Greetings, Earthlings

MDCrawford · Apr 12th, 2008, 16:29

The name on my website is Michael David Crawford, but you can call me Mike.

I discovered Webforumz by searching Google for sites where I could ask for critiques of my website. You're in the top ten! I'll be posting my request in the free critique forum after I post this. I expect that I'll eventually become a paying member.

I live in Sunnyvale, California, where I work on Mac OS X device drivers for hardware RAID cards.

I've been a software engineer for over twenty years. I've worked on many platforms, but the Mac most of all - I used to be a "Debug Meister" when I was in the System Software group at Apple Computer.

I learned about web design the hard way, by creating a website for my old software consulting company. It's come a long way since its original quite half-baked design.

I also stumbled onto some search engine optimization techniques - quite by accident. I had the idea that publishing technical articles on my site would attract potential clients. That worked very well, but more important in the long run was that many who read my articles gave them links, thereby boosting my search engine position. The result is that my resume is now the top hit at google for software consultant; for a while I had the top two spots.

I'm working on a career change: for several years I've been studying piano intensively. When I can pass the entrance audition, I plan to enroll in music school to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies someday!

The site I will ask you to criticize has my music, as well as much of my writing, art and photography. The site was neglected for many years while I focussed on my consulting business, but with my plan to make a career of music, I have been working very hard to improve it, having just rolled out a new design to all sixty-eight of its hand-coded pages.

And I plan to redesign it all over again, after it has been critiqued. I already have several revisions planned. But when I do so, I'll implement my navigation with Server Side Includes, rather than copying-and-pasting them into every single page.

I look forward to my time here.

-- Mike