As you probably guessed, my name is Michael van Leest (a.k.a. Mike). A ColdFusion Lead Developer with interest in all kinds of IT & Web related technology interests. Besides the being a technology geek, I'm also interested in music (Electro House, Techno, House and other sorts), DJing, remixing and last but not least, poker.
So what do I need to put here? It's not easy to write stuff about yourself, so I'm not going to. Just a few pointers on my work and personal interests.
Technology
A few things I developed with or interested in
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ColdFusion
My first choice of server language and my expertise. Working with CF since around 2000 (Codlfusion MX).
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Dreamweaver
The tool that I used in the beginning when I tried some web development WYSIWYG style. I still use Dreamweaver as my IDE of choice for most of my development work. Not that it's the best tool ever, just that I know the tool inside out as I've used it for years.
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Flash/Flex/ActionScript
Always been playing with flash before I did any web development stuff. Making skip intro's that would get me a deathpenalty these days and started to use Flash for RIA's around 2000/2001.
I started using ActionScript at the time it went from AS1 to AS2. GoToAndPlay(x) stuff in the beginning and later learned to build full scale RIA's.
Been working with Flex since version 1, but never had a project (with the budget) to build a real Flex app during the v1 and v1.5 period. I loved it as it maked a big change for RIA developers to get apps up and running within tight deadlines.
During one of the Flex seminares in Amsterdam about Flex 1.5, I talked with some people about that it would be great to have the flex app compiled by the IDE and just publish it to any webserver to make it more affordable for any developer to use the power as Flex. 2 minutes later the "Macromedia guy" (yes it was called Macromedia back then) came back with his laptop and told me to keep it for myself what I was about to see (or he had to kill me). And there was it! Flex Builder 2, based on Eclipse and not on Dreamweaver and it compiled the Flex app! How cool was that. You probably think, what's the big deal? It was just too cool to see they were already building something that I was thinking about.
Anyway! Now working with Flex Builder 3 and (sometimes) Flash CS4, both AS3.
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Adobe AIR
What a change this is making! I love AIR! It still has a great amount of features that are needed, but for a version and 1.5 of the runtime, it's amazing! Without not too many changes you can get your Flex apps to work, on the system (windows, MAC! and linux) of the user... How can you not love that?
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YUI/JQuery
To be honest, I hate JavaScript! Browser specific issues, hard to debug, jada jada. I've used YUI in the past, but never really did any full blown JS enabled app.
Last few months I've been reading up on some JQuery stuff and need to dive into it and start building stuff for some of our apps.
Music
As most people know (who do know me in real live), I'm a music lover! I love almost any type of music, but I really love Electro house and Techno.
A few of my musical heroes
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LaidBack Luke
The guy who has "The Windmill Skills" as we like to say it. Coming from a turntabelism background, he just crushes the dancefloor when he is spinning with 3 or 4 decks.
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Ben Liebrand
The godfather of remixes. Known for his "Grand Mix", Remixes, mashups and much more. The sickest thing is, he sometimes mixes with 5 decks!
Ps. Check his digital art, it's really cool!
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Joost van Bellen
One of my favourite Electro DJ's. He does all kinds of freaky raw sets. He always amazes me with a new selection of freaky mashups from well known songs to raw electro house tracks.
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Jaimie Fanatic
Great remixer. I just love the "unreleased" remix of Missy Elliot he did. Great sounds and he always knows how to get the dance floor jumping.
