about me
My full name is Willem Adriaan Nel, but everybody calls me Adriaan. I was born in Cape Town, South Africa in Tygerberg hospital on the evening of 28 May 1978. I lived in Bloubergstrand, Cape Town until the age of 9 when my parents decided to relocate to Bloemfontein, where I still live today.
My life took some interesting turns as I was struggling to find my place in society, until I met my saviour in 1998. Even though some people critisize my decision on living a life based on christian principles, especially because I choose the Old Apostolic Church as my channel of worship, it is this very life that inspires me and gives me strength. As Norman Vincent Peale states in The Power of Positive Thinking, "God is the source of all energy - energy in the universe, atomic energy, electrical energy, and spiritual energy; indeed every form of energy derives from the Creator."
In 1998 I started studying electrical engineering at the Central University of Technology. I completed my studies including one practical year in 2004, when I received a Baccalaureus Technologiae Electrical Engineering degree, containing some computer systems engineering subjects.
I soon realized that I didn't enjoy electrical engineering as much as I thought I would, and decided to take a whole bunch of courses in website development and graphic design. About 2 years later, I started building specialised websites. I don't use drupal, joomla, typo3, wordpress or any similar CMS system, but rather build sites from scratch exactly suited to the clients needs. I have thorough knowledge of php, MySQL, CSS, xhtml, html and enough knowledge to get the job done in javascript, actionscript, and things like xml and soap.
I'm a member of the Web Standards Group and proactively endorse standards compliant website development where I can. I believe that standards compliant designs will truly benefit everybody including people with disabilities.
On 18 November 2006 I got married to Simoné, my one and only whom I've been dating the previous 8 years. She will be completing her masters degree in psychological education at the University of the Freestate in 2008, where she's currently employed. Our only child, Wolf, a Siberian Husky, enjoys walking with us every day, and loves chasing after rabbits or tarentale (Guine Fowl for you overseas folk) - we live in a wildlife estate called Woodland Hills.
In my sparetime I enjoy playing tennis or the odd game of golf. I rarely play computer games, but do enjoy the occasional Unreal Tournament LAN session.
I love sitting in front of my pc and experimenting with photoshop, illustrator, flash, ajax and oddly enough linux. I truly want to believe that linux has a future, if only they could get Adobe on board to make their apps compatible.
Finally I enjoy meeting people and having long standing personal relationships with them, I don't enjoy parties, but rather a casual conversation over a braai or a board game, or preferably while fishing at Oubos.