I am a frontend web developer and design engineer based in Vermont where I live with two wonderful, healthy cats with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), a judgmental tortoise, and my girlfriend. When I’m not sitting, I explore the paved and dirt roads of New England on my motorcycles.
I’ve worked on so many projects. From beer websites to complicated web apps that I still don’t fully understand what some of them do. I’ve worked with plenty of frameworks: Laravel, React, Vue, React Native, and — my favorite — static site generators like Eleventy, Jekyll, and Astro. But, when you get down to it, it’s all just HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript to make accessible, responsive, and performant information in a browser.
For many years, I was a graphic designer by day who did web development after hours, as a hobby and the occasional client — film festival, restaurant, and artists. Halfway through my career, I made the switch to frontend web development full-time.
As a graphic designer, I worked on magazines, packaging, and branding for the entertainment, industrial, and beverage industries. I designed many movies and fitness DVDs destined for the discount bin and thrift stores.
Although I call myself a frontend web developer, I like the title design engineer. I think it better describes what I do: making design and UX clickable — hmm, I need to work on that description. I’m comfortable delving into the backend and Sysadmin areas, so I’ve been called full-stack. I don’t like that term, though.
About the Site
I’ve built numerous versions of this site over the past 25 years — some launched, oh so many did not. I stopped counting after version 17. It’s been built with hand-coded HTML and CSS in static files uploaded via FTP, Textpattern, Jekyll, Eleventy, and Astro. Building a site for yourself is hard, and I’ll never be happy with it. This site is more educational for me. Things I experiment with here help me with the professional work I do.