Welcome to my portfolio

A little back story

My story as a web designer bagan about 8 years ago, in a time when I knew nothing about computers other than email and Microsoft Word for homework assignments (I was a liberal arts major at SCCC at the time). That all changed after I tore a ligament in my leg while playing softball and lost my new job and had nothing better to do but surf the internet for the next six months till the swelling in my leg was low enough for me to bend it so I could get out of the house again.

One day, I happened to stumble upon free webhosting, and once I figured out what that was, I realized that websites weren't magic and anyone could put something on the internet. This completely changed the way I looked at my computer and I became obsessed with the idea of having my own website; having nothing better to do because of my injury made that really easy.

How I learned to code

I didn't use any tutorials, nor did I have a means of assistance from others while learning HTML. My first websites were white pages with paragraphs and a few basic tags that I didn't understand, I just knew they worked. Eventually, I figured out that I could right-click on any website and click on the 'View Source' button to see the HTML of that website. It made no sense to me, but after obsessively staring at the source of other websites (mostly yahoo) for as long as I did, I started to see patterns. This led to me slowly building my vocabulary and allowing me to make my first real websites.

However, it wasn't until I discovered CSS, which I learned the same way I learned HTML, that web design became more than just an interest, it became a hobby. Before that I began to use a service called Synthasite (now Yola) wich took care of the hosting, styling and graphics for me, I just structured it the way I wanted it to. Once I realized I could do it all myself, I could finally start building sites from scratch with more flexibility to be creative.

My first real websites were mostly gaming websites, where I would embed flash games into pages and write descriptions about them. But there was a much easier way of doing the exact same thing using PHP. There are many PHP scripts for flash game websites. I used one called AvArcade which was one of the better free ones. Again, I knew nothing about PHP, but with enough persistence I found myself creating my first website which I designed myself in a free photo editor called GIMP. this is what it looked like.

My first freelance gig

Flash forward a few years and I know AvArcade (now AvArcade Pro, which isn't free) inside and out. I was a biology major a Stony Brook at the time and wasn't serious about becoming a web developer; it was still just a hobby to me. But, people were asking me to create websites for them, and I was broke so it seemed like a great way to make some extra money. I started a web design company called CyanoGraphics where I designed websites in photoshop, coded them and sold them at my store, cyanographics.com (which is currently under construction). Below are a few sample products that I sold.


Starting from scratch

I didn't work all throughout my career as a biology major, because I made plenty of money doing freelance work. However, once I got my bachelors I decided to scrap my company and focus all my attention to finding a good job. Two years later and the best I could do was an interview for a cage cleaning job which I somehow didn't get after all three interviews. At that point I knew that it wasn't worth persuing anymore and finally decided to turn my hobby into a career, which i regret not doing from the beginning. So, here I am.