Introduction As WebFreek is primarily a blog, I will be writing this in the first person voice. I share the following information with the goal of providing some context for the rest of the site, so do with that what you will. This is not intended to be a professional portfolio.
Early Life This will be the short section, as it is the least relevant to the how and why of WebFreek. My mother taught mathematics and my father worked in the computer industry in multiple roles. My grandfather taught computer science at a local college. Between these and many other role models, my interest in computers, science, and engineering grew strong from an early age.
Academics By the time I had grown old enough to attend college, I had become determined to pursue a career in electrical engineering. I attended Iowa State University, and became active in a number of extracurricular engineering groups during my time there. After Iowa State, I ended up shifting my focus to a career in healthcare, and I eventually obtained a degree in nursing at the University of Iowa. This, however, is a story for a different website.
Engineering Hobbies and Interests These days, I spend the majority of my free time designing and building small electronics. Emphasis on the design part - I have become fascinated with the human elements of electronics design and the psychological factors that influence what is and isn't a good interface. My electronics CAD tool of choice is KiCAD, due in part to the fact that it is free and open-source. Most of my hobby projects are relatively mundane sensor boards based on the ATSAMD21 or RP2040 series of microcontrollers, but I also enjoy designing analog gear including amateur radio equipment. In addition to these projects, I have been working on a theatrical lighting controls platform I'm calling LXmicro. More on this to come in the future.
Amateur Radio First licensed in 2013, my interest in amateur radio began not as an interest in communications, but as an interest in repairing and building transmitters. This interest soon flourished into a full-blown love of all things ham radio, however. I now spend a great deal of time tuning around the HF bands making QSOs, and whenever possible I love to go portable and play radio in the woods. My callsign is W0PRN.
WebFreek.net Although I have made a few small websites in the past, WebFreek.net is my most recent and most likely to stay up long-term. This is the result of messing around with self-hosting, experiments with running a homelab, and assorted other server fun. My goal is to maintain WebFreek as an ultra-low bandwidth blog, but also as a sandbox to play with web design and web server platforms. Please feel free to contact me with your feedback about the site.