I did not study computer science. I studied foreign languages — English and Japanese — at a hospitality and tourism college, and graduated in 2003 straight into a job making websites. Everything after that, I taught myself.
The web was a different place then. I have moved through web design, Flash, interactive campaigns, frontend development, product design, and increasingly the whole stack. The tools have been replaced several times over. How I think about making things has not changed much.
These days that mostly means Vue, Nuxt and Node.js, plus whatever a project actually needs — PostgreSQL, PHP, PostGIS, APIs, cloud services, AI-assisted development. I am curious about how things work, I like solving problems, and I enjoy turning an idea into something I can actually use.
I am not especially interested in picking a label. Designer, developer, engineer, product builder — they are all fine.
I make things.
2018 — 2019
In 2018 I left my job and did not look for another one. I spent the year on Japanese, and took the JLPT from N3 to N1 — two levels, up to the highest one, in twelve months. Most people would smooth a gap like that out of a CV. I would rather point at it. Everything else on this page is something I built; that year is the one time I bet a year of my career on being able to learn something. It also wasn't really a detour: I studied languages before I ever wrote code, and they still shape the things I make.
Graduated from foreign languages, went straight into making websites at LinkinEdge.
A music label. Web, interactive, Flash. Music has kept coming back ever since.
Blog UI design and campaigns, plus building the tools other people designed with.
Frontend for e-commerce, campaigns and interactive work. NBA Taiwan, Yahoo, BenQ, Thermos.
No job. Japanese, from N3 to N1.
Frontend for an AI pour-over coffee machine company — consumer and B2B sites.
The supplier management system — orders, messages, product listings. Sole frontend engineer in the team, alongside four backend engineers.
LiveTRA is nine years old. DroneMapTW checks itself daily. Three more things are in progress.
Some of what I am into has nothing to do with software. Some of it turned into software anyway.
Seven years of electronic keyboard as a kid. A music label in 2006. Then WebPiano, PitchTest, Drop The Beat — and the UI design for the Piano Angel app. Forty-six posts about it on my blog. The things I want to make keep turning out to be about music.
JLPT N1. Studied it before I studied anything technical. I translate song lyrics for fun and keep a vocabulary list of Japanese words for web engineers.
Currently learning, for no professional reason whatsoever.
I shoot film. Lomo, cross-processing, redscale, expired stock. I like the imperfections.
I like learning things, making things, and occasionally turning a curiosity into a product.
Have an idea, a problem, or something you wish existed? I'd like to hear about it.