ABOUT
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Information drives the world. It is the main force in every aspect of everyone's every day life and that is no exaggeration. I love working with every aspect of information, there is no other way to be on the threshold of life than to be responsible for the well being of information. This site is where all my interests converge: Information Processing/Presentation (Programming & Web Application Development) Information Storage (Databases) Information Transfer (Data Networking) Information Security (Systems Administration/Security & Information Assurance)
The Beginning
I first began experimenting with web development back in the 9th grade. I found a HTML tutorial online and started my first website at Geocities. My buddy David was also interested in web development and we both continuously expanded and developed our sites and web development skills. David's current web page is Dave's Zone. After many incarnations this is my current web page.
Where in the world?
I was born and raised in the Washington D.C. metro area. For college I relocated north to the greater Rochester, NY area. Currently I live and work in the heart of Silicon Valley in California.
Education
I am a Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Alum. In spring 2006 I received a Bachelors of Science degree in Information Technology from RIT. My fields of study were: Database, Systems Administration/security, and Web Application Development. Following my undergraduate degree, I enrolled in the masters program at RIT to gain a Masters in Information Technology in which I focused on network and systems security. I received my Masters degree in spring 2007.
My four fields of study are very closely related. The diagram below shows the fields I have interest in and what major skills I have aquired in each.
Research Interests
Directory Services, Service Oriented Architecture
Hobbies
I enjoy most extreme sports: Skiing, Mountain Biking, and Paintball being my favorites. I always like spending time outside, hiking, archery or just hanging out in the woods somewhere. I have been into photography for a number of years now. I used to shoot mainly black and white 35mm but I have recently switched to an all digital setup. I like shooting landscapes of bridges, skylines, and natural formations as well as macro images of various objects. I like playing video games in my free time. The older "classic" 2D games remain some of my favorites although I like the cutting edge games as well. My favorite game of all time is Lunar: Silver Star Story followed very closely by The Legend of Zelda for the NES (AKA The Greatest Zelda Game EVER).
About This Page
I have been asked what software I use for my web page, blog, forums, etc. The answer is none. I code everything from scratch utilizing a LAMP (Linux, Apache, mySql, PHP) architecture. My main website was coded first. It features a poll module that can be administered through a private administrative section, an RSS feed reader that utilizes custom Perl scripts I wrote which will scrape the RSS off a page and assemble it on my page in the proper format, efforts are made to stay XHTML compliant while from time to time the pages need to be updated to validate again. My weblog is a separate system I coded in ASP using Microsoft Access as a back end. The purpose of the blog system was to make something useful while I taught myself how to code in ASP. Later I ported the weblog over to LAMP which is the system that exists today. My forums began as a class project but I hope to find some time to continue to update the system. The forums are also a separate system from the rest of the site.