My web design work has ranged from simple CMS setup-and-gos all the way to fully customized, blank-canvas sites built from the ground up.

As an example, one build was an artist's website featuring a custom, securely-authenticated user dashboard where the artist entered performance date details and had them appear on their "Calendar" page in their desired format. This was accomplished with CRUD operations using a combination of PHP and MySQL on the server side, along with standard HTML/Sass/JS on the client side.

Former company clients include JazzInAustin, RMT Music, AJC Jazz, the Chris Jackson Law Firm, the Jackson & Aguirre Law Firm, and Glass Elephant Productions, with additional individual client builds along the way.

It's hard to be a web developer, a UI/UX professional, or even a tools engineer without doing at least a little graphic design along the way, and I've had plenty of chances to flex my creative muscles in that arena.

My specialty is vector art, and my favorite program for that, bar none, is the wonderful open source product Inkscape. My other favorite go-to digital illustration program is Savage Interactive's Procreate, a practically-indispensable tool on the iPad. Of course, the Adobe Creative Suite and Illustrator have been mainstays in that area, too.

Along with graphic design, and in conjunction with many of my clients' websites, came branding work: everything from brand and site color schemas to logo art, with a bit of photography peppered in as well.

Once, at a contract insurance gig, I was given the tedious task of data entry for thousands of clients and accounts. Our workflow was well-defined, if a bit archaic: enter numbers, tab over a few times, enter more numbers, click an icon, pick up the next work item, and so on. I thought, <insert infomercial announcer voice> "There's got to be a better way!"

Enter AutoHotKey, the fantastic automation scripting language and application. It was my first exposure to the Microsoft COM interface, and uses a lot of the same elements and conventions that I'd later find in the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) UI framework for developing C# applications.

My tooling and automation work has included custom data parsing utilities for use by a human operator, fully automated document and data processors and uploaders, and complex GUI-driven utilities for accessing user applications and executing custom scripts at the press of a hotkey.

UI/UX often feels like the big brother to all my other disciplines; I find myself returning to its core principles day-to-day, whether I'm building a GUI or writing documentation. Ultimately, nearly all software is about some end user: an actual human in front of some monitor, hoping that their experience with the program on their screen will be a good one.

Keeping that actual human in mind has been a core part of my approach to nearly everything I've created. Make it understandable. Make it intuitive. Make it beautiful. Make that other person feel a little smarter because they opened up your application. It might seem a little in-the-clouds, but to me, that's as down-to-earth as it gets.

Good UI/UX starts with good wireframing, mockups, and interviews, and it keeps that end user in sight at all times. Gathering feedback, creating an actionable plan from it, and refining that end product into something people will love is one of the great joys I get from all my coding, design, and documentation pursuits.

Remember the screen that popped up when your NES cartridge wasn't properly seated? That jumbled mess of text, numbers, and random pieces of game sprites? That screen is probably the reason I'm in tech at all—and it's where my love for games, computers, and how they talk actually began.

My first forays into any game design began with things like Mario Paint, but it took off when I found the Game Maker platform (the O.G.; pre-YoYo Games!). From there, it was a cascade into Unity, Godot, and even trying my hand at coding games from the ground up in a few languages. Most of those old prototypes are gone, but some of the JavaScript snippets live on (see the Projects section).

These days, I'm thrilled to be working day to day in Unity and continuing my studies across a variety of languages and tools surrounding game design.

Whether you're talking about a tool, a language, an app, or even just a process, documentation is often the way those complex ideas become truly useful. I've been fortunate to work with and learn from some fantastic documentation sets (Unity and MDN jump to mind). Even the more obtuse docs (looking at you PHP) have a lot to teach about user experience, information architecture, and more.

Much of my formal documentation work has been in DocFX and Markdown, and has centered around C#, Unity, JavaScript, and general API communication, but a love for informative pedantry knows no bounds! I make efforts to document my own projects well, especially when there are tweakable parameters for end users, and I'm always on the lookout for documentation projects to make contributions where I can.

These days, learning code is all about self-study! It comes in so many forms that it can be hard to put down on paper (or screen), but I've had the chance to study a wide array of languages and systems over the years, and I've been fortunate to learn from some fantastic mentors and colleagues.

I also love to teach folks coding, and I'll always encourage people to try their hand at it. It's not necessarily easy, but it's almost always easier than people think. It just takes a bit of time and a bit of will (and possibly copious amounts of caffeine).

Here are a few resources that helped me (and continue to do so!):

• LeetCode Daily ProblemsDaily (and more frequent) coding and programming problems
• MDN: Mozilla Developer NetworkThe gold-standard reference for front-end web developers
• Eloquent JavaScriptA wonderful, comprehensive walkthrough of the JavaScript language (and coding in general)
• NodeSchoolA fantastic learning resource for Node and JavaScript
• javascript.info/"The Modern JavaScript Tutorial"
• Learn to Code HTML & CSSShay Howe's "Learn to Code HTML & CSS"
• HackDesign LessonsWeekly lessons on design from a number of perspectives
• Unity LearnThe best resource around for learning today's industry standard game development platform
• The Nature of CodeFrom the Introduction section: "I want to take a look at phenomena that naturally occur in the physical world and figure out how to write code to simulate them."
• The 12 PrinciplesA beautiful website on the twelve principles of graphic design
• moz.com/learn/seo/seo-cheat-sheetThe Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
• ExploringJSJavaScript books for programmers
• ExpressJS Crash CourseTraversy Media's fantastic video on the ExpressJS framework
• Laws of UX- A collection of best practices that designers can consider when building user interfaces
• Game Programming PatternsAn incredible series of lessons on programming patterns in games and ways to avoid common pitfalls in programming
• Microsoft's Learn C#Microsoft's own learning platform for C#
• CodecademyA fantastic interactive learning platform for a variety of coding languages
• PluralSight + CodeSchoolAnother wonderful interactive code learning platform from the original CodeSchool site
• Khan AcademyAnother great learning resource for those brand-new to computer programming, and Khan Academy offers study in a wide variety of subjects beyond computers as well!
• FreeCodeCampA fantastic, highly-community-oriented code learning platform featuring learning pathways in a number of popular languages