A Little About Me

In short, I’m a web designer living in Ontario, Canada (just outside of Toronto). I’ve mostly been doing freelance work since mid-2005, working out of a cozy office in my home, which I share with my beautiful wife of 7 years, and our two daughters (three and thirteen).

I started blogging in July ’04, which is when I first dove into WordPress. In fall of ’05, I launched a redesign as part of the now defunct CSS Reboot, which gained me entry into the (then prestigious) design galleries. Shortly after, I was accepted into the 9rules network; a collection of hand-picked blogs from around the world, which helped to further expose this here site of mine.

But it wasn’t until Microsoft adopted Firefox’s RSS feed icon in December ’05, when I really got noticed. Basically, I skipped work one morning to re-create the icon in vector, told everyone that we should all jump on board now that the two biggest browser developers were sporting this unified icon, and the world seemed to agree that it was a good idea.

All this attention brought loads of traffic my way. Plenty of which translated into freelance work, and relationships with people who I’ve never even sat down and had a beer with, from all corners of the globe.

Brief Job History

After completing my first year of Multi-Media Design at Durham College, I felt that “higher education” wasn’t going to get me where I felt I needed to go, so I began my first real job search. I ending up landing a job at ‘The Nation’s Music Station‘, MuchMusic. For 2 years I co-hosted a weekly internet pop culture show under the monicker MuchMatt 2.0. I was later bumped up in the ranks to a senior position and continued to work in the Queen St. window until July of 2005.

Mid-July ’05, I moved on and joined the Participatory Culture Foundation, where I spent approximately 8 months managing their many sites and working on the open source internet television platform, Miro (formerly Democracy TV).

From March ’06 until now, I’ve worked as a freelance web designer from the comfort of my home office. There was a year there, when I stopped taking client work and joined a start-up design firm, assuming the role of Lead Web Developer. It didn’t take long for me to realize just how good I had it; working with people I felt some form of connection with, on projects I was genuinely interested in. I jumped back to freelance work, and haven’t looked back. Well, maybe once or twice.

“Yeah! Wooo! Bring it on, sucka! This is my kinda shit!”

I’ve been pretty big into video games for, well, since I received a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas in ’86. I got out of gaming for most of the 90s, while I was busy riding skateboards and playing in bands. I picked the habit back up in the early 2000s, but the focus was on PC gaming. A couple months after its release, I picked up an Xbox 360 and never looked back. I also have a PlayStation 3 and a Wii, but spend most of my gaming time on my Xbox 360. On the casual side, I’ve played my fair share of games on my iPhone and iPad.

“When I’ve got the music, I’ve got a place to go”

Over the years, I’ve played in a number of bands. Most notably, a ska-punk band called Lucky Number Seven from 1997-2002. I was, and still am super tight with the other guys in the band. LNS is responsible for some of my fondest memories and I met so many great people playing shows around the Country. I truly miss it.

Though I don’t spend much time behind my drum kit these days, music still plays a huge role in my life. iTunes is always up and running while I’m at my desk, which is 8-10 hours per day. Needless to say, my play count on Last.fm is up there.