I love building web sites.
I love working on websites. I love writing squeaky clean code. I love communicating with clients, identifying core business needs and translating them into technical deliverables. I love the problem solving and the feeling of accomplishment when another technical dilemma is solved. I love the combination of code and art. I love the grassroots nature of internet communication. I love the ever-widening accessibility people around the world have to internet information. I (usually) love the ever-changing development landscape where there is always more to learn. I love learning new web technologies and am always further honing my skills.
I miss my Commodore 64.
I was introduced to computers and the internet at a young age. I spent many an hour messing with BASIC on the Commodore 64 and later logging onto BBSes on our IBM 286. Video games and economics later diverted my attention for years and it wasn’t until after college that I found my way back towards coding.
In college at Penn State I studied economics, but met a friend who built websites and became intrigued by the process. After earning my degree, I spent some time traveling, living in different places and often dabbling in work in the non-profit sector. Eventually I settled in Austin where I began pursuing professional web design. I dabbled in freelance web design for a bit, then worked with S Collective for two years and now work at uShip. When not coding and basking in the dim glow of an LCD monitor, I can often be found getting lost on some Austin hiking trail or dipping my feet in a cold Austin stream somewhere. I also may be found at the stove preparing my favorite foods, tofu stir fry and steamed artichokes.
I got a fever and the only prescription is more jQuery.
Although I can code sites in Dreamweaver, I almost always use vi. I generally work in Windows, but recently have also been working with Macs and Linux (SSH). I enjoy writing custom apps in PHP and hacking JavaScript scripts like sliders and third party mail apps. I love creating custom WordPress sites from scratch and integrating custom fields, Twitter and MailChimp. I like to use JavaScript fonts like Cufon to spruce up a site. I feel quite at home tweaking WordPress code and customizing a WP backend to a suit a client’s specific needs. I also love e-commerce and especially like Shopify, Volusion and PayPal.