Introduction

Me holding a cute, cuddly, kitten cat.Me and a cute, cuddly little kitten cat (and kitten cats are always relevant). Oh, well hi there! Welcome to my online portfolio and think tank! This site's goal is to share some of my thoughts, pictures, events, and professional and personal work.

This site signifies just a tiny bit of what the web allows me to (relatively) easily do with simple markup, a presentational style language, and a hacked together scripting language that has become entirely too popular. Some of the technologies are XMLHttpRequestCommonly referred to [kind of] as "Asynchronous Javascript and XML, or basically letting you do everything on one page without having to go to the next one (like entering an address in Google Maps)., hash history hacksWithout the jQuery BBQ plug-in (was doing this before it was around)., and YQLYahoo! Query Language - an awesome way of aggregating and filtering data using an SQL-like syntax. with JSONPA graceful hack using <script> tags that call a global callback to allow you to easily transmit data cross domain..

I like to hack around with all kinds of languages and technologies, though, not just web. For instance, I've written a C++/OpenGL game that's beat me at checkers, overclocked my computer +0.8 GHz, and have a 8 disk software RAID Linux box running 24/7 that does automated backups for the couple of TBs of data I paranoidly guard (and it also hosted the chat daemon I use to talk to folks over the tubes with, bitlbee).

As I make changes and alter the features of this site, feel more than free to give me some [constructive] criticism, hints, help, and use any code I happen to post. If you're cool and are viewing something with a browser I may not often use (like say Lynx or Konqueror) and it isn't listed in my compatibility charts, tell me what works and what dosen't and I'll add it. To find out more about me, go to the About Me page.

Projects

Thanks for checking out my projects. Feel free to leave me comments on my work so I can make it better.

Recent commits on Chromium (more recent at the top):
YQL loading... Loading ... wait for it ... come on already SVNSearch and YQL! And Github:
YQL loading... Loading ... wait for it ... come on already GitHub and YQL! (Pulled with a yql-table I wrote to join two GitHub APIs and other magic and both were cached in localStorage ago.)


Past projects

These are so old I won't even throw them up on github, but I'll leave them on this page!


Vector Prediction

Vector Prediction

A simple 2D Vector class that track people's mouse movements as a lazy load techniques. I could use it to preload all my slide shows (if you get within a set radius) to preload the photos (so you don't have to), but I'm lazy.

Check out a simple demo or you can download the script!
Minimax checkers

Minimax Checkers with Alpha-Beta Pruning

Yet another school project that seemed cool enough to post here, this OpenGL / C++ project computes a Minimax tree to a given depth (set by number keys 1-6), and attempting to beat us at our own game, checkers!

Download it and try it yourself!
Julia / Mandelbrot Renderer

Mandelbrot & Julia Set Renderer

This started as a project for my graphics class, and almost ended there. Perhaps it my love for all things 70sthough I was born in '87 or maybe I just had half of a decently cool project on my hands, but this ended up being pretty visually pleasing.

Download the code and run it yourself!
Don't Shoot the Moon (it's just not nice)

Dont Shoot The Moon

This is a game I made in XNA as a sophomore in college for an Intro To Video Game Design class. It's pretty cool, but it never quite got finisheddue to lack of free artist labor and my realization that there's a billion of these games already out there. Regardless, it's got pretty decent game play (in one's opinion), and will run on PC and theoretically XBox360 (it works with a controller for me on PC).

Download it and try it yourself! (Requires XNA 1.0 Studio Refresh)

About Me

Me This page attempts to show myself while not on a computer nor being a nerd. It may actually reinforce the contrary, but I tried.

I really don't like when people write lists of things you might not know about them (but often do), so assuming the old adage, if a picture is worth 1000 words, then quite obviously 9 pictures amount to 9,000 words.

So enjoy the easiest time I've ever had writing 9,000 words.

frequently asked questions

What have you done that's worth even looking at your site?
You're a rough critic, sir or madam. However, I would want to know why I'd listen to some random whipper-snapper on the web as well. My "street cred" (besides the time I hacked the gibson) currenly comes from being on the Google Chrome team in sunny Venice Beach, California. Some past credits include: As if I don't have enough to do I'm making this site and a few other independent sites, games, etc. For a list of the nerdy stuff I do, go to the Projects page.
Is this website solely valid HTML & CSS? I care so much!!!!!!
This website attempts to be valid CSS and HTML. Is it? Hell if I know. Yep. "Why?" you ask? Well, it makes me feel squeaky clean on the inside.
Does validation really matter?
No, not especially. All these sites matter way more than mine, but don't validate: I'm obviously not saying Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft couldn't make their sites validate, they just frankly don't care. However, there's lots of things that the W3's validator doesn't take into account. For instance, stuff actually working in real situations even for less than optimal browsersI'm looking at you, IE..
Is there a point to this website?
That's probably more for you to decide.
Will you make a website for me?
No. Not anymore. I'm tired of dealing with freelance clients. They never give you what you deserve, have their work lined up properly, or have any clue what the hell I do. Here's a pretty good representation. Companies usually do it better.
Is this website actually run by Dan Beam, or is it the evil robot that stole his brain?
Does not compute. Please re-enter query. (P.S. Of all brains to steal, why that one?)
SO SORRY I LOST YR FILEZ

Error!

Sorry, I couldn't find that file on this server.

Don't worry though, I'll keep looking.

You just wait here, I'll be back.