frequently asked questions

or questions i made up in anticipation of your questions
  1. So what is it you do, exactly?
  2. Briefly: sound and computers.
  3. Not-So Briefly: sound design, audio tech and systems engineering, sound op; computer systems administration, maintenance, and repair; server and networking fancy-crazy wiz-bag stuff.
  4. What field(s) do you work in?
  5. Funny story about that....
  6. I used to freelance in New York City as a theatre technician. Then I decided having health insurance would be nice, so I worked as an Apple Genius in NYC for several years. Then I decided my New Year's resolution would be to improve my standard of living, so I got the hell out of New York City.
  7. Now I work primarily in the IT field. That is how I make a living.
  8. So you would consider yourself...?
  9. An 80-year-old man trapped in a 20-something-year-old's body. That's what my friends all tell me.
  10. I dislike labels and titles. I guess I'm an IT Professional by day and a Sound Designer by night. And "by night" I mean "in my imaginary alternate reality world".
  11. And who are you, anyway's?
  12. That's all covered in the about page.
  13. How did you create your website?
  14. 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.
  15. 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).
  16. 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.
  17. Favorite sound(s)?
  18. Subtle stuff. Footfalls on gravel and snow. Paper sounds. Oh, and that one synthetic ribbit-like sound that's in a lot of electronic music.
  19. How did you learn this web design stuff?
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. Why do you use a Mac?
  23. 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.
  24. And it's just so much easier to be creative on a Mac.
  25. Are you some sort of lying hack?
  26. No. I'm a completely honest hack.
  27. How did you create your visual galleries?
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. The guy I purchase my hosting from, Darren, found it for me. He's useful like that . . . sometimes.
  31. About this ordered list: did you know yours isn't numbered properly?
  32. I know. How charming.