About Me
Profile
Name: Jose L. Blas
Age:30
Birthday: May, 21st
Uni: University of Brighton.
Recent Books:
“The inmates are running the assylum”, Alan Cooper.
“Information Architecture, for the WWW”, Rosenfeld&Morville.
“Universal Principles of Design”, Lidwell, Hidden & Butler.
“Emotional Design”, Donald Norman.
I read these book as part of the course. “Siddharta”, “The alchemist” and “Brave New World” are among those that have change my life as many others of my generation. I really enjoy reading a good book, I might talk more about books in this blog in the future.
Skills: Graphic, Web, and Interface design, Usability testing, research investigation, Programming (XHTML and CSS, Java, Javascript, PHP, Actionscript), Project Management.
Favorite Applications: Apple OS X (yes, the whole OS), iWork (Keynote and Pages), Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Flash, BBedit (text-editor), I also use many open-source applications (firefox, OpenOffice, cyberduck…)
Favorite Quote: “If you can make 60 seconds of happiness out of a desperate minutes, yours is the kingdom, you are my son”, or something like this, I think it was Ruyard Kipling who said it.
My story…in recent years.
I’m a 30 years old student of Computer Games Development. I live in Brighton, UK. After moving here almost 4 years ago from the south east of Spain, Murcia, where I originally came from.
I had all sort of jobs before and since I came to England. Now I am building this new company based on freelance work and talent as well as finishing my studies. I would like to move forward with this two projects in mind for the next year.
I have some experience in the computer world. My first computer was an Amstrad 2086, a PC with a 086x processor, no HDD and an external 5.25in disk drive. This was in 1986 and Microsoft was releasing their Windows 3.x Operating System. I remember trying to install it in a friends computer, it wouldn’t work.
I learn GW-Basic at school, it was a beginners course and I didn’t go further with my programming skills at this stage, I was sort of a sports boy. The project I presented at the end of the course was a golf game based in the characters “I” and “o” in a blank screen. The game was really simple but it won me an “A”.
After this I have many computers, I remember specially my first Mac, an iMac DV2000. I have three generations of iMacs (DV2000, 15″ flat screen, and Intel Core Duo 2 24″). I also have own a few PC’s, running different MS Operating Systems (I owned a workstation, dual processor and 3D graphic card around 6 years ago).
Between 1999 and 2002 I developed some skills on Digital Video Editing and 3D. I worked for JoinyVision, a company that offered gigs and shows with VJ’s and spectacular visuals. I also collaborated in the foundation of a new company called Sinestesia, with Raul Selles. He was, and still is a big inspiration for me. Unfortunately for me, by this time I wasn’t in the right frame of mind and I had some adjustments to do to improve my life.
After leaving the night-life (the first step) I worked for a while with Imayhem.com, a job that definitely changed my life. Imayhem is an Internet company which dedicates to offer a wide variety of services, from programming to graphic design, corporative multimedia services and more. I worked for them in the Sales Department, by this stage I must recognise my knowledge of the IT industry was null. This was a beautiful chance to learn from the industry inside, and I am so glad it was with them, they are very intelligent and fantastic people.
After this I decided to fly over the channel and I arrived to Brighton in October 2003. I always tell the story, I arrived to Brighton station with £5 left in my pocket. I owed much to Jaled (SharpStylus). He provide me everything I needed until I was able to work, earn some money and move somewhere else. The first 2 years in England I moved from one house to another (8 times), I spent a year in London and I had as many different jobs as different rooms.
I come back to Brighton after my year in London and then the most wonderful thing happen, I met Lara, my fiancé. Lara’s been my inspiration since then, actually she’s been my everything and she knows I owe her everything I have now.
Finally I landed in the University of Brighton. I found this course on Computer Games Development. The thing that attracted me the most was that it didn’t require any qualifications. Since I had never study English before this was a very easy way to access Higher Education, the experience has been working really well for me.
I have now finished the first year and so far, it has been very in very inspiring. I have learned a lot, above else all, about Usability, Interaction Design and Project Management. It curious that none of this subject was a module by itself, I suppose I just picked what I wanted, I did enough to pass on everything else. I don’t think this is an appropriate approach, but this is what happened.
I am looking forward to the future, which certainly will bring new projects and new things to learn, None Interaction and me will be there…
Thanks!
