My profile

I started designing web pages in 2003 almost as an accident. I was making jokes and playing around with my then roomate Zaheer, when of a sudden I popped the question “how do you make a website?” He started  by explaining how to make a page. As if it was yesterday, I remember him going through MS Frontpage with me that evening, and I never looked back ever since.  Much of what followed I learnt it by  myself. It was more of a hobby than a real career path.  Meanwhile I worked at other places, and somehow kept learning more about javascripting, php, . . .web programming!

My work Ethics.

I have worked in a variety of fields ranging from teaching primary school, technical support, first for Bell ExpressVu, and later for Hewlett Packard (HP) and webmastering.  While it’s true that I enjoy working with others in a team,  I also cherish the moments I spent alone concentrating on whatever I have at hand. In my work, I try to avoid being robotic to the best I can. I love thinking and using my brain because otherwise I am just a robot on a production line, and that probably explains why I love web design so much. It allows me to manipulate things around, see how they look, add or  remove things, . . . Usually when I set my mind to doing something with  a website, I do it. For instance, my learning of  server-side languges like php and asp came almost as result of allowing my mind to wonder. In 2005 when I was acquainted with enough  html,  an idea  came to my mind. Instead of creating pages and editing one by one, what if one created a huge table and each “field” in the table served to hold information for a particular section of the page. Of course I had to figure out how to make those “fields” correspond to particular sections of the pages. So, I set on to a journey to find a way to do that. Just a few minutes in the search I realized my idea was exactly what  server-side technology is all about. Php  struck me as the best language of choice  and that evening I created the first database connection, and a few queries. I was thrilled to realize my thinking was  aligned with that of the creators of server side  technology and this gave me a thrust forward. Before I start working I try to understand what I am doing.

Time delivery

“Do unto others as you would like them to do unto thee”.  I try to abide by this rule when I am working on others’ projects. As a freelancer, I try my best to understand that the sooner I can deliver a project the better the relationship with the provider.  However, I may take longer just to make sure everything is working according to the right expectations.  I keep in mind every aspect of the project at hand when I give a quote.  For instance, if I know your project would take me a week to deliver I would make sure it’s done within that period of time, and add a few  more days just to be sure. I adopted this simple strategy because I had a really unpleasant experience with one provider. He kept adding things we did not discuss at the beginning of the project, . . .