tomgrom.com acknowledgements

I am tremendously grateful for the support, encouragement, and inspiration I've received from sources near and far, past and present. Without it, this site would not have been possible.

Special thanks to:

Jason, Myke, and David H., who have each followed their own vision to create a lasting body of talented and beautiful work. Your successes are an inspiration to me, and to us all.

Steve S. at UHart, for finding a way to get a fire under me to finally complete this site. You have my infinite thanks.

Dave, for putting up with listening to so many things that you probably don't really care about and still offering support and kindness. I am honored to share my life with you.

Mary, for empathy, laughter, friendship beyond words, and a piercing, compassionate wisdom that warms like the sun.

Bill, one of few kindred spirits in my life, who enriches each of my days by simply considering me a friend. Your tech knowledge humbles me, and your quiet strength is greatly admired.

Paul, friend of so many years, for being there when it really counted. I'll never forget how you've helped me get to where I am now.

Liz, for your wonderful way with words, unique insights, and so many great conversations over the years.

Rick, for giving me a new sense of home, family and connection where none was before.

Chuck, for your intelligence, kindness, humor, and thoughtful consideration.

Brent, for your awesome tech-fu, infectious exuberance, and our too-rare geek moments.

John, for showing me that someone can do things right, right from the beginning. We can all learn something from your optimism, hard work, and humor.

Nate , Joslyn and my other brilliant professional colleagues, who have made me feel part of a vital and caring community, supported my learning, and offered constant encouragement. Being around you has significantly improved my life, and I am privileged to serve with and learn from you.

And, lastly, my most sincere thanks to Portia, the best damn cat in the world, no matter how sappy that sounds.

Acknowledgements

Design

The design of this site is an adapted form of Leaves, originally created by Anthony Yeung at SmallPark out of Canada. It's clean, has plenty of white space, is highly accessible, and offers a great deal of flexibility.
I found Leaves at Open Web Design, a site which showcases free website templates for personal or commercial use. It's a fantastic resource for web publishers who want to focus on content rather than design.
The color scheme for this site was inspired by advice from photographer and designer Adam Polselli.
A List Apart and SimpleBits have both helped to shape my design philosophy. They provide frequent opportunities to learn about good web design.

Development and Production

Two fantastic (and free) text editors I use when coding are PSPad for Windows from the Czech Republic and BBEdit's little brother, TextWrangler, for OS X.
My browser of choice for testing is Firefox, using the developer's Swiss Army Knife Web Developer Extension.
The Apache FriendsTeam based in Germany have provided a perfect testing environment with their free and extremely user-friendly Xampp Apache distribution package. It's the easiest way to install a complete Apache web server, including support for MySQL, PHP, and Perl. They provide installers for Linux, Solaris, OS X, and Windows.
I use Cyberduck to transfer files between my development computer and web host. It's free and offers a tremendous feature set in an easy-to-use package.
My hosting provider is E-RICE.net, who provides superior service at impressively low cost.
The domain registrar I use is GoDaddy. While their gratuitous commercials and fierce upselling of additional products and services can be annoying, they consistently offer exactly what I want at the best price.
The Reading Room and home-page Blog listings are powered by customized PHP and MySQL code from Floresense, a talented web services provider with proficiency in PHP, MySQL, C#.Net development, and the design and implementation of large-scale web applications. All of my experiences with Floresense have been wonderful, and I highly recommend considering them for your web projects.
Some of my RSS feeds are provided by FeedBurner, which adds important capabilities like email subscriptions and customization to my feeds.
Lastly, thanks to Bill at FistFullofCode for the awesome PHP mojo that runs my Contact page.

Images

The block image on the top right of each page was originally taken from ImageAfter, and then modified. You'll find thousands of free images and textures for your own use on this amazing site.
Icons used on this site are from the free Silk set designed by the extremely talented Mark James in Birmingham, England.
The iconized image of me in the About the Author section of this site was created by Paul Sahner at DV-Graphics.
All image editing was done with Adobe's Photoshop Elements 2.0. I'm also learning Gimpshop and Paint.NET, both of which are free alternatives comparable with (and some might argue better than) Photoshop Elements.