My name is Marvin, I'm 31 and I'm a Chef. I was born in Manila, Philippines. I spent the last 13 years in Sydney, Australia. And now I'm moving elsewhere. I'd love to travel if I can find the time for it. I also love to meet heaps of new people. Everyone's got a story to tell. :)

The Purpose Of This Site

Like the other online projects that I've done in the past the purpose of this site is for me to have something else to do other than work, sleep and go out. It's a good diversion. I get to write stuffs and post pictures. And I also get to meet (online) a lot of people. Nice!

Web Designing Training / Course

No such thing for me. I've been putting together websites since 1999. Some are dorkier than others. Hehehe! I guess I learned through trial and error. It took a lot of time and patience but it was quite fun actually. I didn't mind starting again from scratch after stuffing up a project because eventually things fell into place.

No Blogger

I don't use Blogger or any other web-based online publishing tools/services. I tried them before but it's not me. It's not that I don't know how to tinker with them, it's just that I prefer to manually upload and update my website. I guess it gives me better control over the contents and it also gives me a lot of flexibility. Although the catch is that it can be very tedious at times.

Tools

There are some online services that I find indispensable however. Here are a couple of examples:

• Haloscan  - For sorting out and posting comments.

• Sitemeter  - For counting the number of visitors and figuring out other relevant information.

As for the actual designing and content editing I use the following:

• Microsoft FrontPage 2003  - For the layout and page setup.

• Adobe Photoshop 6.0  - For editing the pictures and creating banners and graphics.

The peripherals that I use are also very important:

• Sony DSC-W7B  - One of the most versatile cameras I've ever owned.

• Logitech Trackman  - I like this better than the usual mouse on a pad.