About Paul
I’m a web developer with a design background, and a mad, raving passion for web standards, video games, and coffee.
I was going through college, and after four years of print design work, I was falling out of love with the design world; I’m a gear-head, and at the end of the day, I felt I was missing out on all the fun, nitty-gritty technical bits. Enter Flash, the graphic designer’s gateway drug.
I threw myself at Flash with wild abandon, and quickly ended up with some overly technical designs that just wouldn’t work without some serious scripting know-how to tie them all together. So, over a miserably hot summer I read through every Actionscript book I could get my hands on, even sneaking them into my summer school classes when I could manage, just to crack that elusive cipher.
Getting my head around Flash led to me getting my first professional, “Big Boy” job as the official Web Ninja Master™ for On the Edge Design, and in the process, inheriting a half dozen table-based sites. About three hair-tearing months into the job, I sat up and thought, “There’s gotta be a better way to do this!”.
Which brings us to the modern day: Web Designer 2.0. I’ve become quite the standardista since then, converting our client sites to accessible XHTML/CSS, with unobtrusive Javascript (thanks to the brilliant jQuery library) to manage dynamic page behaviour.
About life after work.
On the rare occasion that I actually have free time, you can usually find me lounging in the nearest coffee shop with WiFi, reading about the latest Javascript fad, or combing through the backlog of graphic novels I’m borrowing from friends. Failing that, Steam, InstantAction.com, and an uppity XBox 360 are more than happy to sponge up the remainder of my waking hours.
Amateur Scotsman?
Despite what my friends and dreadful accent will tell you, I am actually Scottish, though 19 years in the country have thoroughly American-ized me. Stll, despite the the protests of countless family members, I’d love to move “home” some day.
You might think that with as many years as I’ve had, that I’d have gotten around to it. But, what can I say? The price of video games out there is prohibitively expensive, so until I make it big here in the states, I just have to lump it and deal with California’s gorgeous weather and low tax rate. It’s a hard life, sometimes, really it is.
Colophon
This site is composed of 100% post-consumer recycled electrons and valid Strict XHTML / CSS, with jQuery sprinkles on top.
This site is hosted by the exceedingly cool guys at Dreamhost, and is powered by Wordpress and a handful of custom plugins I’ve developed.
