Profiles

Cycling, personal development, nutrition, bodyweight exercise, graphic design, branding, advertising, Korean, PHP, WordPress, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, responsive web development, hand-drip coffee, Audible.com, Podcasts, following thought leaders, mentoring,

I majored in Computer Science in university but focused mostly on desktop application programming in Java and C++. I came to Korea in 2006 to teach English, make some money, pay off student loans, see the world, and NOT pursue a Java/C++ job.

In 2009, I started learning HTML/CSS and graphic design with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to try to pick up some extra work to earn money for my upcoming wedding.

In 2010 (after getting married), I got a university ESL job, started learning Moodle to build class websites with, built a few business sites in Joomla!, entered grad school for Media/Graphic Design, and turned on a WordPress.com blog for the first time. I used my WordPress blog to collect notes from my grad school studies, and over time found it to be the best CMS (preferable to both Moodle and Joomla!).

In 2012, I started transitioning all my sites to WordPress, and began digging into the code a bit, adding Custom Post Types, new Page Templates, and so on.

In 2014, I started getting more involved with WordPress development and learned how to write simple plugins. I released my first plugin on WordPress.org in October that year. At the same time, I started writing my own WordPress themes. I learned responsive web design techniques, how to integrate the Foundation Framework into my themes, and better coding and documentation practices.

In early 2016, I interviewed for a summer internship with WordPress VIP and passed through 4 levels of the process, but ultimately didn’t get the pick. Nevertheless, it was a good experience and encouraged me to keep learning and to again pursue a web development job (I’m tired of teaching ESL).

I’m currently still living in Korea (the same city I came to over a decade ago) for a number of reasons including: my wife (and family) is from here, the food is amazing, the culture, nature, and atmosphere are refreshing, the language is interesting, and I’m still fascinated by living abroad. I graduated at the top of my class (Advanced Achiever) from grad school (Media Design) in 2011 after a lackluster performance in my undergrad (Computer Science from 2000-20006). I’ve learned a lot since first coming to Korea, but the most valuable lessons are:

1. Your life is what you make it – don’t waste your opportunity to live the life you’ve always wanted
2. Just Keep Learning – learning is (and should be) a lifelong process of always striving for more and better
3. A strong work ethic and dedicated perseverance will ultimately beat amazing talent (without those things) in the long run (think tortoise and hare – I’m currently the tortoise, doggedly in pursuit of those hares)