Are you wondering about the "women behind the curtain" (to use both a classic movie reference from The Wizard of Oz and an allusion to my work as a performer)? Are you curious about the technology this site is built on or the sources of my inspiration? Read on!

The Woman

The daughter of two English teachers, I grew up in a family that valued education above just about everything else. My parents raised my three brothers and I to be lifelong learners, "Renaissance men" (and woman), and to engage the world with open minds. For that, I am humbly grateful.

In this spirit, each sibling is an artist. My oldest brother is a musician. The second oldest brother is a stage actor, director, and film critic. The next oldest brother is a studio artist and teaches ballroom dance. And I am, of course, a dancer. I do modern, jazz, tap, ballroom, and more. Between the four of us, we pretty much have the art world covered.

To find out more about my life as a dancer and performing arts professional, you can visit my profile on LiveSV.

The Work

Currently this site is running off of pure, hand-coded XHTML 1.0 and CSS3 markup. My current thrust is semantic, responsive, mobile first websites. I'm proud to say that this site currently passes the W3C's mobileOK checker. (We'll see if I can maintain such a high level as my site grows in complexity and flare!) My sites are hosted by ICDSoft.

Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict Valid CSS! W3C's mobileOK Conformance Checker

I have also created sites in HTML5. Specifically, OtherLife Art is crafted using both HTML5 and CSS3.

HTML5 Powered with CSS3 / Styling, and Semantics

The Wonder

I have many, many sources of inspiration, which I will discuss in more detail elsewhere. Here I will just highlight a few important sources.

First off, my mobile web "kick" really kicked into high gear when I saw this slideshow by Bryan Rieger. The slideshow and his accompanying article on the subject made two things clear to me: 1.) Mobile web development isn't just about developing sites for people with $400 smartphones, it's actually a tool for accessibility, which made it more relavent to me; and 2.) I could actually start designing mobile sites with the skills that I already possessed without too much aggravation. Thanks Bryan!

Followed closely on the heels of Bryan's slideshow, I attended a fabulous presentation on Mobile First web design by Luke Wroblewski at Silicon Valley Code Camp. It was a revelation. Add to that Ethan Marcotte's compelling case for responsive web design, and I was all in.

Another great source is Nonprofit Tech 2.0. Again, thank you for making my work relevant! For ten years I was convinced that my love of web design and development would never turn into anything more than a hobby for me. However, with nonprofit organizations utilizing the web and social media like never before, I was finally able to turn my interest into a passion.