Profile

Let the story begin...

At the end of 2000 I was working at a car dealership as a Volkswagen parts professional. I was a pretty good parts man, but I already knew that it was not my cup o' tea. During this time I had been learning Photoshop and realized that I loved designing and working on the computer. I began to do small jobs like posters and t-shirt designs and I was hooked. I enrolled myself at The Art Institute of Philadelphia taking night classes and it was there that I learned my love of coding and Flash. The rest is history. I stopped working at the car dealership and became a freelance designer and web developer.

These days I still love (and do) design but my code is really my art. I am a huge supporter of web standards and am constantly trying to find new ways to make my code cleaner and leaner. I have been doing CSS only layouts since late 2003 and have never looked back. My other passion is flash, I love to get my hands on a good flash project. Lately, I don't get to do as much flash as I would like since I work in a search engine friendly environment, but every now and then I get to flex some flash muscle and always take it as far as I can (in my allotted time).

When I am not working you will find me listening to music, playing my Wii, watching a movie with Brandi, or (I know, I’m a geek) back on my computer learning something new.

FAQ's

Why is this site called mantispirate?

It all started with an image. I made the image at the top right of this site and it made me laugh. Then I was purchasing some new web space and got a free name with the purchase. I figured, why not get mantispirate, its easy to remember and its not taken already. Thats my story. I know, not as exciting as you would have hoped.

What do you use to do your work?

Everything I do starts with Photoshop, Illustrator or both. I do all of my style sheets (CSS) by hand and most other coding in Dreamweaver. I only use Dreamweaver because it has some nice little features like automatically closing tags for you, which enables me to work a little faster. Sometimes I just use textpad to code, depends on the mood I'm in. For video I really like Final Cut Pro and of course Flash for Flash.

Do you do side work?

Most of the time my work keeps me pretty busy, so no, not really. I do occasionally do projects for my friends and family or if I can work out a good swap (work for work). That's about it these days, but thanks for asking.