[HN Gopher] A suspiciously criminal portfolio website
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A suspiciously criminal portfolio website
        
       Author : gaws
       Score  : 321 points
       Date   : 2023-03-11 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blueshirt.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blueshirt.com)
        
       | annoyingnoob wrote:
       | What is wrong with eating only Burritos? The $4.15 Guac is the
       | real travesty there.
        
         | cantSpellSober wrote:
         | It's airport food
        
       | nateb2022 wrote:
       | My 1st gen Surface Go (dual core Pentium 4G RAM) running Windows
       | 11 and Firefox took it like a champ. Didn't even notice it was
       | resource intensive until I read the rest of the comments :O
        
         | unnouinceput wrote:
         | That's because the commenters here never heard of uBlock
         | Origin. My firefox with NoScript and uBlock Origin didn't even
         | broke a sweat. Though I did had to enable in NoScript the
         | domain. Also it runs http only (so no secure connection
         | either).
        
       | madamelic wrote:
       | Cool but frustrating when you want to get a different direction
       | than the scroll is leading you.
       | 
       | I wonder if you could re-hijack the scroll and scroll the page to
       | locked-in points so someone can follow different red strings.
       | Might be nauseating though if there is no transition.
        
       | wardedVibe wrote:
       | If I could actually follow the edges myself, rather than getting
       | put on a rail, this would be awesome. As it is, it has the
       | scrolling-but-not-actually that I hate about some modern
       | websites. Such as some data presentations at NYT and other
       | papers.
        
       | duxup wrote:
       | Does it not at all work in Firefox in macOS? Or is it just me?
       | 
       | It at least moved in firefox on my iPhone. But in firefox on my
       | mac it doesn't move at all.
        
         | JohnBooty wrote:
         | Works perfectly for me in Firefox + macOS on my 2018 MBP.
        
       | VoodooJuJu wrote:
       | Pretty neat.
       | 
       | If you leave the site open and run the following code snippet,
       | you'll be able to heat your house with your laptop.
       | window.onscroll = function(ev)       {         if
       | ((window.innerHeight + window.scrollY) >=
       | document.body.offsetHeight) {           window.scrollTo(0,0);
       | };       };              function pageScroll()       {
       | window.scrollBy(0,1);        scrolldelay =
       | setTimeout(pageScroll,10);       }
        
         | initramfs wrote:
         | yeah, my cpu usage rose to above 80% without any running any
         | additional code, though I couldn't say if it's a bitcoin miner
         | as I am code-illiterate, for the most part.
        
           | johnnypangs wrote:
           | It seems like it just scrolls through the page on a loop.
        
             | initramfs wrote:
             | yes, I think the cause for the high cpu usage is a large,
             | possibly uncompressed image file that takes a bit of
             | processing to display in the browser, although other
             | methods could be used to limit the processing or make the
             | computation more efficient.
        
       | tempodox wrote:
       | Is there precedence for criminal prosecution of hijacking the
       | scroll function?
        
       | Mandatum wrote:
       | Jeremy, I think this is neat.
        
       | PKop wrote:
       | I don't get it.
        
         | devmor wrote:
         | Its a portfolio/resume in the style of a classic "criminology
         | board" reminiscent of older procedural detective dramas - the
         | kind before computers were widespread, where evidence would be
         | mapped out and charted in person.
        
       | dkuebric wrote:
       | No https, very suspicious!
        
       | panzi wrote:
       | Well, it certainly doesn't conform to accessibility regulations.
        
         | hugozap wrote:
         | Adding a hidden html with all the plain text that can be read
         | by a screen reader would be easy or a (switch to boring html
         | version button)
        
       | Domdomkusu wrote:
       | i loved it. !!! I think being developer is this.
        
       | graypegg wrote:
       | Creative idea! Maybe you're Pepe Silvia.
        
         | dccoolgai wrote:
         | The comic genius behind that (which, for anyone who doesn't
         | know is from Always Sunny in Philadelphia) is that Charlie,
         | being illiterate, reads "Pennsylvania" as "Pepe Sylvia".
        
           | Jerrrry wrote:
           | That has been confirmed by writers via twitter to be
           | incidental, not purposeful.
        
         | bigmattystyles wrote:
         | There is no Pepe!
        
       | CosmicShadow wrote:
       | Amazing, we need more cool stuff like this out there.
        
       | mintysoap wrote:
       | I really like this. Does anyone else know of other extremely
       | unique portfolio sites?
        
         | arjonagelhout wrote:
         | Awwwards [0] has many creative portfolio sites, some of might
         | conform a bit more to expectations of the modern web, but some
         | are still fun to explore.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.awwwards.com/websites/portfolio/
        
       | INTPenis wrote:
       | I wish the "here" links had some sort of status text or hover
       | text, why would I just blindly click links?
        
       | vore wrote:
       | The real question is who is going to be the first person to post
       | about scroll bar hijacking in this thread? ;-)
        
         | rikroots wrote:
         | It's not scrolljacking - as I understand the term. It's a very
         | tall body (50,000px) with a sticky full-viewport canvas element
         | which must be animating (mainly Three.js) in line with the the
         | progression of an intersectionObserver attached to the
         | container/body as the user scrolls. This is an example of
         | 'scrollytelling'? A word I learned about a few weeks back and
         | is currently my #1 favourite ugliest neologism in the English
         | language.
         | 
         | It's a clever and intriguing site - which I would expect from
         | someone who works as a graphics editor for the NYT. And yet ...
         | it also disappoints. Disable Javascript and reload the page and
         | nothing happens. Attempt to tab through the site - even to the
         | text and image links - and ... nothing happens. I understand
         | the difficulties around making sites like this (more)
         | accessible but major news outlets like the NYT (and, indeed,
         | the company I work for) should be making much more of an effort
         | on this.
         | 
         | Some of my personal investigations on making canvas things more
         | accessible:
         | 
         | - Scrollytelling demo (very basic)
         | https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/modules-006.html
         | 
         | - Before/after picture slider infographic
         | https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/snippets-005.html
        
         | goosemips wrote:
         | That was the first time on a website that this behaviour
         | genuinely confused me.
         | 
         | I'd assumed that I'd be able to move around the pinboard by
         | touching and dragging, like a map, and it took a while to click
         | that only scroll-like dragging was getting anything to move at
         | all.
        
         | _boffin_ wrote:
         | i think you answered that yourself as the answer is... you
        
           | vore wrote:
           | You got me!
        
       | bhollan wrote:
       | How do people build things like this? Is there a package that
       | helps at all, or is it really just fighting with CSS for a few
       | months to get it how you want it?
        
         | gaws wrote:
         | WebGL
        
         | yathern wrote:
         | This is with threeJS
        
         | burnished wrote:
         | Is the latter how we get the former?
        
       | BolexNOLA wrote:
       | "Why is he writing so much Java?"
       | 
       | I lol'd
        
       | sacrosancty wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | davidjade wrote:
       | The real suspicion is finding an airport meal for less that $25
        
       | uxcolumbo wrote:
       | Neat concept, but slow interactions and difficult to navigate.
       | 
       | Also the hit area at the end for the email - pretty tiny.
        
       | ryukoposting wrote:
       | I have NoScript on, so it was blank when I opened it. Reading the
       | first couple comments, I thought it was going to be mining Monero
       | or something. Nope! Just a portfolio site that's horrible on
       | mobile devices. Noted.
        
       | bofadeez wrote:
       | Did bots upvote this?
        
       | IncRnd wrote:
       | I'm not going to load JS for what is billed as "a suspiciously
       | criminal portfolio website".
        
       | low_tech_love wrote:
       | Interesting. I browsed the website (as much as I could), then I
       | looked at the comments, and I still cannot honestly figure out
       | (a) why this was posted, (b) why is it suspicious, (c) did the OP
       | think this was cool? (d) did they think it was horrible? (e) what
       | the website is actually about.
        
         | low_tech_love wrote:
         | Thanks to everyone who clarified it to me; it was not an ironic
         | question, but I still think that the matter is a bit more
         | ambiguous than simply "everyone liked it".
         | 
         | That said, I will just leave this here:
         | http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
        
           | shrimp_emoji wrote:
           | > _Black on white? How often do you see that kind of contrast
           | in real life? Tone it down a bit, asshole._
           | 
           | What a stupid point. Make your shit less readable because
           | appeal to nature. Even dumber than the usual reason, "I think
           | it looks cool".
        
           | hackerman_fi wrote:
           | For every web-related HN post there's always that one person
           | who keeps reminding how it was all better 15 years ago and
           | how you actually dont need any colours on web since they are
           | so irritating.
           | 
           | Tired of hearing this pointless rant every time. Especially
           | since this portfolio is something fresh and not just a cookie
           | cutter WP theme with annoying animations. Web itself can be
           | art or culture or whatever, if it takes 10 seconds to realize
           | how to use it on your phone then big fucking deal. CURL is
           | handy for reading web content I've heard, keeps you safe from
           | unpleasant surprises
        
             | biorach wrote:
             | > For every web-related HN post there's always that one
             | person who keeps reminding how it was all better 15 years
             | ago and how you actually dont need any colours on web since
             | they are so irritating.
             | 
             | You are a) massively over-interpreting the comment you are
             | replying to, and b) taking it way too personally.
        
               | hackerman_fi wrote:
               | Well that was the gist of the comment, right? You can say
               | it subtly but the point and innuendo remains the same.
               | 
               | I'm not personally offended but admittedly tired of
               | reading this same stuff every week. Maybe I should read
               | less comments, though, as HN is starting to feel like a
               | groundhog week. Luckily not on the same level as Reddit
               | yet.
        
           | Terretta wrote:
           | On the contrary, OPs site is much more the type of thing
           | people were experimenting with early on, about 25 years
           | before today's sameness.
           | 
           | I wonder what percentage of today's HN readership built a
           | site along these lines using image maps:
           | 
           | https://www.w3schools.com/htmL/html_images_imagemap.asp
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | Assuming you're asking unironically:
         | 
         | * This site shows serious web design chops; this is not
         | something you can easily create on a Friday afternoon by
         | combining standard frameworks and stackoverflow answers.
         | 
         | * This site shows an unusual way to basically show one's
         | resume, a way that definitely stands out for its creativity and
         | amount of work involved.
         | 
         | * This site imitates / parodies the common trope of criminal
         | drama movies, and does so not only in a technically compelling
         | way, but also, to my mind, _hilariously_.
        
           | alasdair_ wrote:
           | The site is completely unusable on my iphone. It's the
           | equivalent of submitting a leetcode interview question in
           | brainfuck - sure, it's difficult, but it also shows terrible
           | judgement.
        
             | xxandroxygen wrote:
             | Weird, I just scrolled through the whole thing on my phone
             | just fine
        
               | d1str0 wrote:
               | Same. iPhone 12 Pro ran it just fine.
        
           | low_tech_love wrote:
           | Thanks! The strange thing for me is that I did not like it at
           | all (navigating it on my phone was quite unintuitive), and so
           | I could not really understand whether it was an ironic post
           | or if people actually liked it. And the comments seemed very
           | cryptic and just made it worse.
        
         | im_down_w_otp wrote:
         | It's a novel portfolio site in the style of a crime drama
         | bulletin board. The one thing I don't understand after visiting
         | the site is what Eminem has to do with any of it.
        
         | karaterobot wrote:
         | It's a quirky twist on a portfolio site, that's it. The
         | implementation is novel and interesting. People liked it, and
         | upvoted it. I think that's all there is to it.
        
           | gaws wrote:
           | > It's a quirky twist on a portfolio site, that's it.
           | 
           | Nailed it.
        
         | mrlatinos wrote:
         | (a) It's just fun.1
         | 
         | 1. Everyone else
        
         | LastNevadan wrote:
         | My first thought is that someone had created a HN-specific bot
         | network to upvote it. It was annoying useless site without
         | content and couldn't understand how it got to the first page.
        
           | blowski wrote:
           | I upvoted it because I found it interesting because it was
           | quirky and put together in an unusual way.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | vlunkr wrote:
           | > without content
           | 
           | Huh? Maybe you think it's annoying, but it's nothing but
           | content.
        
             | xwdv wrote:
             | If you're not interested in the content, then there is
             | basically no content.
        
               | vlunkr wrote:
               | Maybe if you're not concerned about what words mean.
        
               | justinpowers wrote:
               | I often open the fridge to find it packed with
               | vegetables, fruits, eggs and other healthy ingredients. I
               | then close the fridge, about 2 minutes later, still
               | empty-handed and still hungry, saying aloud to myself and
               | to whoever will hear...                     "There's no
               | food!"
               | 
               | So, I completely understand.
        
               | burnished wrote:
               | Is this an example of solipsism in the wild? How
               | remarkable
        
         | gabereiser wrote:
         | missed the point. It's the dude's website. Very well done too.
         | Gave me the "conspiracy is afoot" feels. Sometime's you need a
         | distraction from all the sky-falling news or the "we just
         | achieved the impossible but no one can reproduce it" news.
        
         | samstave wrote:
         | Its a fn absolutely awesome resume.
         | 
         | Why don't more people 'hack' their own 'news' in such a
         | fashion.
         | 
         | This is great.
        
           | atleta wrote:
           | Because it's unusable. And it's awesome only because pretty
           | few people hack their own portfolio into an unusable format.
           | If more people did it, even if the format was different for
           | each (which is hard to imagine), the cool factor would be
           | overshadowed by the frustration and impatience these elicit.
           | 
           | Now since very few people do it (or at least it's definitely
           | new for me), it does look cool. But I'm also happy that I
           | didn't have to read through the whole thing and I could stop
           | after a few minutes of scrolling.
        
             | samstave wrote:
             | I'd hire them over you.
        
         | paulgb wrote:
         | It's not _actually_ suspicious or criminal, it's a portfolio
         | site done in the style of a suspect map in a criminal
         | investigation (or at least, a cinematic portrayal of a crime
         | investigation. The reality is probably more electronic, but
         | that doesn 't make for great TV or portfolio sites)
        
           | orange8 wrote:
           | I suspect comment is tongue-in-cheek. It adopts the same tone
           | as the website.
        
           | jedberg wrote:
           | > The reality is probably more electronic
           | 
           | I've done investigations with law enforcement before, and
           | you're right, it is more electronic, but basically it's the
           | same as what you see in the movies just on a screen (so it's
           | searchable). But the software basically has you build
           | clusters of people with evidentiary links.
           | 
           | But it was developed to mimic the old bulletin boards, which
           | looked like what you see in the movies. And also the software
           | is really expensive, so "hobbyist" investigators still do use
           | the bulletin boards and yarn, because the electronic version
           | is too pricy.
        
             | dalys wrote:
             | Does this software category have a name? Or do you have the
             | names of specific software that is popular, but expensive?
             | I am curious how it looks and works
        
               | jedberg wrote:
               | I'm not sure on the category, maybe law enforcement case
               | management? I can't remember the name of the software I
               | used (it was 20 years ago) but here is an example of one:
               | 
               | https://www.kaseware.com/government/law-enforcement/
        
               | jll29 wrote:
               | A very famous and widespread piece of software for law
               | enforcement cases is called I2 Analyst's Notebook, which
               | lets you create/edit/search/visualize case notebooks [1].
               | Thomson Reuters has Case Notebook, which is more for
               | lawyers [2].
               | 
               | [1] https://docs.i2group.com/anb/9.4.1/analysts_notebook_
               | welcome... [2] https://www.thomsonreuters.ca/en/case-
               | notebook.html
        
       | tthhrowawwway wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | radicalbyte wrote:
       | Fun buy the site is very very slow on my M1 Macbook Air.
        
       | noobermin wrote:
       | To contra the top comment, I found this cute. He also has quite
       | the credentials.
        
       | Xeoncross wrote:
       | An impressive work of art to capture the attention of an entire
       | network of leads who can afford to pay and certainly have
       | machines strong enough to run this creative advertisement.
       | 
       | I would assume this is product-market fit or at least a good ROI
       | for the work put into this.
        
       | alex_suzuki wrote:
       | This is pretty slick. Although somehow there is no interactivity
       | on Safari/iOS except the pan and zoom? ,,Next photo" for instance
       | in the photo binder doesn't do anything.
        
       | fferen wrote:
       | Would be better if you could pan around the board. Having only
       | linear scrolling kinda defeats the concept.
        
       | rybosworld wrote:
       | My ryzen 5900x spikes to 70% usage from this site - usually only
       | goes that high when doing machine learning.
        
       | daimler86 wrote:
       | the scrolling is giving me motion sickness
        
       | nico wrote:
       | Hard to navigate on Safari/iOS, but love the concept.
       | 
       | Kind of similar to Prezi presentations.
       | 
       | The strings connecting the different concepts make it very
       | intuitive to explore. Reminds me a bit of the old site maps that
       | a lot of sites used to have (although most of them were pretty
       | useless).
        
         | post-it wrote:
         | I found it easier to navigate on iOS Safari than desktop
         | (swiping down is easier than scrolling for this kind of design,
         | I find), but tapping the portfolio items doesn't work, which is
         | a big issue.
        
           | samstave wrote:
           | scroll on desktop with the arrow keys and get the same
           | experience as mobile.
        
       | worldmerge wrote:
       | That's pretty fun, very different.
        
       | alf_souzin wrote:
       | Interesting!
        
       | felipelalli wrote:
       | It's unplayable in my mobile. Too slow.
        
       | Y_Y wrote:
       | Blueshirt[0] is the Irish equivalent of the Italian Blackshirt or
       | the German Brownshirt. Except that they were much less serious or
       | influential, and also are the ancestor of the current (centre-
       | right) ruling party. All that to say it's not a great name,
       | depending on your cultural context.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueshirts
        
         | lolinder wrote:
         | There are 8 billion people in the world naming things all the
         | time. Naming conflicts are essentially inevitable if we treat
         | everything as belonging to the same global namespace.
        
           | Y_Y wrote:
           | This is a pretty shallow take. The significance of two things
           | sharing a name isn't that it happens at all, it's the
           | expected cross-contamination between the two concepts in the
           | subjective experience of the reader. "Michael" is a perfectly
           | good first name, but if your last name is "Bolton" then maybe
           | you should think about other names for your child. Then again
           | if you live in a culture where most people haven't much
           | awareness of American music from the 80s then it won't
           | matter.
           | 
           | For clarity, I don't give a fig what this guy called his
           | website, but I think it's interesting that it happens to
           | collide with a term well known in a small part of the world.
           | You might care that some people have a negative association
           | with it, but there are plenty of reasons not to too. It's
           | just a fun coincidence imho.
        
           | initramfs wrote:
           | Agreed. It's inevitable that groups are going to want to bond
           | around some artifact such as clothing, a tattoo, or other
           | mutilation ritual.
        
       | waltbosz wrote:
       | I really like the photos. I'm not into sports at all, but his
       | photos do a really great job of telling the story of a single
       | moment in time. The good composition plus the exact right timing
       | makes for great photos.
        
       | kordlessagain wrote:
       | Great, now my fan is running.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Xeoncross wrote:
         | Runs smooth and silent on a macbook air
        
           | Wistar wrote:
           | Runs fairly well on my M1 iPad
        
           | Invictus0 wrote:
           | Macbook air has no fan
        
             | rmorey wrote:
             | smooth and silent on the mac mini too
        
             | Xeoncross wrote:
             | Yes, it was a plug for these impressive little beasts that
             | make no sound.
        
             | lotsofpulp wrote:
             | Intel ones do, I am pretty sure.
        
         | joshmn wrote:
         | Precisely why I bookmarked under "brr" -- things I open when
         | I'm too lazy to get a blanket.
         | 
         | All jokes aside, this is very cool.
        
           | bhollan wrote:
           | What else is in that folder?
        
         | throwaway33381 wrote:
         | ah froze my computer while i wasn't looking
        
       | mkl95 wrote:
       | It's pretty laggy on Chrome/Windows, but I love this kind of
       | "organic" design. Makes me want to shake off the rust of my
       | little frontend work and build something cool.
        
         | HollywoodZero wrote:
         | It's laggy on Safari on Mac too. It's moving at like 15 FPS, so
         | it's pretty choppy.
        
         | Aldipower wrote:
         | Not laggy on Firefox/Linux.
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | Too bad it isn't responsive for mobile devices.
        
         | arnorhs wrote:
         | It is. Works really well on my phone
        
           | irrational wrote:
           | I'm on an iPhone 12 and it doesn't work well for me. It is
           | slow and unresponsive, most of the screen is hidden (not
           | intentionally I think because the parts that are showing have
           | words cut off and don't make any sense), etc.
        
       | nickphx wrote:
       | "blueshirt is the stomping ground for Jeremy White, who is
       | currently a graphics editor for The New York Times and an adjunct
       | professor at Columbia University. He is a designer, animator,
       | coder, cartographer, photographer and data visualization
       | enthusiast. Here you'll find a few recent examples of his work
       | and some other insanely fun facts about him."
        
         | ipaddr wrote:
         | It reads like a hit piece on him like he is involved in
         | something shady.
        
       | residualmind wrote:
       | feels like 2003 again
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-11 23:00 UTC)