About Me

Hi there! Thanks for reading my blog.

As far as I can see there are several motivations for people to start a blog and conquer a private spot on the world-wide-web. I have had blogs before, mostly for the amusement of myself, friends and family. But as an IT professional and one with many interests… I decided to start this one with the ambition and hope to provide good resources, tutorials and share my work with anyone interested.

Ok all nice and well… but maybe I should introduce myself first…

I am a Dutchie but moved to Oz.

I am a graphics freelancer and IT professional. I recently worked as a web designer / developer for a SEO company in Sydney, and have held that position for over 7 years. I have been working in IT for over 15 years, over 8 years as a system developer for Microsoft platforms and environments and another 7 as web developer, mostly using WordPress as CMS. I have significant experience in all aspects of the development life-cycle such as functional design, technical design, development and testing of information systems. I develop applications for both windows as well as web in C# using Microsoft .Net technology. I am skilled in developing database programs in SQL Server and working on my certification for Business Intelligence Developer (MCITP).

So that covers the professional side… On the personal side… I embrace open source. I so much appreciate the hard work talented and enthusiastic developers put into creating tools and programs that often can compete with commercially available software. I try-out lots of software to see if it meets my requirements and how it can be used in my personal projects. That includes the use of MySQL as well as experimenting with other programming languages. And I am a fanatic Inkscape user. I am still considering to participate in its development, but for now I limit myself to writing Inkscape beginner tutorials.

What projects?

I am not really sure if I should call my efforts projects.. but it seems a good denominator to group them with, the alternative would be ‘hobbies’, but what’s in a name? I want this site to reflect the activities that currently hold my interest.

• Coding, coding, coding… Doing the same thing for many years makes one lazy. So I am pushing some boundaries and I am getting out of my comfort zone. I will be looking more at node.js and I supported Azat Mardan on Kickstarter for open-sourcing the 2nd edition of his book ‘Practical Node.js’. I also need to look a bit closer at my preferred workflow. Nowadays I use VVV on Vagrant for local WP Development, there are many tools available that I still ignore.
• Creative Flow. Not really sure how to list this here.. it i s not really a project but more an interest. A couple of years back I started to make daily sketches to relax and explore drawing with natural media. And I loved it. I did some simple courses and got hooked on SkillShare. Lots of talented people out there sharing their skills. Some people are super inspiring and encouraging and I am proud to be part of that community. And I have take some community courses on print design / screen printing. Love to work with real media!
• 2D graphic design. Many years experimenting with 2D graphics applications (vectors, natural painting and photo manipulation) have taught me many skills. I use 2D graphics to brighten up websites, create textures for my 3D objects, clean or enhance photographs, and whatever else. I have learned many tricks as many tips and tutorials are widely available on the world-wide-web. So I am planning to share my resources as well as full project tutorials I created myself on this site. If I link to tutorials on the web it will be because I think they are exceptional, not to fill my page. My toolkit includes several commercial packages, but also freely available programs like Paint.Net, XnView, InkScape, Gimp, MapZone, Project Dogwaffle (version 1.2 is freeware!), ArtRage (the starter edition is free!). Did I mention Inkscape? It is currently my absolute favorite. I so need to update this list and revisit all these programs. I still use Inkscape, Project Dogwaffle and also Twisted Brush, and found some cool experimental programs like Alchemy and Verve. And of course I use Photoshop commercially as required too.
• 3D graphic design. I have been toying with 3D applications for many years, but so far it has been toying. Time to put some effort into that and while I refresh my basic skills I hope to provide some nice how-to’s on this site. Think about Blender and DAZ Studio, tho I use some commercial programs too. I guess my toying stayed with toying as I put most of this a bit in the fridge.
• Template Design UX/UI. As a web developer in a major IT company, it is not needed to have any skills in website design as ‘that is what the graphic design and usability group does’. Fortunately I have had some degrees of freedom, and as graphics design has my interest .. template design for me is just an extension of other skills.
• Photography. I love to go out there (the big wide world) with my Nikon D50 and find interesting places, situations, people to freeze frame forever. I do not claim to be a particular good photographer, but I am an enthusiastic one. My dad taught me to use a camera when I was about 10 years old and I learned how to do old fashioned photo laboratory work by the age of 12. Of course nowadays I use digital techniques to modify and enhance my pictures, and those I consider good enough for display will be shared with you.

So why should you check back?

There are thousands of websites that provide similar information, so I feel already fortunate that you decided to visit my site – and apparently are still reading it *smiles* For the time being there may not be too much content yet.. but please check back as I promise to add new things every now and then.