Story

How’d I get into web dev, and techy stuff?

It’s more than safe to say that music isn’t my only interest. I’ve been developing websites and working on web nerd related development for 15+ years. I also got pretty lucky and landed an awesome gig working for Fullpower Technologies, Inc of Santa Cruz, CA.

Ironically, I only started building websites because of music. Years ago, I thought that I could help my first band get famous if we had our own website – so I dug in and learned how. My first site, “gusher.net,” was the internet home for my first metal / punk rock band. The group actually wasn’t too bad considering that we were 12-13 years old and loved trying to play as fast & loud as possible. Over the course of several years we managed to put out a few records, get on some early indi-label compilations, and we learned quite a bit about music, life, lawsuits, and dying our hair crazy colors. I also learned HTML.

I started building the first version of the site when I was 12, and over the next several years I would rebuild that website every time I learned a new web technique. This was back in the early-mid 90’s and my first ideas of development involved chopping Photoshop layouts into tiny images, and then re-arranging them using html tables… and doing it all over a 28.8K dialup. To put it bluntly – things have changed a lot since then.

Eventually this grew into a dual career and I began building websites for smaller local businesses, and even learned to help them work on branding, marketing, and translating that to their marketing presence both on and off the web.

Sometimes being a musician isn’t always financially rewarding, so throughout all of my years on the road I’ve continued to work on the web. This often meant staying up late after the shows, or updating content from the back of the tour van while we traveled between cities. At one point I was doing upwards of about 200 performances a year, but still managed to enjoy the challenge of meeting deadlines and completing projects.

Recently, I’ve been spending less time on the road, and more time at home working on some of my own web development projects. I’m currently working with HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, jQuery, PHP, experimenting with Python, and always enjoy trying something new.