My name is Maria Theodoropoulou and I was born in Southwest Greece, more specifically in Pyrgos . I am of Greek nationality, Canadian citizenship and UK residency. I have lived in Canada and Greece, and for the last 11 13 years, in various different places in the United Kingdom.
I currently work as a front & back-end developer at bluestorm new media in Hull. I also undertake freelance work that involves all areas of development, from the initial concept, the visual design and requirements specification, to the information architecture, the build and deployment of a client’s website.
My job is to create bespoke web solutions using HTML/xHTML, Ruby on Rails, ExpressionEngine or Wordpress depending on the project scale and requirements.
I love keeping up with new technologies and expanding my skillset continuously. My key skills include, but are not limited to, the following:
I am a web designer by trade and self confessed geek by personality. I spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer, whether it is my mac at work or my mac at home. I like coding and designing and trying to organise the display of information, not only in a way that looks good, but in a way it makes sense. This might be a side effect of the “information engineering” part of my university course back when I was young and impressionable.
I really enjoy taking a site map and a photoshop visual and breathing life into it. I love the challenges and overcoming obstacles, to reach the end of the line to a finished website or application that “works!” Thus quite often I can be seen at work doing my little victory dance in my chair, when a little bit of code is working like expected, swearing if something isn’t, or lovingly stroking my monitor cooing “my baby” at a finished project. [Thank god I work with fellow understanding geeks and they haven’t committed me yet, although they all consider me crazy]
I do often break away from my mac to do other real-lifey things. I really enjoy cooking and experimenting in the kitchen. Living with my boyfriend Mark for the last three years provides me with an on demand tester and taster of my concoctions. He often claims I cook better than his mom so I’ll take my cooking down as a success! I mainly listen to drum n bass and rarely some greek stuff when I’m feeling homesick. I “make things” (as well as break things but that’s another story) meaning I like crafts and DIY. I draw with REAL pencils on REAL paper, much better than I do on illustrator. I read and I do that a lot, whether it’s trade magazines, greek or english books, even the local paper when I’ve run out of stuff. I don’t ever watch TV. At least not the square black thing in the living room. Which is somewhat of a lie since I follow a few series online.
When I’m not doing anything of the above and I’m not working I play WoW. As a player I take the more casual approach. Since I don’t have the time for raids and cba with PUGs, I play just for the fun of it and I’m turning into something of an achievement junky! Depending on the mood I’m a cute little midget gnome warlock or and even cuter gnome mage on the Alliance side. Other times I’m a hot blood elf mage or evil shadow priest on the Horde side.
I have a dream that all my websites will one day exist in a Web where they will not be judged by how they look and behave in each browser, because all browsers will follow the same standards and display them the same.
This is my hope. With this faith in Web Standards and Accessibility for all people and devices we will be able to make a better Web. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of the browsers to a beautiful symphony of design, functionality and content. With this faith we will be able to work better, to play better, to struggle less, knowing that all devices will treat our work equally & with respect.
©acidsmile (unless otherwise stated)
the views expressed throughout this site are my own
and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer