“Who’s that twenty-something fellow who does the interwebs sites” people often ask. I’m not sure who but some do.
I’m Neil Sweeney, aka WolfieZero; that twenty-something fellow that designs and builds websites; but that’s not just it, I also have a lot more going for me than a pretty front-end.
Currently I live with my wife, Kerrie (often referred to as The Girlie), in the south of England.
I’m very much into video games, rocking all the consoles as much as possible, but mainly working through my massive backlog of games I’ve got. I used to blog on a few gaming sites and had one myself, but got annoyed at the world of journalism and thus quit.
Absolutely love listening to music; into punk, metal, rock, rap, classical and everything that makes my ass wiggle. Interesting fact; I still buy CDs and will always over any other digital distributed format because you cannot beat the sound quality of a CD.
Also have an enjoyment for snowboarding and photography; hoping to mix the two together soon.
Working with Web
I first started building websites back in 1998 before I really had a chance to browse the web. I was 12 and had been at second-form school for 6 months but my form tutor was in the processes of changing subject specialization (from History to IT) and he wanted to practice his teaching on a student; he happened to pick me and decided to teach me HTML.
From looking at my first page of HTML I got hooked and make a number of websites for our school intranet service, first one being a video game review site. I carried on making sites of various types for various people and carried on in education till this day.
I work for a small international company in Hampshire developing an number of high-profile sites – my first job that I got having left University the week previous.
I now work for Fubra developing on the WordPress platform, focusing on front-end development and UX research.
My focus is on front-end work; building and maintaining HTML, CSS and JavaScript aspects of sites as well focusing on semantics and SEO. I do dabble heavily in PHP and MySQL working with APIs, MVC frameworks and home-made/from-scratch scripts.
Tools of the Trade
- HTML5 & XHTML Strict
- CSS 2-3
- Javascript & jQuery
- XML
- LAMP development (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP)
- WordPress
- Aptana
- Sublime Text 2
- Transmit
- Photoshop
Animals
Kerrie and I love animals and have taken a real love for rodents. A sandy boy gerbil named Looshkin and also a Chinchilla (Homo Beige) called Roxie. We had 3 other geribls but they have died and are missed greatly, which is silly to say about gerbils, but they where great fun. Roxie the Chinchilla very cool and intersting pet but a lot of work, one I shall write about as it’s not really a pet that should be bought from a pet shop but one that is seriously thought about.
Hoping to expand our pets once we buy our next property and have a couple of dogs, cats and possibly Degus! But for the time being we volenteer at a wildlife rescue centre, Hart Wildlife. If you live anywhere and love animals I suggest you get involved, it’s great if a little smelly!