the raison d'être of this design
Minimalism is not a blank white page eating 5 megabytes of your data plan, heating your device, wasting your battery, harming the environment, and taking years to download.
Minimalism is all the information you want, instantly.
The page you are looking at transferred 100 kilobytes to your device. This entire site could be zipped up and fit on a floppy disk. Nothing is "minified". You can look at the source.
When a potential customer visits your website, what do they want more: to find the price of your widget; the hours of your business; the contact number for your sales team?
Or to watch your JavaScript animations load?
New technologies are fun, but I value practicality. User experience matters more than showing off, more so now in a time when businesses are understandably worried about being left behind in an AI arms race.
my skills
Want something shareable? Download the pdf résumé.
what I think I'm best at
Python React Web Accessibility Tech Strategy Mentorship "DevOps"
longer list of technologies I have used to solve a problem or complete a project
- Languages
- Ruby, Python, Bash, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, C++, Ada, Visual Basic, Java, Scala, Haskell
- Frameworks
- Django, Rails, React, Vue, Spring, Drupal
- Markup & Formating
- HTML5, CSS, XML, JSON, YAML
- OSs
- Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Slackware, QubesOS, Arch, Android, Puppy, Alpine
- IDEs & Editors
- vim, VSCode, Atom, Eclipse
- Build Tools
- sbt, npm, Make, g++, gradle, rake
- CI/CD
- Artifactory, Drone, Jenkins, SonarQube, CircleCI, Apache Airflow, GitLab runners
- Cloud Providers
- OVH, Linode, ScaleWay, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Provider (GCP), Microsoft Azure
- Virtual Machine & Containerization
- Vagrant, Docker, kubernetes, Citrix Xen, Xen Orchestra
- Configuration Management
- CFEngine, Ansible, Terraform
- Linux Tools
- logrotate, rsync, cron, gpg, logical volume management (LVM), netstat, nmap, grep, find, curl, jq, dd, ...
- Networking
- pfsense, HAProxy, Bind9, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, FTP, NFS
- Database
- MySQL, SQLite, Percona XtraBackup, Cassandra
- Indexing
- ElasticSearch, SphinxSearch
- Mailman, Exim, Postfix
- Service Discovery
- Consul
- Hosting
- Apache, NGINX
- Have Hosted
- MediaWiki, Request Tracker, Open Journal Systems (OJS), Hashicorp Vault, OpenEdx
- Logging & Monitoring
- Icinga2, Sensu, Prometheus, Kibana, Grafana, PagerDuty, New Relic, FluentD
- Documentation
- Markdown, LaTeX, Wiki
- Video, Audio, & Design
- Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape, Terragen, Sony Vegas Pro, Audacity
Ask about any of these in a job interview! 😀
about me
I sing in the shower. I like spiders. I'll eat carrots but I prefer broccoli.
I got my first computer when I was five. I went to college for computer science. I interned in data science engineering for a global retailer. I did system administration for a top 1,000 (by web traffic) site for three years.
I built online educational platforms for some of the most well-known universities in the world, working fully remote on a globally distributed team.
I rewrote legacy HTML markup into ADA compliant React.js for one of the biggest banks in America.
In my latest job, I made a website where cities, counties, tribes, and states can request government domain names. I also helped create a website where Americans can pay taxes online for free.
In past lives, I have variously done: paralegal work in state and federal cases; IT work in the national office of a political organization; crisis line operation; and bad poetry.
talks I've given
Intro to Systems Administration at Code & Supply, 2017
My Laptop's Little Cloud, QubeOS at Code & Supply, 2018
A Contributor's Journey with Xavier at Open edX Conference, 2019