about the author
May 2, 2008
if you’re expecting some sort of clever autobiography here, you’re not going to get it. i’m just going to tell you the facts. the facts that you need to know in order to understand how i get to where i am today.
most people call me by james, but the people that really know me call me by boogie. that’s the name i’ve always gone by since birth thanks to my grandfather who assigned it to me for some odd reason. people ask me all the time why i go by boogie. i don’t really know. all i know is that if you say “boogie”, you will catch my attention.
i attended montgomery high school which was pretty much flooded with the bad types. gangsters. heavy drug users. bullies. i’ve had to learn to survive during my first 2 1/2 years at that school and it’s corresponding middle school which was just as bad. in order to survive, i had to adapt. i was one of three students who first obtained a cd-burner. at the time, warez (illegally-downloaded programs, music and movies) was just starting to spread. there was an underground organization of illegal selling of cds to students, friends and even teachers. my good friend, eric, sold the music and movies. i sold games and music. for a time, it was good. if you wanted something, you either came to me or you went to the other two guys. that little $100 cd-burner made me hundreds of dollars and gave me the exposure i needed to survive in such a high school.
throughout those years, i’ve met many great friends. i’ve also made many terrible enemies. those terrible enemies have caused me to lose some pretty good friends, friends that also became enemies. those people created many websites about me. they teased me. mocked me. spread rumors and lies about me. even some of my best friends to this day once laughed at those websites that mocked me. the things i’ve learned to do with code is what i used to get back at people that teased me. and it’s gotten me into trouble. many, many times. on the upside, my early involvement with programming and code has allowed me to develop my critical thinking skills. i began to think like a programmer.
towards the end of my sophomore year, i caught a break. just as the teasing and the laughing came to a boiling point, my parentals told me we were moving. we didn’t move to a new city. we moved to a different part of the city. a place called eastlake. a place 12 miles away where i could start fresh. the final 1 1/2 years of my highschool career were good ones. i still continued my malicious coding and experimented with shell, C, java and javascript.
ever since highschool started, i’ve been blogging. that’s 1998. i’ve been a blogger since 1998. granted, my blogs back then were primitive and a waste of everyone’s time. i blogged about my day. i blogged about what i did, what i ate, where i went. i didn’t market the blog. everything was being updated manually through dreamweaver’s wysiwyg interface. during my highschool career, i had no design skill. my blog was neon green text on a black background. but i’ve always been the gravitational field within my group of friends and i’ve always been told that my blogs were addicting to read and my friends wanted more. i loved my friends to death, so i gave them more.
after highschool, i strugged trying to find what i wanted to do with my life. i know i wanted to do something with code. being a whitehat and manipulating code to break security structures is not what i wanted to do as a career however. i started off a blackhat and will stay a blackhat. i attended southwestern college, not knowing what to major in. i simply chose classes that i wanted to take, not going by any specific coursebook or class roster. i simply took random classes and hoped for the best. after a couple architecture, accounting, math and web design classes, i dropped out. that year was a waste of my time.
just before dropping out of southwestern college, i had a sort of design enlightenment. i started looking at things differently. i saw things from a different perspective. i took my inspiration from fluid and organic shapes and elements and began integrating them into my designs.
for months and months, i did nothing but design. i designed website after website, learning all from dreamweaver’s interface and online tutorials. fast-forward to the year 2005 where i decided to find another school that could help hone my skills. the design was there. i just needed the development to be there.
i searched san diego high and low. while taking a few design classes at SDSU, i narrowed down my choices to two colleges: coleman college and the art institute of san diego. what sold me to the art institute? honestly, it was the location. there were no fast food joints around coleman. art institute, on the other hand, was a different story. prime placement, mission valley with a nice building to boot. i was sold.
i’ve learned a lot over these past three years. my background with home-brewed shell, java, javascript and C++ helped me develop an appreciation for html, css, actionscript and PHP/mysql. fortunate for me, i am obsessed with this industry. it is still unknown which route i will take, but whichever i choose, i will take my design background and hit the industry headfirst for halos.
during my time here at the art institute, i’ve freelanced while being totally committed to my employers. my experienced successes and failures have gradually evolved my skill every step of the way. this blog is my way of sharing the benefits of my experience with other hungry designers out there that want to kick as much butt as i do.
i continue to freelance and do design work for a “firm” in los angeles. i commute there 1-3 times a month to meet with my designers and for photoshoots on several occasions. i’ve also done editing work for imagine entertainment in little italy as well as develop interactive interfaces for emn8. at the same time, graduation nears me inch by inch as i prepare my last few projects here at school. several of which are a mashup of interactivity, design and hardware.
i work in a field that’s constantly evolving and my motivation stems from the creation of work that is always unique and can potentially contribute to the growth of the medium. my blog and my work is a long-term goal to achieve a level of success where either of the two will influence other designers that will pave the way for tomorrow.
sorry you had to read all of that, but you chose to. so no, i’m actually not that sorry.