Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews, questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. This week and next, to celebrate our fifth, we will sit in the Timeout seat. Today: Tristan.
Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
I was born and raised in Louisiana. As a child I basically lived outside, in what most people would consider the country. Catching snapping turtles, climbing trees, taunting bulls, etc. With the amount of time I spend indoors now people don’t typically believe that. And while we do have alligators, they’re not a daily issue as some people, mostly Dan and Rich, assume.
I’m a developer at Dribbble and I’ve been a developer of some form for over half my life now. All because I wanted to create my own skateboarding website on Geocities. I quickly realized the best way for me to learn was the trusted view source method. I’d find other sites I liked, examine their code, and then do my best to recreate it without looking at the source code again. And for some reason I enjoyed it and haven’t stopped enjoying it yet. And now thinking about it I wonder if I would have been a designer instead had I wanted to create my own skateboard.
What are you working on?
Most of my time lately has been dedicated to the API. I can’t wait to see what people build with it, especially with the ability to comment, like, and upload shots and attachments.
Choose a favorite shot of yours. Why is it a favorite?
Something you might like. I’ve literally wanted to work on the API since I learned about Dribbble.
Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot (e.g. hardware, software, pens, paper, blowtorch)?
The documentation site is based on the GitHub Developer site. The API itself uses Doorkeeper for OAuth, which saved a lot of time, and ActiveModel::Serializer for the JSON rendering. The rest is mostly a typical Rails setup.
Choose a favorite shot from another Player. Why do you dig it?
Heisenberg by David L. Wehmeyer. I could probably pick anything from David’s One Year of Design project, but you can’t go wrong with a Heisenberg pick.
How did you get to Dribbble?
I was living in Boston when Dribbble was first released, so I learned about it pretty quickly. I had some contact with Rich then, trying to work on the API for free and requesting a database dump of comments for analysis. Rich rightfully refused to let me work for free and for some reason I never released my comment analysis.
In early 2013 Rich e-mailed me asking if I was interested in working as a freelancer for them. Which worked out considering I had planned to freelance full-time for the year and Dribbble would be quite an impressive first client. Unfortunately they offered me a full-time position a few weeks later, quickly ruining my dream of freelancing full-time. But on the bright side I was finally in the perfect position to work on the API.
Find Tristan at Dribbble, on Twitter, and at tristandunn.com.
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