Wild Beard

Hey! I'm Press. I like turning pretty pictures into code.

How I Work

I'm a frontend developer who enjoys translating designs into pixel-perfect websites and components. On top of that, it's a joy to create websites and tools anyone can use and enjoy. I like looking at something and saying "We did that and I was a part of it."
Lately, I've found myself doing a lot of development for growth teams. It wasn't something I knew I wanted to do until I fell headfirst into it. I enjoy helping product, marketing, and design teams increase conversion through better page performance, A/B testing, and better UI/UX patterns.

Speaking of UI/UX patterns I know it is a bit ironic that my site isn't an example of good UI/UX. This is somewhat intentional. I wanted a place where I didn't have to worry about converion rates, super-optimized readability, or any of those metrics (outside of lighthouse 100s!).

What I Work With

I've worked with a lot more web technologies than I'd like to admit. I've written backend code in ASP, ASP.NET, .Net, and PHP. On the frontend I started with vanilla JS and jQuery. From there, I've dabbled in Knockout and React before settling on Vue. After bouncing around I finally decided to settle on the my holy trinity: Laravel, Vue, and TailwindCSS. Despite convience of TailwindCSS, I absolutely love writing with Sass.

During my time as a dev, I've bounced between editors. I started school with Notepad++, moved to Brackets, Atom, and settled on VSCode. However, when a bug with Vetur was causing significant memory and cpu usage (crippling my laptop!) I swapped to Neovim. It needs no introduction but there's nothing better than those sweet, sweet, vim motions. As a bonus, I'm a bit more efficient when SSH'ing into servers!

How I Unwind

While not working you can usually find me spending time with my better half, playing games, working on project cars, or doing something outdoors. I also try and maintain a healthy amount of incomplete projects (*ahem* cars) to keep myself busy when I have free time.

Cars

22 Tacoma 6MT: This is my go-to truck and daily driver. While it's mostly a grocery getter it does serve a bigger purpose. From snow travel to logging and taking us up and over mountain tops and into the wilderness.

'93 F150: This was my grandfather's farm truck. I've spent more time in this truck's bed as a kid going fishing and helping out around the farm than I have spent driving it. It's beat up and not pretty but it runs and it made the trip from OK. to CO. during the heat of summer.

'95 240sx: Arguably the worst lawn ornament I own. It doesn't run, the trunk doesn't latch, and there's a spare motor in the passenger seat. What started out as a high school project has become the "I'll get to it someday" project.

Games

  • Valheim It's like Minecraft but with Vikings and better in every way.
  • 7DTD This game is beyond scuffed. But it's fun.
  • V-Rising Vampires & Gothic Castles. Need I say more?
  • Battlebit Remastered This is what Battlefield would look like if EA cared.
  • New World There's no better David & Goliath story. Except AGS is both David and Goliath.
  • A Godot Game I've always wanted to make a game and now's my chance. I've been learning the Godot game engine in my spare time and tinkering with some concepts on pen & paper.