About
This is what I do.
I am an IT guy with many skills, and I'm always open to learning new ones.
Although challenges may suck my energy below absolute zero, I still enjoy taking them on. Sometimes, it is a server task about making a machine operate beyond what seems possible. Then it could be some border on a CSS element defying common sense. Or a Ruby gem that drives someone up the wall. Or it could be showing how Macs are magnificent beyond their captivating shell beauty.
But I am not exclusively an IT guy. Just some geek or nerd living in piles of comic books, watching Star Wars while downloading Deep Space 9. Not only do I socialise regularly, just like anyone else, but I also enjoy debating the humanities, questioning reality and the limits of knowledge, or practising logic and oral skills. If you meet me, make me happy by bringing up these or some other essential questions on God and existence.
I'm a gnostic. Maybe Buddhist, but not a true one. I do not believe, I know, question, or reason. You may have your way, but this is mine; this is my choice.
I've started thinking analytically since I became aware of myself. Still, I conceived my first algorithms somewhere in the late seventies with Texas Instruments TI-57 and soon took first steps in BASIC and Z80 assembly on Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80. Brief episodes with Sinclair ZX-81 and Spectrum led me to the Commodore 64, whose architecture, kernel and API were the theme of my high school graduation. Yes, I've done C and assembly on x86 DOS too; it felt like my last Commodore 128D, which I ran on CP/M.
Those limited environments taught me a lot about appreciating limited resources, optimisation, and a battle for every single byte and CPU cycle. Imagine your CPU running at 1MHz? That was our 6502 baby; friends and I called RISC when we fought the other tribe with their Z80, which we called CISC.
I know about Macs. I've seen Apple ][ and the very first Macintoshes, but got my first one somewhere in 1995 and never looked back. I was fascinated with simplicity, beauty and overall philosophy. And I still am. Others may like the case or some fancy UI tricks, but I know and understand what's ticking under the hood. And I like that.
DTP was my escape to aesthetics. I enjoyed type, that strange marriage of mathematics and aesthetics, ruled by splines and psychology and incomprehensible logic for rhythm. I've done that for a decade and a half, went pretty deep, and I am still very proficient in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
Just as I thought the hardware industry was dead in 1990 and switched to DTP, I figured DTP would go down too, as everyone thinks they can do it and the need for printed anything declines.
So I finally decided to jump on the web wagon in 2006. However, I've used mail since the late eighties, on academic net long before the Internet became public (I even remember debate and disgust on opening web sites for commercial entities!)
And here I am right now, split between front-end development, Drupal site building and development and server building, tuning and maintaining.
You've read so far? Rarely anyone does, but then again, what would an About page on a personal Blog be if not all about a person who owns it?
If you are interested in something more specific, have an Indecent (job) Proposal or wonder about The Meaning of Life, feel free to contact me somehow. Even better, meet me in person. Somewhere.