About Matt
I am an avid diver, and love to take photos & video underwater. I’m also into electric bicycles and the outdoors. I commute to work almost every day on my eBike. I design and build my own eBikes, though I have owned one factory-built eBike for a short time (building your own is better). I enjoy web development, programming in Python & PHP, Data Analysis and Data Visualization, photography, graphic design, 3D modeling & CAD/CAM design. My computer of choice is a Mac—though I dabble in Linux too.
For the other geeks out there, my preferred text editor and IDE is NeoVim. My favorite editor font is Source Code Pro.
My favorite pastime is scuba diving.
As someone who has been scuba diving for several years, I can confidently say that it is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling hobbies I have ever taken up. The sense of adventure and the opportunity to explore the depths of the ocean are truly unparalleled. One of my favorite things about diving is the chance to see marine life up close and personal. I have been lucky enough to see a wide variety of creatures, from colorful fish and coral reefs to larger animals like sharks and sea turtles. Each dive is always a surprise and I never know what I might encounter. The beauty and diversity of the ocean never ceases to amaze me.
I also love building things.
I build my own eBikes, I also build my own mechanical keyboards. Taking things apart to fix or improve them is really rewarding for me.
The “Projects” area of my website is where I document new keyboard or ebike builds. I also post dive trip reports in this part of my site. My “Blog” area is were I write about smaller projects/jobs and other life events. For example, I may post a dive report over in Projects, and have a related blog post about some new personal achievement or experience I had on the trip. So be sure to click around when you come by to visit.
About the site
This is my personal website. I use it to blog about stuff I want to share and where I can talk about my interests and projects. It’s also my playground where I will test out the latest in web technologies and other fun (for me) design and development stuff.
I have had an issue with the idea of large social networks and how they do business. I understand they need to make a buck, but on these big social sites, you and I are the product and advertisers are the actual customers. The big social sites own whatever you share and can use it however they wish. They mine everything you do and then use that data they gather to sell advertising space to other people and businesses. I decided to start this site so that I can still share the stuff I want with the people who may want to see it—but I maintain ownership and control—not some big company.
Here’s how I built this site and the resources that inspired and instructed me in growing as a web developer.
Since all good creations start with a foundation, that’s where I’ll start too.
The foundation
This site is built using a static site generator called Jekyll, and is hosted on GitHub Pages.
The style
This site currently uses a lightly modified version of the Jekyll site theme Personal by the excellent designers at JekyllThemes. The theme is so good out of the box, that all I really had to do was modify the color palate and add my MG™ logo.
Get in touch
I’d love to hear from you! You can reach out to me directly by using the contact form here on the site. You can also follow my other online activity by following any of my social links in the footer.