About Me

Who am I?

I've always been an artist, and now my works of art are web designs. I started drawing when I was about 8. I received a pretty nice collection of art supplies for Christmas, and liked copying cartoons and drawing pictures of my toys. Later I started drawing with Rapidograph pens. These are the type of pens that you fill with ink and clean at the end of the day. I'd use these on bristol, and while I would design some things in color, most of my art was black and white.

In high school I found that I really enjoyed ceramics. I was never very good using a pottery wheel, but loved building with clay, carving designs into the clay, and wondering if what I was making would survive the kiln. In college I took more ceramics classes, but since the curriculum was focused on the wheel, I decided ceramics wasn't for me.

I took other art classes in college. Not really because I thought I'd be a professional artist one day, but because I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. I enjoyed doing scratch art, and was able to do a lot of work with my beloved colored pencils. One of my scratch pieces was selected to be in my college's art show. I felt like I could draw anything, and for me that was a problem. I was bored with art. There was no challenge.

Fast forward to 2018, and here I am being an artist again. This time it's digital art. My canvas is a computer monitor or mobile phone, and my colored pencils are replaced with various technologies. I write code to display my ideas. I communicate digitally.

The world of web design and development is so dynamic, there's always something to learn, and a new challenge to face. It's perfect for me.

Below I've listed the technologies I use to make websites. A PDF version is available for download. I call it my résumé.

Front End Related Experience

  • HTML and XHTML
    • WYSIWYG since 2003
    • Hand coding since 2005
  • CSS
    • WYSIWYG since 2003
    • Hand coding since 2005
    • Sass since 2014
  • JavaScript since 2009
    • React
    • Native Javascript
    • jQuery and jQuery UI
    • Vue.js
    • ES6
  • Modern workflow
    • Git
    • NPM
    • Sass
    • Gulp
    • Webpack
  • Photoshop since CS era
  • Illustrator since CS era
Brian

Back End Related Experience

  • PHP since 2006
    • Custom procedural code & OOP applications
    • Modern PHP framework experience
      • Laravel since v2
      • CodeIgniter since v1.7.0
      • Slim since 2012
      • Proprietary (Brain)
    • Modern PHP applications
      • Wordpress since v1
        • Custom theme design
        • Custom widgets
        • Custom plugins
        • User training
  • MySQL since 2006
    • Schema design
    • Database normalization
    • Optimization
    • Automated backups
  • SQLite since 2012
  • Modern workflow
    • Git
    • Composer
Brian

Server Admin Experience

  • Linux server administration since 2009
    • Ubuntu
    • CentOS
    • LAMP install and management
    • Postfix
    • Dovecot
    • AutoSSH

Miscellaneous Experience

  • Native Android apps since 2016
    • Android Studio
    • Java
  • OS familiarity
    • Windows since 3.1
    • Linux since 2009
    • Mac since 2010

Formal Education

  • Palomar College
    1140 West Mission Road
    San Marcos, CA 92069
    AA General Education, August 2000
  • San Pasqual High School
    3300 Bear Valley Parkway
    Escondido, CA 92025
    Graduated with diploma, June 1990
Brian