frequently asked questions

or questions i made up in anticipation of your questions
  1. So what is it you do, exactly?
  2. Briefly: sound; lights; properties.
  3. Not-So Briefly: sound design, audio tech and systems engineering, sound op; lighting electrical work, board programming, board op; properties construction requiring digital graphic artistry (such as branding).
  4. What field(s) do you work in?
  5. Theatre. I mainly cater to the theatre community.
  6. That said, I frequently end up working for industrials, television, and anyone else that might have need of my abilities. Artistic fields are notorious for overlapping like that.
  7. So you would consider yourself...?
  8. A Theatre Artist, specifically; but an artist, generally.
  9. That is how I make a living.
  10. And who are you, anyway's?
  11. That's all covered in the about page.
  12. How did you create your website?
  13. I use XHTML 1.0 Transitional, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and a little creative determination to design my websites. I'm not a code-monkey—and with any luck, I never will be. I am a professional theatre artist and designer at heart. CSS allows me to approach website creation from a design-oriented perspective; create interesting, pretty (ooh-shiney), useful pages; all while learning a minimal amount of programming code and markup.
  14. Recently, I've done away with Apache Server Side Includes (SSI) in favor of PHP-based pages. I'm beginning to introduce XML databases, XSL style sheets (and all sorts of other fancy crap) into my site, and I needed a dynamic page to do it. It makes repetitive parts of any website SO MUCH EASIER to deal with (e.g., header, navbar, and footer).
  15. I use Dreamweaver MX 2004 to write all of my HTML and CSS. My machine is an Apple PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz laptop named Towel, with 2GB of RAM, running Mac OS v10.4.x. It's always with me whenever I go traveling.
  16. How did you learn this web design stuff?
  17. Everything I know about HTML and CSS, I taught to myself, meaning: I poured over online reference manuals until my eyes bled. Crucial pieces of this process were the world wide web consortium, css zen garden, and eventually the free online tutorials available from westciv.
  18. I also dissected innumerable web pages in an attempt to see how others were doing things. Sometimes, I use CSSEdit (by macrabbit) to view a site's CSS. One website in particular, DOOCE, proved most useful. I have shamelessly stolen her basic design concept, and based much of my markup structure upon hers. I can only hope she approves.
  19. Why do you use a Mac?
  20. I've used both Windows-based and Macintosh computers for as long as I can remember. Then, one fateful day in 2001: I finally lost it, ran naked and screaming into the night, and left the Windows-based world of computing. FOREVER. There are no plans for a return flight.
  21. And it's just so much easier to be creative on a Mac.
  22. Are you some sort of lying hack?
  23. No. I'm a completely honest hack.
  24. How did you create your visual galleries?
  25. My visual gallery pages were created using a PHP photo album package called scry. The php generates all the markup for me; all I have to do is put the *.JPEGs into folders.
  26. It's completely free; distributed under the BSD license. Once installed on my hosting server, it was relatively simple to modify the scry CSS to match my pre-existing styles.
  27. The guy I purchase my hosting from, Darren, found it for me. He's useful like that . . . sometimes.
  28. How do you feel about ordered lists?
  29. I dislike them. Immensely.