Codecatering is a page that serves two purposes. The first is to provide a portfolio that I can show to potential employers as an example of my work. The second is is to help sell the occasional web side job, that I hope to someday turn into a thriving consulting business.

Even among all these technologies the strongest of all our capabilities is integration. Integration of the best of unencumbered (freeware) tools and offerings from the open source community, most notably Linux and *BSD. You will see many areas of such integration in each of the areas listed.

The top four blue links show current Brainbench certifications. Click image for entire transcript

Many sites are now providing XML/RSS feeds so other sites can integrate sidebars with links to fresh content. The simple syntax of XML makes it painless to maintain content.

XML/XSL allows construction of website macros to ease construction of complex sites with tags featuring collapsible trees, drop down menus and email obfuscation all as simple XML tags which produce tightly integrated websites with XHTML,CSS and Javascript with integrated CGI/ODBC in Perl or C++.

The links page features and example of original XSL producing integrated HTML, CSS and Javascript featuring a collapsible folder structure

OS experience includes Windows 95/98/2000/XP as well as several varieties of Linux and BSD and Unix (SVR4) operating systems.

Applications experience is partially explained in the other ares of the site, I will concern myself here with experience in supporting and migrating MS Office.

This links page uses XML to describe the data for the folder structure used in this page. The XSL produces an HTML page designed to work with a custom CSS stylesheet and some javascript to provide very powerful web design 'macros' such as the tree macro used here.

The code works uniformly across IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari and even Opera. On Linux, Windows and Mac the pages all look and feel relatively the same.

I also enjoy analog electronics as a hobby, having built various amplifiers and radios. I solder well and am skilled in most phases of prototyping. I am thoroughly familiar with electronic devices digital and analog, design methods and construction from concept to PCB and user software for Windows/Linux.

We use OrCad/PSPICE here, along with a wide variety of freeware from the HAM radio community, and several PCB shops provide design software. We use a package called PCB123

Java is a language supported both within browsers and as a standalone language. It is often touted as being "cross platform", and for the most part has lived up to it's claim.

I am less proficient with Java as for example C, C++ or Perl but can design with and utilize it when it's the best choice for a design goal.

I also collect freeware applets to perform useful functions or to produce unusual visual effects for a web page.

Click to send mail via a freeware Applet

C++ or C is my first language of choice for many applications. Because of the lack of portability of VC++ code to Unix, I've integrated the freeware Borland Compiler with Bruce Wampler's VIDE and several other libraries to produce a "template program" to work with any hardware I may produce, reintegating inport() and outport() via driver in NT and up and via assembly level device IO in 98. I'm skilled at socket programming, and have integrated a debugging layer with modeless dialog into the above mess. Screenshots for the Microsoft and XWindows versions are shown.

Click to download a sample exe and try the template and socket IO but the sound blaster dialog uses direct IO and causes an error on NT, XP or 200*

I use the following: Cakewalk, GoldWave, Rebirth, Audio Compositor, MP3 Producer, AnalogX tag editor. I also play guitar.

Click for an example of original music produced using the suite of software outlined above

For Graphics I use PaintShop Pro 7, Gimp2, 3D Studio Max, Adobe Premier, Poser 4 (and friends), GIF Construction Set and Instant Engineer (CAD)

I can aslo find my way around Photoshop and AutoCad, but prefer the easier to use tools because of the better learning curve vs. producivity ratios. Since I use so much software on a daily basis, some advanced features are often overlooked or forgotten.

The graphics on this page were produced using many of the tools I've listed above.

I graduated Technical School for Electronics in 1980, about the time of the first Personal Computers. Because of their relatively small size, and my continuing interest in them, I understand their intricacies at a level that is very difficult for those now starting out to attain.

Over the years I have developed some relatively complex hardware, and written the software to work with it. As examples I hand built the device ("chip") programmer shown under electronics and burned its' own firmware on it. Other examples are magstripe reader interface, printer port driven sound device, printer port keypad interfaces and much more.

My first site was on the internet in 1993, several years before it became commonplace and several years even before AOL offered internet access. Since then I have worked with TCP/IP and am thouroghly familiar with most protocols, many of them with a detailed ones and zeros understanding of their inner workings, including layers, routing and stateful firewalls.

I've worked with some Cisco and Livingston routers and firewalls and most recently implemented an OpenBSD based firewall allowing VPN access using OpenVPN and X509 based public key authentication using easily available USB thumb drives to facilitate secure access for "road warriors". Linksys wireless setup experience.

This is the first site I worked on in XML/XSL. I added the IFRAME support to work with the graphic with the bottom border. I also authored the PERL CGI form handlers for the contact links at the bottom.

The CGI is somewhat unusual as it's HTML output uses an empty META refresh to cause an unload event which either returns the user to the incomplete form or automatically closes the window after briefly prompting them for missing fields or briefly thanking them for their submission, if javascript is enabled.

Click to visit site

This is the sister site using the same XSL. Optional GET encoded data appended to the URL allows the start page to be vectored to previously referenced content

For this site, I also produced the background to work with a logo from Rockstar Design. I didnt modify the CSS much for these sites, I would have made more use of classes for the block element positioning. I did what was necessary with javascript and XSL to get the existing site working with IFRAME support.

Click to visit site.