I am Sam Wilson, a dev living in Austin, Texas. The calligraphy on the office whiteboards is my fault. Pumped on dodgeball.

My real name is Jeremy. My grandmother just called me Sam so much I thought it was my name. She did this, in part, to irk my father who chose and liked the name Jeremy.

I started app development at a concierge kiosk startup in 2001. My Flash interface was in local news footage. I was over the moon. My mom cared but no one else really did.

Near the end a sales guy came up to me and said, in the context of a huge contract for becoming a data provider, "Hey I told Lycos we know XML. Do we?"

In 2004 I transitioned from Flash to JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. At the time ExpressionEngine was a big deal, so I worked a lot in that. About then years later I was hired to their small remote team, EllisLab. There is something to be said for the pocket cultures within the tech and design space. I learned a lot and met some great folks.

In my early twenties, most nights I'd lose track of time while working. Afterwards I'd go to Wendy's because it was next to the office, and get a burger and fries. Maybe I did this too much because one day I was doing pull-ups casually and passed out. This was the moment that got me into fitness and nutrition.

For me, the harder the creative work is to start, the less likely it is I'll do it. It's why I love calligraphy. It's easy to do something cool quickly. Oil painting, while amazing and fun, has a higher threshold of effort therefore I don't paint much.

Cooking, especially baking, is something I really enjoy and a creative outlet. My best cookies involve sage and apricot.

One of my happy spaces is Figure 8 coffee shop, and not just because I'm addicted to three espressos per diem. Which I totally am.

Growing up in a small town in Kentucky, most folks were extroverted. And although I lived in a slightly larger Lexington for several years, I moved to Pittsburgh. Here I experienced some culture shock, which I kinda needed. Though it wasn't for me long-term, I came out of Pittsburgh with crucial friendships and experiences that I can't imagine missing out on.

The way my children revere me reminds me that they share in all of my successes as well as any of my failures. The risk inherent in anything I consider is shared by them. It's a good thing.

To my occasional chagrin, I find it hard to dislike people even if they are at first unfriendly. When someone is antagonistic or off-putting, I tend to try to win them over or figure out why they are that way. I've made a lot of friends this way and I find first impressions are only true half the time. But also not everyone is going to love me and I'm okay with that these days.

I suffered daily headaches as a child. These headaches could make me throw up. Out of necessity, I knelt down similar to how a toddler naps. I'd put my forehead on the ground and would then visualize my pain as a red syrupy substance leaving the front of my head through a small hole, draining down into the Earth. It took about 20 minutes and then I felt better.

The sun makes me sneeze, this is called Photic Sneeze Reflex. I don't think of it as a problem though, sneezing rules.

My escape hatch for insomnia is a book on pop chemistry on my iPad. When I can't sleep I break it open. Three to ten paragraphs in and it's Snoozington.

When I was 4 years old, I got a Suzuki JR 50 with training wheels. I didn't die on it, but I did get a scar on my leg that looked like the parallel grill marks on a burger.

Exercise is underrated. Training from Jhonphillip Yonan (not a misspelling) gave me back the command of my body.

I broke my wrist skateboarding down a long hill in Glasgow, Kentucky. This was a hard way to learn about the power of the long tail.

I play on a dodgeball team in Austin Social Sports League.

I am not Sam, but I go by that name and I make apps and stuff on the internet. Thanks for visiting my site.