I'm Just a Geek

For an art guy, I'm pretty geeky. I have this love for computers that my wife thinks is kinda scary. Not only do I work with one for my job, I have configured my home computer as my personal entertainment center. We watch TV, movies and listen to music all on the computer. It sends reminders to my cell phone, plans out my day and allows me to call friends all around the world using VOIP. That may not be astounding to some, but I really do consider our computer a member of the family. Yeah, I'm pretty much a dork.

I say this because this is the first post in this new blog and anyone who is familiar with the blogger formats will see that the interface has been customized. I figured out a way to edit the code to make the page seem at least a little bit like it was tailored to our company. Again, probably not an amazing feat for some of the hardcore nerds out there, but for someone who has no training on writing or reading computer code, I'm pretty damn proud of myself. The funny thing is when it comes to building the backend of a website, I haven't got a clue. But, for some reason, I know how to read code and figure out how to hijack it, tweak it and turn it into something new.

In college, I took on computer programming as a major and failed miserably because the teachers couldn't speak English. So I persued the arts instead. However, my love for the tech side of things never seemed to wane. Many times, I was called on to install a network, fix a software problem, I even built a company website straight from raw code when websites were just starting to make their way onto the commerical landscape. This was very cool stuff for me. I later got arrested for hacking that same website, but we'll save that for another discussion.

I guess I've always been a technical tinkerer. Some people have their '79 Trans Am. I have PHP. It doesn't seem very creative on the outside, but like any puzzle it helps work the brain in new ways and gets the creative juices flowing. The more I tinker on the web, the more I find I can produce successful design projects. A lot of design professionals out there seem to resist the technical side of what we do. I love it. Crafting a great logo design one day and then figuring out how to code a survey form into a website another day is what makes this job so versatile. Does anyone else embrace their inner geek?

©2007 David Scott | Cosmic