I'm a Web Generalist

I design and I develop (usually at the same time). I think modern web apps should be more client-heavy and always in sync with the cloud. I think good design can really change the world. I like all my visual designs coming through a single CSS HTTP request. I believe in an open platform over walled gardens and native lockdown. I think the future is about openness and sharing, and that no amount of attempted control can stop it. I want to be a part of this force of information that is reshaping our species.

I Like to Organize

Solving problems, thinking in abstraction, and connecting the dots are my types of things. I love organize things that seem too complex into things that seem easy enough to use: visual design and hierarchies, filesystem folder structures, URI paths, database columns, application menu structures, file naming conventions, variable and class naming (and formatting), and anything else that isn't easy to understand and which impedes progress.

I Like to Optimize

I'm also pretty good at web site/app optimizations (e.g., speed, usability, seo, etc.): I can make a web app, equally client and server heavy, with complicated CSS, semantic + clean markup, and a bunch of bitmaps and optimize that down to a few hundred milliseconds primed load time.

Some Personal Choices I've Made

• Currentish computer languages and tools with which I feel totally comfortable being given any kind of problem to solve (and which I use almost every day): Ruby, Javascript, Actionscript, HTML, CSS, JSON, PHP, MySQL, Rails, jQuery, Underscore, Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Vim, GIT, SSH, Apache, Bash, and Markdown.

• Stuff I'm currently using and playing with, but that I want to know better: Backbone, Node, Canvas, websockets, local storage, NoSQL (playing with MongoDB atm), and Nginx.

• Things I like (other than computers, that can't be eaten): movies (the top of my list reads "Die Hard"), cycling, outer-space, alpine skiing, infrared photography, the philosophy of mind, speculative fiction (PKD in particular), french illustration (I'm looking at you, Moebius), and using a combination of media (mostly black ink) to make my own images on paper.

• Digestible things that I enjoy: New York pizza, full-flavoured scotch (e.g., Lagavulin), Montreal smoked meat, really tart goat's cheese (any particular kind), salty dill pickles (my uncle Mark made the best pickles one year :D~~), Kobe beef tenderloin (I spent a crap-load of money to try it, and everything else is cardboard in comparison), salmon sashimi (obviously), and bitter sake (chilled).