The Site
The impetus for this Web site was pretty simple. I've been doing Web development for several years and have learned a fair bit about stuff like HTML, CSS, Perl, PHP, and MySQL. I've helped a lot of people with sites of their own, both personal and commercial, and I've been doing a bit of it in the various co-op jobs I've had during my university years.
These days, everyone has a Web site, and people would ask me, "where's yours?" I've had a couple personal pages over the years, but I figured, if I'm going to tell people I'm a Web developer I should have my own site. So I made this one.
Rather than using blog software like Geeklog or WordPress (both of which I have used and are excellent, by the way), I did it all from scratch in PHP, Perl, and MySQL. This way I had complete control over how it worked, and I now have something I can point to and say, "I did that!" Yeah, it's just a personal site, but it still looks cool.
The Design
There have been several versions of this site. The first, which debuted around 1998 or thereabouts, was a page on GeoCities about why me and my friends were so awesome. At the time, we thought that people actually cared about who we hung out with and what music we listened to and what movies we liked to watch. By looking at most of the blogs around today (including my own, I suppose), it seems that nothing has changed.
If I'm honest, I can't even remember the URL for that GeoCities page I did... something like geocities.com/SiliconValley/Blah/39292939232 (you old folks remember that, right? haha!) and committed all of the sins of a Web 1.0 personal page: obnoxious background, large fonts, and animated GIFs abound that served no purpose but putting flames on my page. I hope I've come a long way from that now. :)
I wanted the design of the site to be nice and simple, and also make a statement about who I am. If you are actually interested in knowing how I came up with it, I'll explain some of the features and where they came from.
- The sun rays logo in the top left hand corner is something I designed a few years ago and has appeared in all of my Web sites. It illustrates the importance of the sun's light and energy in our lives. It is also influenced by the Vergina Star, a symbol popular in ancient Macedon.
- The red colour is meant to represent my pride and patriotism for my homeland, Canada.
- The white maple leaves scattered about continue this theme. I chose white because it was more neutral and it makes reference to the most well known Canadian season (winter).
- The city scape reflects my experience growing up in Toronto, and my love for cities lit up at night.
- The road signs are there because I love to drive.
Well, that's it. Any questions, feel free to ask.