Cartoon render of Alan based on an Ooblets character.

Hi! I'm Alan👋

I'm a weird nerd that tinkers in all things computers. Professionally, I'm a web app developer, but I also do a lot of UI design, server setup, and really anything computery. I have some neat cats too. You can find me all over the web, often with the username "alanaktion", including on Twitter, GitHub, Keybase, and Last.fm.

If you want to reach me, the best way is maybe via Twitter, but I'm bad at checking DMs. I also occasionally check my email, alan@phpizza.com. If for some reason you want it, my PGP public key is available on Keybase or directly.

I enjoy taking photos. You can find some of them on Unsplash, here's a selection:

Pink blossoms on a tree in springtimeTop-down aerial view of a forest in Provo Canyon, UTA rocky, snow-topped mountain in sunsetClose-up view of a Lego minifigure with a large moustache wearing a beret. Reminds me of Jamie Hyneman.A field of yellow flowers and small trees.Top-down aerial view of a frozen waterfall, flowing into a turbulent river.

I also run a pizza blog! I eat a lot of pizza (like, too much pizza), so I decided to document it. For a while when I first started the blog, I posted every time I ate pizza, but since that's often daily, I now only post new pizzas that I try for the first time. I try to give a simple review of each one, and while I find detailed food critique weird and difficult to do well, I enjoy writing the brief summary and posting the photos.

A pizza in the box, half is pepperoni pizza and half is cheese breadsticks.

My current favorite pizza is the Little Caesar’s Slices-N-Stix. Half-pizza, half-Italian Cheese Bread!

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Here are a few of the things I've designed and built:

  • The title card for Ren's Adventures, showing the name and main character sprite.
    Ren's Adventures

    A simple visual novel game template built for the Playdate handheld console. Includes a basic scene scripting system, conversion tools, and demo project.

  • A screenshot of a test run in the Lime Testing Suite, with a list of tests being performed showing each test's status and comments on the result.
    Lime Testing Suite

    A simple test case library and manual software testing suite, designed to make reproducable test flows easy and intuitive. Built on Laravel with Inertia.js, Vue, and Tailwind CSS.

  • A screenshot of the Zippa knowledge base builder interface, with a navigation menu on the left and a list of knowledge bases in the main content area.
    Zippa

    A startup I co-founded as a platform for publishing knowledge bases. I designed the branding and back-end UI, implemented marketing page designs, and built the applications.

  • A screenshot of the Phproject landing page, showing some feature examples.
    Phproject

    An open source project management suite I started early in my professional web development career. It's gathered a decent userbase, with contributors from all over the world, and is translated by the community into 12 languages.

  • The blue StructHub logo with compass glyph.
    StructHub

    A startup focused on providing a sophisticated publishing platform for instruction and assembly manuals. I lead the development and did all of the branding and UI design.

  • A stylized ellipsis implying more content
    And more!

    Check out my GitHub profile for a lot of other projects I've worked on.

Tip: you can scroll horizontally!