Cheesy Quintessence

My name is William. I am 22 years and 6 days of age and currently reside on the planet known to many as Earth. I was homeschooled since the third grade, and am now a student at Temple College. Most of my learning is done on my own, and I spend a lot of time studying things that interest me.

My interests include programming, web design, graphics design, video games, and photography. I don't get around much; instead, I spend my free time chatting online and expanding my knowledge of anything computer-related. I have no interest in sports or similar activities.

Online, I am a member of the Zelda Classic community and run a Zelda Classic resource site of my own. I am also a network administrator of irc.initialized.org, the best IRC network that I have ever used.

I've found that I enjoy programming a lot. My favorite language is PHP, which I know extensively. My use of it goes beyond its common purpose of dynamic web site content, as I use it for things such as WildBillBot, my IRC bot, mathematical scripts, and other tasks that I could probably accomplish with shell scripts. I know many other languages, of course; here is a quick list of every programming or markup language I know at least enough of to do something useful:

• (X)HTML
• CSS
• WML
• JavaScript
• PHP
• Python
• MySQL

As I am majoring in Computer Science, I'll certainly be learning more programming languages in the future.

I liked to draw when I was younger. Since that time, I have learned that I cannot draw anything decent-looking. That has not stopped me from picking up the skills needed to manipulate images with Photoshop and The GIMP, though; I am an advanced user of both programs. However, as is the case with many things I attempt, I am, while being able to master the technical aspects, not the greatest pioneer of aesthetics.

I have been designing web pages since 2000. My start was quite rough, as I used Netscape 4's composer to build my pages. Of course, my ways have been meliorated greatly since that time. As an advocate of web standards, I ensure that all of my pages (both HTML and CSS) validate with the W3C's validation services.

You will find a list of all of the sites alive today that I played a role in the making of in the web design section.

If you would like to contact me, please do so via IRC on irc.initialized.org:6667, where I go by WildBill. Alternatively, you may try emailing me. I also use AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger, but contacting me using those protocols would be difficult due to the measures I must go through to prevent harassment.

The name of this site used to be totally unoriginal and creative, but now it's awesome. "Cheesy Quintessence" can be interpreted in multiple ways, of which some might have a touch of irony. According to WordNet...

cheesy: adj. of very poor quality

And according to Webster's 1913 Unabridged Dictionary...

quintessence: n. The most characteristic form or most perfect example of some type of object.

Depending on your tastes, the visual aspect of the design of this site is very cheesy. Perhaps this site is the perfect example of one with a cheesy visual design. However, I strive to make my markup quintessential. Thus, regardless of how cheesy the visual design may be, this site aims to be a quintessence among web sites.