...a little bit. Little bit.

My first computer experience was somewhere around 1984 on a Commodore 64 which I used to store the lyrics of songs my band had written. That didn't last long (they were really bad lyrics), as It was clumsy and difficult to operate. Fast forward to 1988 and my first taste of Macintosh. A friend was lucky enough to get his hands on a Mac Classic and he lent it to me for a weekend. Of course, I didn't have any idea of what to do with it other than play with Mac Paint. Honestly, what else was there to do with it?

I played in multiple bands over the years and had some minor successes. I was fortunate enough to play in a backup band for Exposé, and open for the Miami Sound Machine (Gloria Estefan). I enjoyed working as a studio drummer and playing local bars. It was a fun time. Computers weren’t allowed in my world. Chicks didn’t dig computers, they were into lead singers and guitarists. Since I was a drummer, computers seemed to be in my future.

One of the members in my last great band was a Mac user. In fact, he had a little company that sold them. So I began to learn what it was all about. My entire background had been in art — I was actually going to go into a commercial art field if the music business hadn't come-a-callin' — so, with great interest I watched how he laid out Macworld print ads for his company. It was then I decided to get my own.

In 1991 I got a Mac LC, with an 80 MB hard drive and 4 MB RAM. Meh. It was state-of-the-art for '91. So, I started learning my way around the Mac by designing flyers for my band. That then led to work in a marketing agency — my first real job as a graphic designer! That lasted for about a year. I was off to greener pastures.

Graphic design was my primary job, up until February of 1996, when I was hired as the New Media Director for a television production house. Wow. I thought to myself, "I've made it." However, there was a catch: I had to learn how to build websites for these guys. Zoikes! I had worked as a Mac troubleshooter and repair tech for a couple of years, so I wasn't a stranger to technical stuff, but this was a whole new thing. I had to learn code. That was scary. I had two companies depending upon me to build their web presence. I also didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. This was right around the time Adobe launched Pagemill, the first WYSISYG web page creation software, so I happily purchased a copy and started learning.

During my time with them I created a ton of sites. Big sites, little sites, easy sites, incredibly complicated sites, video, audio (Flash wasn't Flash yet, it was called FutureSplash), you name it, we did it. I created CD ROM multimedia presentations and even did some video editing using Adobe Premiere. I always came back to websites. They were just too much fun. I was even interviewed by Adobe in 1997. They had a feature on their website where they interviewed web developers (we were called "Web Masters" back then ) that used Adobe Pagemill. In fact, at a SIGGRAPH convention in New Orleans, an Adobe employee (I won't mention names) approached me and asked if I was interested in working as Creative Director for their Internet division. I was highly flattered, although later turned down the offer. I was happy where I was and knew I didn't know enough yet. Plus, I didn't want to move to San Francisco.

After my stint in television I decided to go it alone as a freelancer. During the last 10 years I've worked with some great people and impressive companies. I was able to create sites for Universal Music, and do QuickTime Virtual Reality tours for Harley-Davidson, as well as Cranes BeachHouse, a beautiful local bed and breakfast site. I've created custom applications for Jackson Memorial Hospital and Beiler Bros. Records.

In the last five years I've been focused on PHP/mySQL web applications. These aren't just websites, they're applications that are live on the net. My first one, Ballywho!, is an email marketing system used by large companies like Jackson Memorial Hospital and Fleet Bank Boston, to individuals like well known low-brow artist Skot Olsen. My most recent project is a website/web service called tagChimp in which desktop programs can access and share data with the tagChimp website. So far, it's been a huge success with thousands of people subscribing and using it every day.

Links

Download my resume (PDF)
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