Welcome

I'm Steve Rukuts, a third-year web design student at the Hull campus of the University of Lincoln. I specialise in making dynamic, accessibility oriented websites.

As of June 2008, this site will no longer be updated. If you want to follow my latest work, read my weblog or see my degree show showcase, please visit http://steve.ac/.

Featured Project

Statlab

Statlab is a new way to visualise website statistics. It works a lot like Google Analytics, but you can see people browsing your site in real-time. You can use it to profile your site navigation, or quite simply have something interesting to look at. Impress the folks at your next meeting, impress your friends, or just marvel at how much traffic you're getting.

Read more...

 
 

Three

01.

Year 3 - Final Year Project

Statlab

Statlab is a remote-hosted web statistics service that works in the same fashion as Google Analytics. Once you copy the supplied JavaScript to your website, it will begin tracking your statistics in real-time.

Statlab is intended to complement, not compete with Google Analytics.

Signups to Statlab are currently limited by invitations to help with the server load. If you'd like to get an account, you should e-mail me.

Developing Statlab helped me to gain a better understanding of the internals of Flash CS3, and XML processing. This is also the first website that I have successfully produced with Python and Django. I feel that I have created something truely unique; during my research, I was unable to find another site quite like Statlab.

Media

 
 

Three

02.

Year 3 - Dissertation

Solving the Wrong Problem

My third year dissertation, "Solving the Wrong Problem" looks at the subject of accessibility in web design, specifically, the difficulties experienced by blind people using the internet. In it, I look at many methods that people have devised to assist the blind, and I recommend several methods of my own that can be accomplished with already existing technology.

In researching this dissertation, I read many papers published on the subject, interviewed several blind people and became part of several online communities. This helped to give me a greater understanding of the methods and workarounds that the blind use to access the internet, and this will be very helpful in my future professional practice.

 
 

Three

03.

Year 3 - Client Project

Drink Angel

For this project, I collaborated with Alex, Emily, Erin and Zoe to create a solution for Drink Angel, a charity that creates software to educate teenagers about the dangers of alcohol.

The bulk of my work on this project was spent behind the scenes, creating the administration area and the code that interfaces with the main Flash animation.

While working on this project, I developed several new methods of structuring PHP projects, and I created several useful libraries that I will use in future projects. I have discovered that I enjoy working as part of a team, and look forward to this part of my professional practice.

 
 

A lot of my work from years one and two is missing or incomplete due to a hard drive crash.

I am making every effort to make this work available as soon as possible.

 
 

one

04.

Year 1 - Contextual Practice

Fire: Creator and Destroyer

This was the first of many essays that I wrote for Contextual Practice. It compares some of my earlier photography work to another student's.

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one

05.

Year 1 - Supplemental Briefs

Experimental Video

This is the first video that I ever edited, and it helped kick-start a life-long interest in the world of film-making and editing. I would definitely be interested in editing more films in the future.

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Contact me

If you have any questions or comments about this site, you can e-mail me at steve@steve.ac.

Further reading

I now have my personal site available at steve.ac.