About

Me

I am a bit of an oddity in this world.

Neumont

Think about a paradox: a person who loves logic, math, algorithms, and problem solving who has an equal love of music, art, and creativity. It’s an odd synergy with symbiotic qualities, one side allows the other to flourish, and as one side grows, so does the other. But like any relationship, there are times when one side over the other must be chosen. Because of that, I’m currently enrolled at Neumont University with a major in Computer Science, which is a highly specialized and accelerated Bachelors program with an emphasis on project based learning. As of right now (February, 2009) I should be graduating about a month with a Bachelors in computer science, a large portfolio of projects, and a repertoire of skills, languages, frameworks and techniques that can rival even MIT masters program graduates.
MiB Hot Stuff - Self Portrait

Photography

Neumont aside, I spend a large amount of my free time doing photography and design work for people and companies as you can see by the site. I shoot whatever interests me, which can be just about everything, from a leaf on the ground, to the people standing next to me, to the architecture and landscapes of the area I live in. If you ever saw me outside of school, my camera is most likely strung around my neck with an extra lens residing in my pocket; and as my friends can testify, I really enjoy catching people in the act of whatever they happen to be doing, the more interesting, the better.

I’ve also started doing weddings, portraits, and shots of anything anybody is willing to throw at me, including stock, product shots (You know, photos of that crazy new shaving cream your company just developed and need to advertise and promote), landscapes, architecture, you name it. Its the best type of job in my opinion: a problem and a challenge to make the best image possible with the resources available, the opportunity to be paid to be creative and a chance for me to interact and meet many types of people from all over the age spectrum, from children to teens, to moms and dads, grandparents, businessmen and women.

Design

As this synergy of logic and art continues to expand I’ve seen areas where they overlap, and web design is one major overlap. The web is an an interesting and creative mix of graphics and functionality, its a place where I’m able to be creative in creating new and interesting designs and layouts while still being able to pay attention to detail and to the needs of whoever is using and developing the code that powers the site.

I’ve got to admit it, I’ve got a huge pet peeve when it comes to poorly designed or poorly coded websites to the point where I will not use a site because the little flaws just continue to stick out in my mind and bother me to no end. Because of this, when I design templates or do site designs I have an acute attention to what looks and feels right and will continue to tweak the design, graphics, and layout it until it satisfies my artistic side.

Another frustrating trend I’ve noticed is the sheer quantity of sites that are so difficult to update that adding one more page requires hours of work changing, updating, modifying mounds of code to make everything to work. I’ve seen sites that are setup this way, some you wouldn’t even know were designed like this unless you were the one assigned to change the sites content. Because of this, any site I design or create is designed to be easily updated via an administration interface of some sort tied into a database and a dynamic page generator.

Imagine this if you can, the ability to log in, click a button, enter a few pieces of information and *boom!* a new page is created, automatically added to all the menu bars on all the pages, with content that can be edited via a simple, easy to use visual editor embedded inside your site administration page. Or imagine a news page where adding posts is as simple as typing in a a page title, the body, with images that have thumbnails automatically generated with slick lightbox effects that show the full image and title when someone clicks on the thumbnail.

Every site should have this kind functionality, and every site I design will have this kind of functionality in one form or another. Besides, I really don’t like spending large amounts of time updating sites for people when I can set it up so that they can do, write, and modify whatever they want, whenever they want.

About this site

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