About Robert Brodrecht

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Who are you?

Like I told someone once, I hate when people ask, who are you? When people ask that, they usually want to know your name. I'm not my name. I am not a unique identifier for your internal database. I'm more than that. So, what do you want to know, what is your name, or, who are you?

What is your name?

My name is Robert Brodrecht.

Ok, fine. Who are you? For real.

My essential nature: I am a problem solver. But I guess I'm more than that. I'm also an artist, a writer, a philosopher, a cynic (e.g. faultfinder), a rationalist, a theologian (in the -ology sense), an elitist, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I'm into computers, cars (especially electric cars and rotary powered cars), aggressive inline skating, building things, DIY, good design, good music, good books, good movies, and good conversation.

According to Tam, I am a typical capricorn, which, apparently, inclines me to believe that astrology is bullshit. I can't deny the latter part of that statement.

I am a web designer by profession. I currently deal with HTML 4.0, CSS 2, JavaScript (especially Ajax at the moment), and PHP 4 with MySQL. I am a standardista. However, I'm interested in learning a trade in the event that there is a shift in the World Wide Web that forces web designers into obsolescence.

What do you look like?

That's me in the header graphic. I'll post some more pictures eventually.

So, what's your story?

I was born in Birmingham, Alabama at Saint Vincent's Hospital and raised happily in Trussville, Alabama by both of my parents (with my younger sister, Anna). I attended school in the Hewitt-Trussville zone of the Jefferson County Board of Education, where I generally considered myself outside of the typical social order (though I may have ended up in the art / theatre / computer geek classification by the end of my senior year). Notable achievements at Hewitt-Trussville include (in 1999): artist laureate of the school magazine, cover designer / artist of the year book, lead in the school production of Dracula, a letter in Cross Country, and placing somewhere in the top 50 or less (GPA wise) of my class.

Aside: I guess it's important to note that sometime around 10th or 11th grade, Jeremy Logan introduced me to web design, which allowed me to take art to an entirely new medium. I spent countless all-nighters (often on school nights) redesigning my website. This is where my love affair with the web started.

My college career was spread across several colleges. I technically started college the summer before my senior year in high school at Birmingham Southern College in their Summer Scholar program. After I graduated high school, at my mom's request, I shipped off to UAH, where I spent a miserable year. UAH introduced me to many communications concepts in their web cognate, but I ultimately transferred to the University of Alabama to attempt to have a social life. A member of the Mallet Assembly, I graduated with a double major in Philosophy and Art Studio (with a concentration in Graphic Design), after completing my final course requirements for UA at UAB in the winter of 2003.

My work history is sparse. After high school, I started a short summer tenure at Trussville Utilities, returning the next year as a contract employee. The next summer, I fell into landscaping, working on a maintenance crew (cutting grass and pulling weeds). After that, I picked up odd web design jobs. Eventually, I ended up part-time bar tending at Birmingham Country Club. At the end of my college career, I landed a job at ACCi as their full-time web developer.

It seemed like fate that I got laid off at ACCi after eight months, right around the time I decided that it was imperative that I move to California. I'm still not sure I buy into fate, but I ended up in Hollywood, California two weeks after I was laid off. After an unsuccessful three months stint as a freelance web designer in California, I landed a job at ESN Media Group filling their need for a full time web designer, though I ended up delving into web development projects frequently, and moved north into the San Fernando Valley.

Nothing major happened. I made a living and lived. At first I rented a house, then got an apartment when I decided the house was too expensive. I made a couple of friends that enriched me, and met quite a few people who were interesting to know.

After three years in California and hundreds of liters of vodka later, I packed up my things in mid June of 2007 and headed back to Alabama to be closer to friends and family. California was great, but I felt like I was missing out on a lot back home. I secured a telecommuting position as a PHP developer at 9th Street Creative, based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama while I lived with my parents until I got my feet under me.

I spent seven months coding PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about business. I also put 10,000+ miles on my car while taking the daily commute to Tuscaloosa from Birmingham.

In January of 2008, I came to the conclusion that working in Tuscaloosa and living close to Birmingham wouldn't be feasible in the long term. I landed a job off Highway 280 near Mountain Brooke as the lead web designer at DataPerk. I finished up at 9th Street at the end of January and started DataPerk the 1st of February with the intent of settling down somewhere in the Homewood, Alabama area.

Now you are up to speed.

I'm not up to speed. You talked about a few people. Who's who?

I tend to mention names in my posts and I have regulars that drop by and post. I'll try to keep an updated list here (in alphabetical order by last name, even if I don't print their last name) of who these people are.

Bryan Allen: Bryan Allen is my comedic relief. I don't remember meeting Bryan. He just slowly faded into existence. Bryan has always been a bit of a recluse, and I wish he weren't. He blogs under his hiking site Bears Can Fly.
Tammy Bellisle: Tammy (aka TJ, Tammy Jo, Tizzazzimazizzy) is the feeling of eating Pop Rocks manifested in a person. Well, sometimes. If you want to check out Tammy's acting info, you can look at her website (that I made for her ;). If you want to get more info about her, you can visit her MySpace page.
Dale Campbell: Dale (aka Masonite, Mearl) is an ice skater, inline skater, ramp builder, risk taker, and Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. I met Dale when he opened Ramp 'N' Speed, Birmingham's first skate park. The skate park was my friend's and my hang out for better than five years. Dale has some great stories and coined the pickup line, My wife and I are separated... by 5,000 miles.
Daniel Cockrell: Daniel (aka D) is my friend since third grade and my roomie throughout my career at the University of Alabama. Daniel is a finance major and aspiring poker player, which, when I think about it, makes me want to tilt my head like a dog that just heard a weird sound.
Nick Jenkins: Nick (aka Nhik) was the reason I tried this blogging thing. Nick and I went to high school together and bonded over web design, photography, and God talk (done mostly in Mrs. Frost's office where he was supposed to be her aid and I was supposed to be in Photography I). Nick had a short musical career with a band called Strangers and Pilgrims, I think. Having decided to do that family thing early, Nick is now a proud father and dedicated husband. Ever fond of number sequences, Nick blogs at tentwelve.org.
Alex Justinger: Alex is a writer and film maker. I consider Alex to be my (former?) protoget. I met Alex on a Halloween night when he was sophomore in high school when we were both invited to Sloss Fright Furnace by a mutual friend. I didn't expect to see him again after that, but, luckily, he came back around and ended up being the facilitator of some great moments. If you want to read up on Alex, you can check out his film-ish blog or his personal-ish blog
Jeremy Logan: Jeremy (aka J, Fixedd) is my hetero life partner. I met J in 7th grade, then re-met him in 10th after he was put back into the public school system. We're into the same sorts of things, which facilitates for long and multifaceted discussions, typically with a bottle of vodka not too far away. His website is finally online but it seems mostly stagnant. You can read his blog at LiveJournal, though.
Erin Lee: Erin is a cute little red headed girl that will verbally kick your ass if you are on the opposite side of her political spectrum. Erin, like Alex, was one of those people that I didn't expect to stick around, but ended up being a major face in my life. She has a MySpace page, but i don't think she set up the friendly URL...
Paul McRae: Paul (aka Pauly Wall) is my favorite ex-Sonic manager. Paul appeared sometime while I was in high school, but I didn't really hang out with him until later. Paul lived with me for a few months in 2005. He used to have a LiveJournal blog, but he hasn't updated it in ages.
Moody: Moody (aka Moo, Craig) is one of those people that I don't remember not knowing. Moody is an anomaly and is thus very difficult to understand or explain without being around him. Uncharacteristically, Moody joined MySpace.
Nathan, My ex-Boss: Nathan was my boss at ESN Media Group. From what I hear, Nathan has been a radio DJ, a competitive skateboarder, a competitive gamer, and a web designer. Nathan was a pretty awesome boss and a cool guy.
Erin Poe: A poet once said, A good woman would pick you apart / A box full of suggestions for your possible heart / And you may be offended, and you may be afraid / But don't walk away, don't walk away. Erin and I have a relationship that, like all unstoppable objects, impresses itself upon everyone that comes in contact with it (for better or worse). Since I've been home, she's been that good woman, continually stripping me of layers and helping me build back something better. She will always hold my heart.
Kathryn Thomas: Kathryn (aka Kat) is a contemplative, independent woman that I had the pleasure of meeting almost a decade ago in Art I at Hewitt-Trussville High School. Kathryn, for whatever reason, has stuck around through thick and thin, which I am grateful for. If you want to know more, you can check out Kathryn's website.
Dan: Dan (aka d00ltaz) is a punny PHP programmer that I used to work with who runs Simply Zip Codes and Great Sayings. After knowing Dan twenty months, he officially exhausted all of his stories and inadvertently started retelling them. Dan likes to remain anonymous, so I'm not going to say any more about him.
jes5199: jes5199 (aka 52, Jesse) is Jeremy's friend from childhood. If I have a an uber-geek question (e.g. about RegEx), I hit him up. He stayed at my house once when he wanted to get away from some other guy he was staying with and J was gone for the night. My sister got REALLY pissed off at me because she thought I was a bad host when I went to sleep without doing some undisclosed thing. If you want to keep up with jes5199, you can read his blog.

Who are your favorite bands?

I'm into a lot of different styles of music. For the sake of being official, though, here are my top 10 favorite bands (in the order that I like them the day I wrote this):

In the past, Ani Difranco and Tori Amos would have appeared on that list. In recent years, Ani's sound has evolved into something that doesn't tickle my fancy (though I think she's getting back to her roots in her newest album) and I've not been motivated to pick up any of Tori's new stuff. The Smashing Pumpkins and Face to Face were pretty close to being on the list, too.

There are also quite a few bands that I dig that I think it's still too early to make a call on because they don't have many albums (or I haven't heard their newer stuff). Those are bands like Black Lab, Cursive, Evanescence, Interpol, She Wants Revenge, The Used, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more.

Likewise there are a few bands that I adored one album but everything else I've heard didn't stand up to the album I fell for. Those are bands like Fountains of Wayne, GodHead, Goldfinger, Orgy, The Marshes, Pitchshifter, and probably a few more. Rusted Root stands out because I like several releases, but they just keep getting worse and worse as they get away from their live sound.

That's enough name dropping.

Are you done yet?

Nope. I'm not done yet. The great thing about this is that I get to keep putting questions in your (figurative) mouth that I want to answer. The next few questions you are going to ask will be geeky questions about the website.

About Robertdot.org

What's the story with this site?

I started this site in 2003 (when I was still actively working on somethingHollow) in attempt to get in on this blog craze. I registered the domain in March 2003 as a play on Slashdot, then realized soon after that only geeks would get it and it was a bad domain to tell people.

What's your web address?
Robertdot dot org
There are two dots?
No... you spell the first one out.
R-O-B-E-R-T-P-E-R-I-
Forget it. I'll e-mail it to you later.

I bit the bullet and kept it anyway.

How'd you make it?

As I said, I'm a bit of an elitist and a bit of a perfectionist. When I started making web sites, I quickly learned that hand-coding HTML gave the most control. So, I code all my HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and back-end code in a text editor. Currently, Smultron is my editor of choice.

Of course, I use Photoshop for all the graphics. I developed the site on a MAMP server and host it (for now) at Delta Web Hosting.

Oh, and I use Smarty for my templates. I used to think it was stupid because the code output was crappy, but I've grown fond of it after realizing that it can be made to put out legible HTML.

What about web standards?

As usual, I do my best to meet web standards. I'm off the XHTML bandwagon for several reasons, and back on the HTML 4.01 Strict bandwagon. Well, the HTML 4.01 Strict should be XHTML ready, save for a few insignificant changes. The CSS Naked Day was a bit of a wake-up call (even though I was mostly good anyway). Now, I'm more explicitly concerned with good markup.

I've been on an accessibility kick, as well. I'm doing my best to make this site accessible. This is a difficult task because I don't browse the web on alternative devices. Further, I don't think many handicap / atypically-browsing people drop by my site to let me know how I'm doing. I do it anyway because I believe in the principles of accessibility. And because I'm an elitist.

What about accessibility?

This site is my first real adventure in accessibility. It's been in the back of my mind for a long time and I've made attempts on all my sites to be more accessible than if I didn't try at all. My goal for this site is Double A Compliant with the WCAG 1.0, with hopes to be Triple A Compliant. That said, I am fallible. If you notice something on this site that is not Triple A Compliant as specified in WCAG 1.0 and not accounted for while using my accessible stylesheet, let me know! I'll do my best to fix it or explain it away!

I made some additional notes about accessibility policy if you want to read about some of the finer features on Robertdot.

Dude! Your HTML is pretty!

Thanks! I do my best to output nice HTML. I was able to learn HTML by looking at other people's code. I figured I could return the favor by making my HTML legible to anyone who decided to view source. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, I am told.

Wow. Your archive is pretty big. What's up with that?

A long time ago (2001) in a far away land (Alabama), I started a site called somethingHollow. I wanted to use it to present important topics and have an outlet for discussion and thought. I kept it for two years before I finally gave up on it. It was my first foray into a discussion site. While it wasn't wildly successful, I was pretty proud of it.

somethingHollow also had a featured project called Alex's Movie Quotes (aka AMQ). This was an area for Alex Justinger to post movie quotes. After somethingHollow, I made AMQ it's own site and gave Alex the ability to post movie reviews.

So, a large portion of the archives comes from somethingHollow and AMQ. The rest are archives from various incarnations of Robertdot.

While I'm talking about the archive, I need to mention that the dates and times of posts might be a little off. I had only hosted my site at two places when I converted the archive back from HTML to mySQL: CrystalTech and Delta Web Hosting.

CrystalTech is located in Arizona. Fortunately, that means they are always GMT -7 because most of Arizona doesn't adhere to Daylight Savings Time. Unfortunately, I might have messed up on my adding every now and then, or I may have stored dates as GMT on any given version of a site and not made note of it.

Delta is located in Houston, Texas. Texas, like most states, does recognize Daylight Savings Time. So, some of the times might be off if I got the dates wrong that DST starts (GMT -5) or stops (GMT -6).

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that I spellchecked the archives as I went. I was getting tired of people finding my site for Alex's misspelling of words like woman and women. I also deleted some comment trash at my discretion and ended up leaivng out most of the open forum.

You are cool. I want to link to you!

Go for it. I only ask that you link to http://robertdot.org/ with the trailing slash if you are linking to my front page and always without www. It's a branding thing.

For Promotional Purposes

I just finished a site for Kane Fulton that I need indexed by the search engines.

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