My name is John Atten, and I also have any number of accounts under the name XIV Solutions. I am fascinated by all things geek - programming, computers, the internet, and life in general. I am a self-taught student of programming and software development, and I spend way too much time and money pursuing this interest. My friends and familiy are concerned for my well-being.
The Beginning
My earliest exposure to programming was way back in the day (this would be the early eighties) when I wrote a little program in BASIC on a TRS-80 which solved quadratic equations. Why did I do this? because I hated algebra, hated math, and hated the quadratic formula. My genius thinking at the time was that I would not have to learn or practice quadratics if I could get the machine to do it for me. Ha ha ha. The joke was on me. While this would be a trivial excercise anymore (I made friends with math in later years), at the time it was quite the task, and in creating that silly few lines of code, I found that I had more than mastered the quadratic formula.
I am either fluent in, or actively learning:
- vb.net
- C#
- Java
- MS T-SQL
- ASP.NET MVC 3 (working on this NOW, as of Summer 2011)
- Objective-C + Cocoa Framework (haven't gotten very far on this one. Yet . . .).
I currently use the following development tools:
- Visual Studio 2010 Professional
- SQL Server 2008 R2 2008 Developer Edition
- MS Web Matrix
- Eclipse IDE (for Java and Android Development)
- XCode 4 (for iPhone/iPad Development - you must get this from the Apple App Store)
- A bunch of other utilities and stuff that I will likely discuss in future posts.
My other Passion - Music
My other passion is music. I play guitar, and have had music in my blood all my life. I played in a fairly successful band in Seattle during the early ‘90s. We played all over the Pacific Northwest, and released several albums. I currently own a Black Les Paul Custom with gold hardware, and a black on black Fender Stratocaster (a man must have diversity of tone). In the early nineties I designed, owned, and operarated a commercial audio recording studio with a friend of mine, and recorded and/or produced a number of great bands from the Seattle/Tacoma area. Currently, I create my own music at home using Propellerhead Reason + Record (a very, very nicely put together peice of software. These guys created a great UX, and the program is awesome. Go get it. Now.).
I currently live in Portland, Oregon in the United States.