Shan-Dysigns

Male

Texas, USA, Earth

Technology:
Graphic Design (club posters, corporate identity/branding, vinyl record labels, various media/product packaging), Web Design & Development (jQuery, PHP), Audio Mixing (stage/club/dance performance, random competition), Video Editing (media conversion, various video projects)

Domestic:
Carpentry (rough & finish), Cooking, Painting, Writing

My education spans three different colleges where I studied T.V./Radio Production, Audio Engineering, and various Computer Science courses.

My first computer was a used IBM from my father’s office and contained two 5.25” floppy disk drives (I believe they were called bays back then). I used that computer in high school while I learned the programming language BASIC during my first Computer Science class. I quickly advanced to a Tandy model the following year as I became fascinated with computers during the days of Bulletin Boards, Windows 3.1, and when AOL was my IP. I grew up as part of the Atari generation where the local arcade was my second home. I can still remember riding my broken down Huffy bike with pockets weighing me down filled with pounds and pounds of quarters and the first day I reached the 9th key level of Pac-Man. My days of the arcade died out when Nintendo hit the market. I became addicted to that punk-ass Mario and his creepy group of characters. I still love playing console games, but I am more interested in the computer point-n-click adventure games like the Myst series. I guess one could say I am a modern-day geek (if there is such a term these days). I don't mind geeking out occasionally when I am surrounded by other computer enthusiasts. Working from home can create a lot of distance between the social scene and whatever friends I have left. I am a very technical-minded individual, so maintaining friendships with non-technical people is pretty taxing because most of my friends don’t have a clue as to what I speak most of the time. Maybe I am creating this profile in an attempt to find more like-minded, technical people.

I am ready for the challenge to build my first computer! I know this is embarrassing to admit, but since I know it has nothing to do with my level of education or quality of work, I don’t mind sharing that I am still working off of a 2004 Dell Dimensions XPS Gen 4 computer running Windows XP (as I cringe from the apparent laughter and pointing of fingers). Can you imagine how hard it is to work in Photoshop with only 3GB of RAM (and that’s not even how much is available to Photoshop)? Considering my computer’s shortcomings, I can still manage to spit out some pretty detailed posters (I just have to wait forever to render effects). I have procrastinated buying/building a new computer for over 6 years because “the latest technology” was always just around the corner. I decided it’s time to spoil myself with this new build, so when I begin to list the details of my ideal setup, I can only imagine the comments of “that’s overkill” or “that isn’t necessary.” I have researched consistently for the last 2 months, so I can say with confidence that many of my decisions are along the lines of the “because I can” mantra. I’m here to learn what I don’t already know, but I’m not going to be too interested in conversations that don’t advance the topic (I hope that makes sense).

Freelance Digital Media Design