What I'm doing
What I'm learning
What I'm listening to
Scraped every hour from my Last.fm feed
- Hair of the Dog | Sweet Caroline
- The Smiths | Cemetery Gates
- Cat Power | Love & Communication
- Jack Johnson | Rodeo Clowns
- The Strokes | The Way It Is
- Elliott Smith | Wouldn't Mama Be Proud
- Van Morrison | Who Drove The Red Sports Car
- Paul Simon | The Obvious Child
- CAKE | Mexico
- The Stooges | Dirt (take 5)
About your host
I am a journalist and Web developer based in Houston, Texas. By day, I work as the computer-assisted reporting specialist for the Houston Chronicle, where I use databases, computer programming and statistics to do investigative journalism. By night, I develop dynamic news applications, lately using Python and Django.
Professional
Before I joined the Chronicle in September 2006, I worked for nearly two years as a data analyst for the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. I also did freelance CAR work for a number of organizations, from The Boston Globe to the Virginia Public Access Project.
In early 2006, I started working as a developer (not designer) for several local news sites. My most significant projects to date, Vox Magazine and the Columbia Missourian, are part of a four-site redevelopment effort by the Missouri School of Journalism that we hope to finish by late 2007. I've been working lately as part of a three-man band, with Ryan Swarts on design and Brian Hamman running the show.
Personal
I grew up in St. Louis Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, and have lived and worked in more than a half-dozen cities since. I graduated from University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
I believe strongly in technology's power to reveal and disseminate new information. My language of choice is Python. When I'm not working, you can usually find me reading non-fiction, following baseball, playing guitar or surfing the Web.
About this site
History: This is the second iteration of car-chase.net, which was born from the now-defunct chasedavis.net. Chasedavis.net was built mostly by hand, using ASP and Dreamweaver, long before I knew what I was doing. Car-chase.net first launched about two years ago and ran on Wordpress, which I found too inflexible. This iteration was built from scratch to overcome that flaw. I can't say I'm happy with everything, but I hope the freedom to change and expand will make this site last a while nonetheless.
Design: I am not a designer and I probably never will be. As such, the design of this site was heavily influenced by geniuses like Jeff Croft, Wilson Miner, Khoi Vinh and Nathan Borror. I wrote most of the code on my own (although I copied bits and pieces), and I'm happy to say that, as of its launch, all structural code validated XHTML 1.0 Strict.
Backend: The backend is written in Python (2.4) and Django (0.95), including all the whiz-bang gadgets running behind the scenes. I made several changes to the Django source, mainly to expand the comments framework. Where possible, most data interchange is done in JSON, as opposed to XML.
Tools: This site was created on two Linux boxes: my server, running Debian, and my laptop, running Ubuntu. All code was written using vi. The databases are mySQL and the Web server is Apache. Among the various apps I used that others might find useful: dp.SyntaxHighlighter, tinyMCE, Akismet and the Hiveware Enkoder. Last but not least, artists like Billy Bragg and Uncle Tupelo helped pass the time.
