Web Developer and Vinyl Enthusiast
Greater Seattle Area
- Current
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- Web Development Engineer at Amazon.com
- Past
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- Mega Extreme Web Developer at Digital Railroad
- Web Developer at ImageKind, Inc.
- Male ballet dancer at Pacific Northwest Ballet
- Software Developer at POP!
- Web Developer at X-BAR
- Web Developer at Bear Creek Web
- Proprietor at John Simons
- Web Developer at SoftwareMedia.com
- Software Developer at Cat Daddy Games
- Education
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- University of Washington
- Western Washington University
- Kent-Meridian High School
- Recommended
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5 people have recommended John Porter - Connections
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109
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
John Porter Simons’s Summary
Client-focused web developer with seven years experience building web pages and applications, with especially deep knowledge of client-server interaction (HTTP, CGI, AJAX), presentation (HTML, CSS, images), and behavior (JavaScript, DOM).
John Porter Simons’s Specialties:
ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, SQL, AJAX, HTML*, JavaScript*, CSS*, XML, XSLT, Python*, Twisted, Orbited, HTTP 1.1*, jQuery*, Prototype, Photoshop*, Fireworks . . . . . . * I actually invented this technology, and implanted it into the so-called inventor's mind by way of a lucid dream-vision sometime in the mid-seventies.
John Porter Simons’s Experience
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Web Development Engineer
Amazon.com
(Public Company; AMZN; Internet industry)
June 2008 — Present (1 year 6 months)
When I'm not writing JavaScript or Perl Mason or Python or Ruby or CSS, I can usually be found listening to my deskside turntable, or up on the 40th floor of the Columbia Center, at Starbucks, trying to order bizarre things like a "Double Tall Happy Meal" or a "Nonfat Alligator Machiatto (two pumps of alligator)".
Some things I wrote or had a significant hand in developing:
Greasemonkey scripts
Popover (DIV overlay) library, used across all of Amazon.com (with alpha PNGs even in IE6)
Throttling proxy server written in Twisted Python
Many JavaScript components, including drag and drop table columns, image magnifier, slideshow, slider controls, ajax form posting
Prototyped all sorts of concepts using JavaScript and Rails
Mac geekery such as a Phone Tool dashboard widget and contributions to the Amazon TextMate bundle
More about that throttling proxy server: This is a bandwidth-throttling forward proxy, which means you set your browser's http proxy to point to it, and it restricts your bandwidth to some specified bits per second. Twisted has nothing like this out-of-the-box (stopProducing/resumeProducing being totally useless in my estimation), and it fairly accurately reproduces modem-speed page load experience. There are some Amazon-specific elements to it, but the main guts are probably something I should open-source. -
Mega Extreme Web Developer
Digital Railroad
(Privately Held; Photography industry)
August 2006 — February 2008 (1 year 7 months)
The usual ASPX, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XSLT kinda stuff, plus more recently, Ruby on Rails. I came into this role with expert level knowledge of the front-end aspects of .NET, i.e. getting web controls to play nice with web standards, as well as world-class CSS skills. I mean I'm one of the first official entries in the CSS Zen Garden for god's sakes. One important thing I think I've learned here is JavaScript. So many web devs (myself included) assume they basically know it already because they studied computer science and they already know C++ and Java, but that's just not the case. It's a really powerful and interesting language, but you have to actually spend some time to learn it. If someone claims to know JavaScript just ask them how variable scoping works... it's nothing like C and if they don't know they haven't learned JavaScript yet.
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Web Developer
ImageKind, Inc.
(Internet industry)
February 2006 — July 2006 (6 months)
ASP.NET, SQL Server, AJAX. Kelly Smith is a righteous dude, but the company just wasn't a good fit for me. I wrote their Frame Shop, an interactive feature for choosing print size, frame, and matting. It was a lot of fun because it involved server-side image compositing (to scale) as well as ajax. It's served as a good demo in various job interviews.
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Male ballet dancer
Pacific Northwest Ballet
(Non-Profit; 51-200 employees; Performing Arts industry)
November 2005 — December 2005 (2 months)
I don't want to talk about it.
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Software Developer
POP!
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
July 2005 — October 2005 (4 months)
ASP.NET, Tessitura, left to pursue a career in ballet.
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Web Developer
X-BAR
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
April 2005 — July 2005 (4 months)
ASP.NET, CSS, JavaScript. Yet another place I've worked in Pioneer Square. I wonder what Paul Hanson is up to?
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Web Developer
Bear Creek Web
(Internet industry)
March 2004 — March 2005 (1 year 1 month)
ASP.NET. This is where I learned ASP.NET, thanks to Kevin Mayer for giving me the opportunity to jump into a brand new (to me) technology. I also discovered that working from home sucks, it's lonely and depressing, so I moved on. I also did some "web production" work, i.e. "here's a Word doc and Photoshop comp, make it a webpage." That kind of work would have been so much easier if I'd had MangleBracket back then. That's right, MangleBracket. Check it out at manglebracket.com.
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Proprietor
John Simons
(Internet industry)
2002 — 2005 (3 years )
This is just my freelance stuff, so I could link to a couple people like Megan Finaly (it requires a company name). I also did a few odd sites like wanp.org, coloradosteelsash.com, lightek.com, and got accepted into the Css Zen Garden (http://csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/018/018.css&page=22) and got published in a CSS book by Apress: http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=159059231X
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Web Developer
SoftwareMedia.com
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
June 2003 — September 2003 (4 months)
PHP, MySQL. This was my "pre .net" web development phase, when I hated Microsoft and would only use open source. I still hate Microsoft of course, but ASP.NET ain't so bad. All I really remember about this summer job was that I made $12 an hour, and the boss drove a cool black Lexus IS-300 and his brother smoked a lot of weed.
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Software Developer
Cat Daddy Games
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)
May 1999 — December 2002 (3 years 8 months)
C++, DirectX, Visual Studio 6. This is where I learned to program, straight up. Pat Wilkinson was the shit. Harley too, he bought me a skateboard when I was working on Skateboard Park Tycoon. If you go out and buy a copy of "Snowboard Park Tycoon," it has my voice in there as one of the characters, and Mac named one of the tricks after me. He called it the "Dirty Simons." Once I get my Mac bootcamped I can play all those old games again, for old times sake.
John Porter Simons’s Education
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University of Washington
B.S. , Computer engineering , 1998 — 2001
I started out at Western, and transferred down to UW for a better caliber of technical degree. I originally intended to do EE but got into the Computer Engineering program which at the time was highly competitive. I think I had a 4.0 average at UW my first year. But I'll always consider Western my home school. Those three years in Bellingham were possibly the best years of my life. Seattle's U-District is a harsh and desolate place which I hope I never see again.
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Western Washington University
1995 — 1998
Bellingham was really fun in those years, living on campus and on 1011-A Indian Street. Watching Death Cab for Cutie take off while the Rev Hydra went nowhere. Hosting web pages on the school servers (I still remember my home folder was ~9543391).
- Activities and Societies:
- Wrote and published one edition of a lampoon newspaper, called the "Western Daily Informant." Now a highly sought-after collector's item.
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Kent-Meridian High School
Wrote and published five issues of a lampoon newspaper, called the "Royal Barrel."
Additional Information
John Porter Simons’s Websites:
John Porter Simons’s Interests:
As my subheading suggests, I like vinyl records. But in a more general sense, I like analog sound, which comes from -- among other places -- the people you talk to. My home stereo uses vacuum tubes for amplification, and in spite of my profession as a computer programmer, I firmly believe the world would be a better place if the transistor had never been invented. Also, my DJ name is "DJ Nat Mangle." It's a geeky Linux Netfilter reference.
John Porter Simons’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- new ventures
- expertise requests
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- reference requests
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