History: (Warning: May Cause Drowsiness)
The Early Years
My interest with electronics as a teenager led me to 2 years of studies on the subject during high school. Around that time, the internet boomed in popularity. In addition, during that time, my family purchased its first computer; a Compaq Presario with 128 MB of RAM, and an 800MHz processor. I quickly became fascinated with computers and related technology soon afterwards, and started playing Delta Force, an online video game (I could actually play with other people over the internet?! AWESOME!). Delta Force was a lot of fun for me, and it was what got me first involved with making websites. A few friends and I decided to form a squad to complete with other teams, and all the best teams had websites. Naturally, we needed one too - so off to Homestead I went. Sadly enough, I created my first website using an online generator offered by homestead, but at that time, I thought it was nothing short of amazing!
In a few months time, I had seen a few other websites that had something different about them, something that made them stand out from all the rest. After contacting several other beginner webmasters, I found out that those best websites were made not by an online wizard (software or otherwise), but instead were written in something called HTML. At that time, the best input I had was from a high school friend of mine, who created (and later sold) a website called NetCheats.com. He explained to me that by using HTML, and an exciting technology called CSS, I could create a website template that I could reuse for each page of a website, and by changing one file, I could change all the colors on every page!
Time for College!
3 years, 5 or 10 websites, 2 HTML Editor Software changes, and a discovery of a cool server side language called PHP later, and I was entering my first year of college at KSU. Joining KSU's branch of the International Game Developers Association, I offered to create a website for the group that would allow us to share our programs and schedule meetings. That website was one of the first times I had put something together that used multiple scripts to serve various functions. I really went all out on it, adding an event calendar, file manager, and news system all rolled into one sleek design that showed off my freshly learned 3dStudioMax skills. After a few months with the IGDA, I decided that it would probably be a good idea to make a website where I could post all of my previous works so that I could professionally offer my web development talents as a freelancer.
Therefore, I went about finding a hosting company that would allow me to get my website up and running, and stated learning Macromedia Flash, a cool animation program that the gurus at 2advanced.com made excellent use of.
PhiberArt, the new cool
After I found a hosting company, I registered the domain PhiberArt.com (a concatenation of an intentionally misspelled fiber in reference to fiber optics, and art) and started work on my site. X-Gravity was my first professional site for a complete stranger, and it featured HTML, minor CSS, and a cool flash banner.
After the success of the X-Gravity website, I had gained notoriety on a popular forum, WebHostingTalk.com. From that forum, my website and portfolio grew at a steady rate, and I honed my web design skills on hosting site after hosting site. After about 2 years of freelancing, I had made around 20 sites professionally, and had gained a multitude of skills during the process.
Downtime
While I did take down my freelancing website due to time constraints, I did create several more websites during the downtime, some of which were for repeat clients and others were for people who remembered or had seen one of my previous websites, and caught me at the right time. I created a homepage for myself that makes use of the lastRSS PHP library for reading RSS feeds, and more recently created a lightweight PHP/MySQL content management system (which I received 3 upper division credit hours for, whoohoo!). Additionally, during that time I made significant gains in my programming skills, programming regularly as a hobby, as well as for school, and creating websites for myself and others.
Still awake?
So there you have it - A not-so-brief history of what I've done and what I do. To find out more about what I've done, you can look at my portfolio, contrarily, you can check out my resume to see what I'd like to do.
