About
About Me
I am a computer programmer currently employed by InsureMyTrip.com. I find the work interesting, rewarding, and not very stressful. I enjoy using Free and Open Source Software, programming, reading, cooking, wargaming, shooting, experimenting with new and interesting technologies, and general poking around to see how things work. I currently live in upstate New York with my wife and our three cats.
About This Site
This site is written in PHP, primarily for the use of the include directive, which allows me to include the various page layout elements (header, footer, menu, etc.). This ends up saving a lot of time. For example, when I add a page, I don't have to edit every other page to change the menu. All I have to do is add it to the menu generation code, and it will be added to all other pages.
The layout is accomplished using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). I found the following links useful in finding information and examples: I have attempted to utilize good design principles in the design of this website. This include (but are not limited to):- Easily readable text. Since a lot of this website is devoted to content, I attempted to choose colors that reduce eyestrain. I find that black on grey is easier on the eyes than black on white.
- Recognizeable links. I specifically left the links embedded in text in the standard "underlined" mode, so that colorblind folks can see the difference. I didn't leave them in the navigation menu, because I figured that people can figure out that the naviagation menus is a bunch of links.
- Reasonably scalable layout. People with poor vision should able to increase the font size large enough to make it readable. It seems scalable enough to me that if you have to make it large enough that the words overlap, then maybe it's time for a text to speech converter.
