Show HN: My Windows XP portfolio with working Game Boy and iPod

Posted by mitchivin 4 days ago

Show HN: My Windows XP portfolio with working Game Boy and iPod(mitchivin.com)

I posted my portfolio here about a year ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45154609) and while there was a big response, it was very mixed! It'll probably be similar this time, but regardless of your thoughts about the concept, I think I've done a pretty good job creating one of the most nostalgic corners of the internet, especially with the latest additions.

It'll always be up for debate whether this is an effective way to get noticed as opposed to a standard, quick and easy portfolio, but I'll die on the hill that this is way more fun for both parties, every day of the week.

70 points | 34 commentspage 2

superdisk 4 days ago|

Not to criticize your work too harshly, but you specifically call out that this showcases attention to detail, and it's actually very inaccurate to the actual Windows XP, for anyone who's ever used it before. The UI elements are all haphazardly sized relative to each other, there are alpha-fade ins/outs, the loading bar in the boot screen animates smoothly when the real thing popped along block-by-block, fonts are antialiased when they shouldn't be, hover-over dropdown menus appear/disappear instantly when moused over, the fake scanlines are just a pixel grid overlay, the selection box on the desktop is filled but should be a dotted outline... these are just the few I saw and I haven't used XP in years.

stavros 4 days ago||

I agree with you, but also I feel that that's way too much work for a portfolio site, and this is good enough for me.

mitchivin 4 days ago|||

no offensive taken dude, great eye you have and at some point i'll go through and see if I can address each of these things

aside from the pixel grid effect - thats just there for fun and I like it

qmr 4 days ago||

I enjoyed the pixel grid

qmr 4 days ago||

XP had cleartype no?

andai 4 days ago||

Awesome. Props for the iPod clickwheel. I miss my Classic!

mitchivin 4 days ago|

haha thanks! turns out it isn't as easy as searching for a standard audio file for the sound (being a machine sound i guess/think?) so I had to find someone doing ASMR and cut it up hahah

po1nt 4 days ago||

That Windows XP loading bar brings me back. Great job.

mitchivin 4 days ago|

thanks boss!

iJohnDoe 4 days ago||

So friggin’ cool. I think it’s really fun and when you can instantly entice people to click around and explore then you have already succeeded.

mitchivin 4 days ago|

That was the idea! I can't stand here and say that it's made me completely stable in my freelance career but it defintely got some eyeball's on me that would have no clue who I otherwise was

KankanHuo 4 days ago||

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animanoir 4 days ago||

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wetpaws 4 days ago||

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Philip-J-Fry 4 days ago|

I commented on the original post and I still don't understand the point of a "Visual Designer" basically reimplementing Windows XP in the browser. What are you trying to show off?

Also, it seems very buggy with the visuals. I see weird artifacts.

zapzupnz 4 days ago|

I have control bugs. Like, if I drag around a window using my trackpad, I can't seem to 'drop' the window; the state doesn't change and I'm stuck with a window attached to my mouse cursor.

I agree that I'm not sure what value I'd see, as an employer, in a "visual designer" whose CV rips off something else's visual design. Much of the design doesn't belong to you (never mind the ROMs used in the Game Boy emulator) so my alarm bells about how much you respect IP would be going off ("this guy's gonna get us sued").

Now, on the other hand, if this were a display of some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills, I'd understand more, but then the title OP has given themselves seems off.