Scott Williams
This is my website. A “portal” if you will.
From here you can get to know a little more about me. What kind of things I like to work on. What I do in my spare time. That weird thing I can do with my teeth. And some other stuff too.
From here you can get to know a little more about me. What kind of things I like to work on. What I do in my spare time. That weird thing I can do with my teeth. And some other stuff too.
My two favorite creative outlets are code and photography. Shootsy is the result of that. It's a web application for photographers that handles all boring, but necessary stuff.
At some point, I became self-aware and realized that I wasn't up to being a solo founder. So I hooked up with Mr. Carter De Angelis and we made some magic together. I've been able to concentrate on the backend and a bunch of fancypants JavaScript, and he's been able to turn out a stunning UI.
It is currently in a private beta, and will be launching Summer 2011.
The first “real” thing that I can remember programming was a Mechwarrior-esque game on the TI-83 calculator back in high school using the BASIC-like language. It was responsible for a lowered average grade in the Trig/Pre-calc class that year.
In college I got my first taste of web programming. I wrote some basic websites for a school district's HR department. Yes, they are terrible. No, you can't look at them.
Later on, I got more experience with software development. I've worked with some amazing people, and learned a great deal. I've even managed to release some cool things from time to time.
These days I work for a pretty rad consulting firm in Phoenix, AZ. We're a Gold Partner with Microsoft and deliver a fantastic level of expertise to different businesses.
I mostly use ASP.NET MVC, along with other things like the Entity Framework, WCF (preferably with JSON & REST), and lots of JavaScript.
On the side, I've grown in stature with Ruby on Rails. Shootsy was built with Rails 3, and tons of other libraries. I've also used a few Python based frameworks for various other things, have gotten pretty rusty with them.
I do have an account on Github. I have to admit that I prefer Mercurial's overall approach to source management, but I have to admit that Github is significantly awesome.
A man's got to have a hobby. For me, it's photography. My main photography website is over here. It is in dire need of a facelift.
I started to get serious about photography a few years ago. Back then, I fancied myself as more of a landscape and nature photographer, but have come to enjoy people and portraiture much more.
I shoot with Nikon cameras and lenses. I've also taken to the strobist way of doing lighting. Although, in recent times the constant cycle of recharging AA batteries has annoyed me, so I'm considering switching to something like AlienBees.
Managed Ministries is a non-profit startup making management software for churches. The pitch is this: software that churches use today is either ridiculously expensive, or terrible, or both. We aim to fix this.
I have written a little bit of code for them, and also served as a Technical Advisor.
Last year I finally got around to using TextMate, and once I figured a few things out, totally loved it.
However. There are few features that I really wished it had, so I started to look around. I landed on Vim, but since it had a steep learning curve, I figured that I should blog my progress as I learn my way around it.
I also have a personal blog. I update it every so often. Currently it resides on Posterous, but I'm considering super duper happy with it. Posterous itself is a fine platform, but I can't seem to get the posts to conform exactly to how I think they should look without some extra effort.
The Socially Networks
These days it seems impossible to avoid them. Some are pretty useful, and some are just for fun. I try to avoid the ones that have no point.
Twitter
swilliamsTwitter is where my random thoughts go. Sometimes I try to be funny, or poignant, or just link to stupid crap. If you follow me there, I'll send you $20.*
Facebook
scott.t.williamsFacebook is for friends and family. I likely won't “friend” you if I don't actually know you.
Flickr
swilliamsI need to do more on Flickr.
Forrst
swilliamsI am brand spanking new to Forrst. I plan on doing a little bit more stuff here soon.
Hacker News
swilliamsYeah, it's probably Slashdot 2.0 these days, but it is still on my list of sites to read everyday.
StackOverflow
swilliamsMy StackOverflow participation ebbs and flows. It is still an incredibly valuable resource, but I don't have the patience to really dig through and write a quality answer on most questions.
Pinboard
swilliamsEver since Delicious went the way of the buffalo, I hopped onto Pinboard. I don't really care about any kind of “social” aspects of bookmark sites, but if you do want to see what I've liked enough to save, look here.
Rdio
scott-williamsThis is where I get my music these days. I have yet encounter anyone I personally know on the site though, which is a bummer.