 years ago

I'd love to check some out. Which of your posts would you recommend?

edit: Just checked out Easy Retirement Planning. Looks pretty sweet. What age do you think is a good time to start using such a platform?

anonymouz• 14 years ago

You should do some proof reading. E.g. "probabley", "He states that HE could have done better, had he studied for either exam, but the tradeoff wasn't worth it." (highlighted personal pronoun is missing). It's trivial but on a CV-type page these things tend to stand out.

biscarch14• 14 years ago

Highly Appreciated. I'm looking over everything again.

jblock2• 14 years ago

http://contrastrebellion.com/

But seriously, hanging indents, a very minor textual hierarchy, your Masonry layout is messed up, etc.

It all looks very unprofessional. KISS is your friend unless you are a master of making these complex responsive sites. Fix your voice, too. This is your site. Don't write it like a biography if the site itself is an autobiography (unless you're really funny and clever about it, which you aren't).

The purpose of a site like this is to allow people to find out more about you. What you've done mashed your entire professional life into a really, really long document that only looks passable on mobile phones. Figure out what you want to say. Make it CLEAR. Use CONTRAST. Put those pictures on your flickr page and link to it.

Personal pet peeve: don't tell me how experienced you are at a certain language or technology with a percentage--show me some shit you made.

biscarch14• 14 years ago

Fair judgement.

The reason for the photos being on the same page is because it eliminates a click, a page load and a move offsite.

I'll work to become more knowledgable in the field of design as I clearly have left some issues on the table. (I enjoyed reading through the link btw.)

Thank you.

jblock2• 14 years ago

No problem. Hopefully you take all this criticism from HN as just that: criticism. Iterate and make it better! You're already a step ahead of a LOT of people out there.

sneak• 14 years ago

Hire a copy editor.

biscarch14• 14 years ago

On it.

HyprMusic2• 14 years ago

In my opinion the font is way too big. Makes it very difficult to read your full story, and it's too out of proportion with your skill bar text. Remember your target audience is professionals, but people learning to read.

biscarch14• 14 years ago

The more I read it, the more I agree with you. I was trying to preemptively adjust the font size (I prefer large text and find myself zooming in all the time), but in combination with the paragraph width I'm starting to believe it doesn't work.

hnriot• 14 years ago

Must be a really slow day if someone's "home page" has made it, it's like 1996 all over again.

this site looks miserably bad on the iPad, it's riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, the design is neither functional nor aesthetically pleasing, the content is a mixture of resume, personal history and some horrible over saturated snapshots.

If you're looking for a job I would strongly suggest you buy a word press theme and go with that instead if trying to make a website like this.

And lastly, calling yourself a polyglot is pretentious, Just say you speak seven languages or whatever.

The best way to show you're good at something is by demonstrating it, rather than stating it.

But I've saved my its critical comment for last. Please don't list trivial technologies, like vim, iterm etc. if you're a software developer I would expect you to be highly competent in an editor and I don't care which one it is. If you're a designer I expect you to know photoshop and illustrator and indesign, if you're a web developer I expect you to know JavaScript and sass and HTML and CSS. For any technology that you are "experimenting with" just don't mention it.

When I get a software engineering candidate resume and they list Word as a skill I immediately throw it out.

And lastly, if you're going to make a personal site that puts your best for forward, don't do it in one night, give it some actual thought.

Don't say you're clever, show it, do something clever, try it at least on a mobile device! For an example of doing rather than saying take a look at hakim.se

Show HN: Made Personal Site Last Night (For YC App)

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