whoami

Hey. You came. Well, that's cool, come on in and have a seat. Can I get you a drink? I've got Guinness in the fridge...

This tech blog will be a space specifically for me to write my thoughts on technology in general, or anything else I decide I want to use my soapbox (can it be called a soapbox if no one reads it?) for, but typically web technology and project management. I'll tell you about my experiments and work with various programming/scripting/markup languages: JavaScript, PHP, Java, Apex, Flash, Flex, ActionScript 3.0, CSS, and html among others. I'm also interested in computer hardware and gadgets, so I might occasionally write about that stuff - pretty much if I have a thought that I think at least one other person would find helpful, useful or otherwise interesting, well, I might put it on here.

Ok, so that's what I may or may not talk about - but the title of the entry was "whoami" - which of course is the UNIX command to get the current userid - so this entry is the response to that command.

var MattHowey = {

prof: "RIA Software Developer",

city: "Philadelphia",

state: "PA",

lang: "English"

}

Right...so I'm not going to write the entire post in JSON...and UNIX doesn't really speak JSON natively anyway...

I'm Matt Howey and I would generally call myself a "Rich Internet Application Developer" (RIA Dev). I have been making websites since about 1997, and professionally since 1999. I was a print graphic designer for a period before that. I have a Bachelor Degree in Communications & Public Relations and an Associates Degree in Graphic Design & Computer Graphics - but who really cares about that mumbo jumbo. It's not what did you do for me in college, it's what can you do for me right now. Technology has changed dramatically in just the time I was obtaining those qualifications. My personal growth from Graphic Designer to Programmer and general RIA Dev has been a constant learning experience - new languages, new versions of languages, W3C standards...sometimes it's all a bit overwhelming. Hard to decide what direction you want to go with things from a technological standpoint. So far, I'm thinking that having a lot of experience, in a few things - and a little experience, in a lot of things is a good way to actually be good at something while keeping your horizons as wide-open as possible by experimenting with as many technologies as time will allow.

I digress... For me, with an art and graphic design background, the natural progression was into frontend development. Basically, I knew how to make something that looked pretty good in PhotoShop, but when it came down to putting it on the web, I didn't really know what I was doing. I first learned HTML by making something in the DreamWeaver WYSIWYG, then switching over to code view to see what it made. Once I was creating html tables on my own, I was off and embedding tabled, inside tables, inside tables, inside....huh? Yes, this is how layout was done in the CSS stone ages for you young hipsters.

I have progressed from embedded tables, weird frame setups, and generally messy and non-semantic markup to programming in different capacities in various languages like JavaScript, PHP, Groovy, ActionScript, C#, and Java -- inside various frameworks such as Zend and Grails.