this is me
On this website you will find information about me as a person, as well as what I am capable of. I am a creative digital engineer. I develop as a hobby, as well as a profession. Stop reading right now if you expect me to discontinue improving myself outside of the 40 hour work week you will pay me for.
I created my first website at age 12 when the fastest modem I could could get my hands on was a 28.8kbps dial-up.... back when domain names were $75 a piece and the only place you could buy them was Internic. I lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina, but I have been working online as long as I have been online.
Things have changed a lot over the years... I moved back to Charlotte in 1997 and expanded my skill set by adding more programming languages, including PHP and Java. In 2002, I graduated high school and went straight to work as a web developer at a start-up in Raleigh. Between 2004 and 2010 I did freelance work and furthered my education. I've been in this internet game a long time... created a plethora of websites. I watched the rise and fall of Netscape, Corel, and Macromedia.
Over this entire time period, I had many odd jobs to make ends meet. None of which are really relevant to my web development, but include: (12-15) CEO Chambers Lawn Care, (16-18) Carowinds Food and Games, (24) RedStorm Entertainment Game Tester, (26-27) Casino Game Hardware Technician and Software Tester, (27) Sign Shop Designer/Producer, roofing, construction, landscaping, etc etc.
Web development/programming has been a hobby of mine for the past 16 years. Though people tell me I am a decent graphic designer, but I don't claim to be one; I am proficient with the entire Adobe collection. I went to CPCC for Simulation/Game Development in 2007. I learned a lot of really interesting things that I now apply to my web development; from 3d modeling and creative writing, to game engine programming/scripting and video production. I'm a one-man game development machine... but there aren't any game companies in Charlotte, and I wouldn't leave this city for less than Google. DO YOU HEAR ME GOOGLE?
Besides all of that, I have played sports all of my life and love hanging out in nature. I've also been playing drums since I was 6 and I am very passionate about my music. I have had my car since I graduated high school, and turned every bolt on it at least once.
I'm not afraid to tell you if something is wrong. I may be an introvert, but I am really outspoken and opinionated. Rest assured, if your request is logical... I can make it happen. I'm also a fast and eager learner.
I believe that developers are the magicians of the modern age. We have the power to create illusions and immerse millions of people at our fingertips. We weave magical webs of code that, if woven correctly, will never be noticed but create a seamless end-user experience. Speaking of which, you can use your left and right arrow keys to navigate this site. Hit the right arrow to continue...
stuff I know
Languages, Scripts, Frameworks
- HTML5/XHTML/CSS3/XML
- Java/Javascript/jQuery
- Ruby on Rails
- GIT, Heroku
- PHP/MySQL/Postgres
- Actionscript
- Bootstrap (UI Framework)
Methods and Buzzwords
- Object Oriented PHP (OO PHP)
- Model/View/Controller (MVC)
- Representational State Transfer (REST APIs)
- Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP)
- Content Management Systems (CMS)
- HTML5 Canvas Development
- Data Mining (custom crawlers)
- Responsive Design (media queries)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Pay Per Click advertising (PPC)
- Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
- e-Commerce/Shopping Carts
- Webkit Browser Extensions
Software
- Illustrator, Fireworks, Photoshop
- Dreamweaver, Flash
- Premier, After-Effects
- Soundbooth, InDesign
- Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, Blender
- Unreal, Unity3d, Source
Passions
- Mechanical Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Problem Solving/Inventing
- Pattern Recognition
- Music/Drumming
- Horticulture/Cooking
what I do
Projects from the past year:
Websites:
Italic sites are no longer under my control, but I did make them. This should explain any errors you come across. Someone else broke it! hah
Applications/Games: (I've since lost a few of these URLs to being unemployed)
- Project Offroad - one week into a Unity3d experiment
- etPost HTML5 before/after image slider
- What's My Metal Worth? - dynamic metal pricing app
- NationalCableTechs.com - private cable technician proficiency testing app
- ThrowPlastic.com - disc golf tee-time scheduling app (under construction)
- I've also created PHP calendars, custom cronscripts, call centers, tournament ladders, RSS aggregators, web crawlers/data miners, templated newsletter distribution apps, custom content management systems, and much, much more.
read these
This is a collection of snippets from the internet that I believe every employer lacking programming experience should read.
Programming Languages and Methods
I admit: I couldn't keep up. Just learned Backbone.js and only found out it's already out of fashion, I probably should have used ember.js. Trying to get a hold of ember.js, someone told me to use Meteor, oh, no, no, should be Angular, um, Tower.js is the current hottie (based on node.js). As for HTML template, I should use handlebars, not mustache, wait a second, DOT.js, seems better, wait, why use a HTML parser in a browser? Is that the browser supposed to do? Thus, no need to use HTML template? Yes, use DOM snippets, wait, are you talking about web components? Isn't that W3C for? Or you are talking about developing web apps in plain Javascript like what Google does? Bullshit, I only need CoffeeScript, it performs very well, so why not CoffeeScript? Or use Coo, LiveScript, DART, GWT? OK, that's too many to choose from, I might as well go back to Ruby on Rails. No? Ruby on Rails is clunky and not extensible? How about Grails, Groovy, Roo? Too simple to use? All right, how about node.js? Not extensible as well? But, it enables me to write code for both client side and server side, oh, even MongoDB in one language - Javascript. No, don't like Javascript? How about PHP? I hear ya, it's not thread-safe. Are you joking? All right, let's go back to server-side programming. Back to Java? No good? Lisp, or Clojure? Great, it has a bridge/protocol buffer/thrift, in this way even Haskell programmers can come on board to write web apps. Or use Scala/Lift/Play, they are the best framework came into being, because FourSqure is using them so they must be good. Of course, we shouldn't use SOAP and will use JSON RESTful services, only banks and Walmarts use SOAP, and (for persistence) certainly no SQL DB, since they are not flexable.
I see... I plan to outsource it. The vendor may use a Wordpress template, then copy and paste a few jQuery code snips and it will achieve the same effect, no need to make any difficult technical decisions as above.
- a [Chinese] programmer's plight
Introverts
Imagine you're swimming along the bottom of a pool, tasked with analyzing a pattern of markings on the bottom. You're finally starting to understand what you see and make some sense of it, when suddenly a voice transmits down into the water, "Hey! Come up now!" So you break away from your pattern, totally losing what you'd accomplished so far, and haul yourself up through all that water, surfacing, looking around, trying to focus on the person who summoned you to see what is so important.
"Did you have a good weekend?" the person asks.
"Sure, thanks. What's up?"
"Oh nothing. I just saw you swimming so deep down there so I wanted to stick my head in and say hi."
WHAT??
That is how I feel all the time at work. I have to concentrate pretty hard sometimes to either read some tough material or figure out ways to get data I want by creating queries. Sometimes just as I'm about to really understand something or get a cool idea, I see a shape at my door. I know some people would ignore that shape, but of course it could be the boss! So I look over there and it's Him. The guy who just wants to say hi. And last week he did tell me, "You just looked so deep in thought that I wanted to stick my head in…" Seriously.
Introverts can go really deeply into our own heads, concentrating to an extent that is ultra intense and productive, if you will let us. When you come by and shatter our thoughts for no good reason at all, we have to bring ourselves back to the surface and focus on you, and sometimes it takes us a moment. By then you've already launched into whatever chitchat you came there to do. The interruption totally ruins what we were accomplishing, and sometimes it takes us a long time to get back to the spot where we were. I also feel a bit disrespected when it turns out you weren't interrupting me to tell me the building is on fire, or the boss wants to see me… You just came and interrupted me for no good reason at all. I understand that extroverts might be feeling terribly bored or restless if they are reading or working and might welcome a friendly face stopping by, so I wanted to let you know why the introvert you're visiting does not look so happy and might even look as if he's in a daze as he comes out of his deep thought process. At that point, be sure to get to the point, and don't insult him by asking if he is OK!
Now I know we introverts can have an incisive wit that makes you howl with laughter, so I understand why you want to stop by. So if you're not supposed to interrupt us while we're thinking, how does one ever get to talk to an introvert? My preference and what I've seen and heard is that we by far prefer email anytime, if you need something that doesn't have to be right now. If you are requesting information or an action that does not require interrupting us, we'd much prefer to get an email (or Twitter tweet) that we can address whenever it works best for us. If you just want to chitchat with us, I consider it a worthy interruption if you stop by at lunchtime and ask if we want to go with the gang to wherever, or talk to us when we grab a soda from the break room. But remember that we usually don't like meaningless small talk, so if you're really interested in getting to know an introvert you'll probably want to use the sneak attack method to get him to talk.
When you see an introvert deep in thought, please respect that he is far inside his own head and it took awhile to get there, so please don't sever the delicate thread of a really cool idea he is now getting. Once he accomplishes his task, who knows, perhaps he'll come looking for you to tell you about it!
- introvertzone