About Me
Hi. My name is Chris. Below is a little background about myself. But for a more abstract view, read 100 Things About Me.
The Basics
I was born at Brookdale Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn, NY on March 5th, 1980 at 8:55 AM. Shortly thereafter (eight minutes, to be exact), my twin brother popped out and immediately it was on.
Big Time Geek
In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I am in front of a computer all day. I wake up, turn on my computer. Sometimes I wake up, pack up my laptop, head to the office and turn on my computer. When I return home I lather, rinse repeat as desired. So, suffice it to say, I am a geek.
When I’m online I spend most of my time reading blogs about the state of the web. I post most of the links I visit and find useful for web design technologies over at my del.icio.us page. I am very into desiging with standards for the web. Using table-less layouts with CSS for positioning and style has helped me to seperate content from style which is the guiding principle behind designing with web standards.
Hobbies
In my spare time (of which I have very little) I enjoy playing poker online and I run my own poker tournaments every two weeks in upstate New York where I reside. Besides poker, I love watching the Mets. I’ve been a Mets fan since I was six years old, taking only a brief hiatus after the strike and I rooted for the White Sox in the early nineties (mainly because of Frank Thomas). Happily, though I returned to my Mets roots around 1996 and have been faithful ever since. One of my earliest memories is watching the 1986 World Series with the Mets battling the Red Sox. I love baseball, but I do enjoy watching football and the last 4 minutes of basketball games. I don’t really have a true team for football or basketball, but by default I root for the New York teams.
Movie Making
While my interests have really shifted towards web and print design, my first creative experiences were with a video camera. I started filming stop-animation movies when I was 5 or 6 years old using my Dad’s camera and my Playmobil set. After that, I graduated to live action shorts at around 8 or 9, and in high school collaborated with my brother Jon and best friend Chris in a media conglomerate called, “3 Guyz Productions” (Yes, that’s right, with a z.) Cut me some slack, I was 16. Our first film was very low budget and had very little production value. Entitled, “Mucous”, this impromptu movie was a hit among friends and some family members (we nearly set Chris’ kitchen on fire when Little Suzie had to shoot fire from her mouth) and spurred us to continue creating features like, “How To Steal Your Parent’s Car” (based on a true story), “Mucous ‘96″ (The Mucous sequel), “Shvizm”, “M3: Mucous Murder Mystery” and “Otto, Pierre and Miguel”. We started with hack editing (we literally had two vcr’s piggybacked and edited by the “play-record-pause” technique) and evolved to linear editing utilizing a video switcher and various computer programs for titles and effects. Eventually, this body of work landed the 3 Guyz in a video production school for half the day of high school in our senior year.
I’m a Twin
Being a twin is a bizarre force. I struggled very early on to develop my own character and I still have trouble with it today. It’s all I’ve known and the benefits being that I always have a friend and that there is truly a connection between Jon and myself that cannot be forged any other way. The caveats being that I’ve always been known as “a Matthias” or “one of the Matthias twins”. It was a novelty growing up. The only reason people knew me was because of my twin status. I’ve heard all the questions; “You guys ever share girls?”, “You two ever trick people?”, “If I hit him, will you feel it?” My answer to the latter question is, “Yes. Hit him. Hit him hard.” Then I fake injury.
I am eternally thankful to my parents for not going gung-ho on the twin thing. I can’t remember us wearing the matching clothes. I remember we’d wear similar clothes but different colors or styles or something of the sort. Thank god. Its tough for kids to find themselves, how can we expect them to find themselves if they are always looking at an exact replica every day.
However, while I’m glad my parents took an interest in Jon and I finding our own hobbies and interests, I regret that I never took up drawing. From very early on Jon took to drawing. Apparently, I had a very dominating personality and Jon pretty much followed my lead in everything. My parents were concerned that Jon needed to do his own thing, so when he started drawing and painting they were ecstatic. He was good. He continued to have art lessons when we grew up while I was playing around on the computer. Dammit, I wanted to draw, I’m sure. I never learned and now I do my best to be a graphic designer with limited drawing ability. I use computers to achieve the results I desire. And since computers were my thing when we were growing up, Jon got a late start using graphic programs, too. Heck, if you mash us together we’d probably be an awesome graphic designer. Hahah. I was just thinking about how I wish I could have absorbed him in the womb. JK, Jonny, JK!
That’s a Wrap!
I plan on using this blog to tell my life stories so I don’t have to repeat them all the time, and report on web design for all the interested masses. I will try to avoid politics as this just gets my panties in a bunch, and in truth, I feel helpless about it. I tried to vote in a Democrat this time around, but the middle of the country had other designs for their leader. Enough said. No politics.
Enjoy this blog and forward it to friends if you find it useful.
Cheers,
