My name is Matthew Turland, or Matt to my friends. I'm in my mid-30's and live in New Orleans. I'm a husband-to-be and a father to three children and one stepchild-to-be.
I'm a software developer by trade, mostly with PHP and JavaScript but also occasionally using other languages. I blog about that sporadically on my web site at https://matthewturland.com. I've written some things that have been published and done some public speaking.
Lifestyle
Most of my jobs have been remote since 2008, which I believe has been great for my work-life balance. I'm a big advocate of remote working and foresee it only becoming more common as we venture further into the Information Age, jobs become increasingly knowledge-based, and our economy is further globalized.
A few times a year, I travel to my employer's headquarters for a few days to a week at a time to have face time with my coworkers or to attend or speak at a technical conference. While I enjoy visiting other places, I generally don't enjoy the process of traveling and prefer to spend most of my days at home.
On the average day, you'll find me working, taking care of my family, and keeping up with our household.
Passions
I love my job. I still remember messing around with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript when I was a teenager and then QBASIC and C++ in high school. When I took my first computer science course in high school and finished its entire workload in the first half of the year, I knew I'd found something that was both a proficiency and an interest for me. Today, I take pride in my craft and put of lot of myself into producing the best work I can. I want to help build things that make the world better for everyone.
I've written a book on web scraping that I'm in the process of updating. I love open source software. I'm interested in web services, hypermedia, emerging API technologies like GraphQL, automated testing, relational and non-relational databases, usability, documentation, and all manner of other topics in software development.
Outside of software development, I'm interested in recent events in science and technology, artificial intelligence, writing, geek culture, and games. I also enjoy karaoke.
Steemit
I got a Facebook account when it was still limited to university students. I signed up for Twitter in September 2007 when it was still in its infancy. I don't mind being an early user of new web sites and technologies. After seeing @lukestokes talk quite a bit about Steemit, I decided to give it a try. While I don't have nearly the extent of his interest in cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and the like, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about them. So, I'm going to try writing on Steemit and see where it takes me.