About

This Site

Somedirection will be focused on Javascript / CSS / Commentary / Design & Music. Occasionally there may be some self promotion, strong opinions, and chasing the long tail of the interwebs.

This site is managed with Wordpress. It resides on a DreamHost Media Temple DreamHost server. It was built passionately with my own agile workflow on 15" & 17" Macbook Pros using MAMP, Photoshop, Textmate, Firefox w/ the Web Developer and Firebug Plugins, Transmit, and Parallels Bootcamp/IETester to deal with IE cockroaches. To keep my head on straight throughout the process there’s only one site I would recommend for project management and that’s Basecamp.

The blog should evolve over time to be a showcase of cutting edge web standards techniques, some of my own design, some adaptations of more popular methods. Everything should validate, unless I made an egregious error, in which case “whoops”.

Myself

I am an recent inductee into the Cult of Mac. I converted in June ‘06 and haven’t looked back. Ironically, I grew up with a Mac, but lost my way. My first computer was a Quadra 700, but in my early teenage years I wanted to play games. This found me under the realm of Gates’ Dictatorship for many years. I always wanted a mac, but I had no real reason to make the switch. Of course that all changed when Ruby on Rails screencasts enticed me to grab an old G4 from my father to start learning all the bliss that was Textmate. Apropos, Apple soon released Intel based processors and the rest was history.

I’m an absolute stickler for efficiency. I work hard and fast. I hope to share a lot about my work flow with everyone.

I currently live in Brighton Everett Medford Somerville, MA.

I still call my grandfather by the nickname I gave him when I was a child, “Happy”. It sounds kind of strange, but all subsequent grandchildren still call him that, it stuck.


My Goals

Here is a list of personal goals. Not only are they listed for my own personal benefit as a reminder, but I hope that as this blog grows and my journey through life progresses my peers and friends will keep me honest and slap me around when they find I am deviating from my intentions – I tend to get side tracked.

  • To be well-known and respected by my peers.
  • Able to work from anywhere. It’s quite easy to do in my line of work – and the main reason I’ve chosen the career path that I am on now, aside from my scholastic training as a Chemical Engineer.
    9/7/07 I’ve left the 9-5 world behind for good. Adios!
  • Run my own company (technically I already have done this but it was not full-time). Whether selling wingdings or thing-a-magigs, I’d really like to call the shots someday.

Updated 6/12/2009

My Influences

I’ve read their books – or know their stories. Here is a list of individuals that have impressed me by their expert knowledge, out-of-the-box-thinking, inspirational ideas, motivation, and exceptional marketing abilities.

My Involvement

House of Mac

Windows sucks. I’m an Apple missionary and this is the current status of affairs.

Mostly I’m just keeping track of this for my own self-gratification.

Converts

  • Dan Pickett
  • Bill Rowell – Although he was always an Apple user; his Macbook Pro envy finally got the best of him.
  • Mark Arvanigian – He will welcome Mac security like no other.
  • HAPPY – my grandfather’s got a Mini now. He loves it.
  • My Aunt Corinne – less than a week after we got my grandfathers Mini, she went out and bought a new 24″ iMac.