kirsle.net/www/about.html

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{% block title %}About Me{% endblock %}
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<h1>About Me</h1>

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			<img src="/static/photos/ff7ec4f5.jpg" width="256" height="256" alt="Kirsle" class="portrait"><p>

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						<img src="/static/icons/aim.gif" width="16" height="15" alt="AIM">
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						<strong>AIM:</strong>
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						<a href="aim:goim?ScreenName=Kirsle">Kirsle</a>
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						<img src="/static/icons/skype.png" width="16" height="!6" alt="Skype">
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						<strong>Skype:</strong>
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						<a href="skype:kirsle?chat">Kirsle</a>
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						<img src="/static/icons/xmpp.gif" width="16" height="16" alt="XMPP">
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						<strong>XMPP:</strong>
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						kirsle@kirsle.net
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			&#0164; <a href="/contact">Send me an e-mail</a>
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			<h2>Hello world!</h2>

			My name is <strong>Noah</strong> and this is my website. I am a software engineer who lives in
			Los Angeles. My areas of expertise are primarily in Perl and Python back-end
			software development, however I believe I have a knack for the front end as well.<p>

			I built Kirsle.net from the ground up. Its back-end code has been rewritten a
		   	dozen different times, in two different languages. I made the web design in Photoshop and
			pieced it together using standards compliant HTML 5 (the spec, not the
			buzzword), CSS and a little bit of JavaScript. The back end is entirely written
			in Python. The previous version of Kirsle.net was written in Perl and ran on my
			"PerlSiikir" CMS. I rewrote it in Python
			<a href="/blog/entry/goodbye-perlsiikir">for various reasons</a>, and I like Python
			more these days anyway. <img src="/static/smileys/tango/wink.png" alt=";)"><p>

			Besides being a rockstar at back end development and a pretty decent web designer,
			I've dabbled in some 3D modeling, Flash animation and other artistic things.
			You can find them under the "Creativity" section on the left navigation. :)<p>

			Some of my personal projects are listed under the "Software" section to your
			left. The rest you'll find on my
			<a href="https://github.com/kirsle">GitHub page</a> and
			<a href="http://search.cpan.org/~kirsle">CPAN profile</a>.

			<h2>Kirsle?</h2>

			Where did I come up with the name Kirsle? Long-ish story, but here's the cliffnotes:

			<ul>
				<li>In 1997 when the Internet was still brand new, They didn't want us
					using our real names online so I always went by one screen name or
					another.</li>
				<li>The game <em>NiGHTS: Into Dreams...</em> for the Sega Saturn had an
					enemy on some levels named Kircle, and I liked the name but I read
					it as though the "C" were pronounced like an "S". Nonetheless, it
					became my screen name.</li>
				<li>People often pronounced it with a hard "C". The last straw was when
					I discovered that Text-to-Speech software also pronounced it this way.</li>
				<li>I re-spelled it as Kirsle so it was spelled how I wanted it to be
					pronounced.</li>
				<li>In doing so, I created the most unique name ever. All of the Google
					search results for Kirsle are about me!</li>
			</ul>

			Later on I turned Kirsle into a full Internet alias/fake name of
			Casey Kirsle, which I used as my name for several years online (some of
			my older Perl modules on CPAN are signed by this name). <em>That</em> was
			mostly because I like the name Casey, and Kirsle could plausibly sound like
			a last name. <img src="/static/smileys/tango/wink.png" alt=";)"><p>

			<h2>Kirsle.net is Open Source</h2>

			The Python code that powers Kirsle.net is an open source project of mine named
			<a href="http://rophako.kirsle.net/">Rophako</a>. It means "Website" in
			<a href="/wizards/translator.html">Azulian</a>. The Rophako CMS is open source
			software that I released under the GNU General Public License and you can
			<a href="https://github.com/kirsle/rophako">clone it on GitHub</a>. The HTML
			files for Kirsle.net are <a href="https://github.com/kirsle/kirsle.net">also
			on GitHub</a>, but those probably aren't very interesting to you.<p>

			The CMS supports a web blog, photo albums, comments, and subscriptions to comments
			(so that your guests can watch a comment thread for future posts by others). I'm
			always improving it and adding new features.
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