My name is Brad Fish, and this my website. I'm not a huge fan of people putting their whole lives up on the internet (particularly their personal lives), so you won't find much about me personally here. Instead, you'll see stuff regarding my use of technology in my profession and hobbies, and related stuff. Particularly, you'll read about my thoughts on computer programming in various areas such as web and game development.

I will however divulge a bit of information about myself as it relates to technology, programming, and the stuff you just read above. You either clicked on the "About Me" link because you have an itchy mouse clicker finger and have trouble clicking on stuff that you are interested in, or else you really wanted to learn something more about me. If the latter, read on.

I got into programming in the 8th grade when I stumbled upon some source listings for BASIC programs inside my junior high algebra textbook. Having known of the existence of MS-DOS QBasic (for playing Nibbles and Gorillas, why else?), I began typing in the source listings and soon after started learning to make my own programs. I've been hooked ever since.

Through middle school and early high school I made the jump from QBasic to Visual Basic to the old-school Microsoft C compiler and then to the very first version of Microsoft Visual C++ (which luckily was still able to compile MS-DOS programs). I did lots of odd random things like develop my own Mode X video code, write programs to hack save game files for computer games (woo hoo, 0xFFFF gold baby!), and other assorted odds and ends.

Soon high school was over, and I was pretty proficient with C (I thought I knew C++, but that's a story for another time). I then started my undergraduate work in Computer Science at Brigham Young University. At that time I wrote some nifty code which is still in use by lots of people around the world today, glFont. To my knowledge, it was the first ever tool and API for using TrueType fonts in fast quad-based text rendering in 3D applications. It's been featured on opengl.org.

After my freshman year, I took a break from school and served a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Yep, I learned Mandarin Chinese. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to learn another language.

After returning to BYU, I got a job working for the TALL Group (Technology Assisted Language Learning) doing client-side Java development for software that taught English as a second language. I was responsible for our specialized component-based framework and one of our primary tools there. Working at TALL was a great experience and I have made some of my most lasting friendships there. However, I was no fan of Java, and can't say my opinion has changed much since then.

During university I also did the development for Enduring Rose, which is a growing, successful online gift retailer.

After university, I did professional PHP programming for DataX. As much as I am loathe to say it, the horror which is PHP made me want to go back to Java. After rewriting their primary system, I left DataX so that I could code in neither Java nor PHP. Nowadays when faced with a web development challenge, I turn to python and Django. Occasionally I write about web development on my site, but it is not my first love.

Nowadays I do independent software development for BYU and other clients. On the side, I work on my game Red Rover, a futuristic RTS set on Mars, which I will very soon use as a resume booster to get a job in the games industry.

There you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about me.