I’m a software engineer. I write programs professionally and as a hobby.
I’m also a runner, participating in a number of running events on Long Island throughout the year.
I use this site as a creative outlet and, generally, to talk about things I am interested in. This is my little place on the web; I try to keep it tidy and pleasant.
A Quick History
Code and Run is maintained by me, John Famiglietti, the former sole-proprietor of Crux Technologies, Inc. Under Crux, I was basically a hired gun doing custom programming jobs as a consultant. Later, I got involved in a project that led to a regular full-time job. I kept Crux going; occasionally using it for side work, and briefly offered Font Runner as a shareware product through the Crux site before reverting it back to freeware.
After the Font Runner shareware experiment, I really didn’t need to maintain Crux. At the same time, I needed an outlet to release hobby work and using a corporate entity such as Crux for that seemed inappropriate for a number of reasons. This was when I finally decided to shut down Crux and start this blog.
Credits
As a software developer, my first instinct is always to create something from scratch. This time, however, leaving the heavy lifting to software like WordPress was a no-brainer. Customizing it and theming WordPress was enough of a project by itself.
I spent quite a bit of time perusing the extensive WordPress Themes Directory looking for something just right. I wanted a simple look-and-feel with tiny splash of style. The jQ theme was closest to what I was looking for, and I almost settled on it, but, ultimately, I decided to create my own theme.
Ian Stewart’s Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial over at ThemeShaper proved to be an invaluable resource. Using his tutorial and source code as a framework, the only remaining task was to turn my mock-up artwork into CSS.
For the first time in a couple of years, I got up to my elbows in CSS and quickly renewed my disdain for IE 6 and 7. I had mostly managed to avoid all the problems with these browsers but the menu presented problems. I decided to be a wiseguy and implement an all-CSS dropdown menu system from scratch and it actually worked very nicely under standards-compliant browsers, but was completely broken on IE 6 & 7. I took consolation in the fact that my CSS turned out to be very similar to what Stu Nicholls shows could have been.
Finally, WordPress 3 was released and its new default theme, Twenty Ten, had exactly the menu I was looking for. It’s all CSS, it works in all browsers and, obviously, is compatible with WordPress. My CSS menu project was an interesting challenge and I didn’t want to give it up, but suddenly, it felt like I was reinventing the wheel. Therefore, I credit the WordPress Team for my beautiful menu!
Originally, this blog was just named after me, but I like the double-meaning of “Code and Run” since it describes what I do so well.
When this site had my name, I used a Cufón rendering. The font was Fertigo Pro. The main drawback to this was the font and required scripts totaled up to more than 100k. I found a font on Google Web Fonts, that I like (Belleza) and am using that for the title of this site now.
Add it all up and you have a theme I call Potatoes.
