My name is Luke Dingle. Well it has been for a couple of weeks anyway. I tried to purchase the domain name SteveSmith.com but alas, that had been taken. Instead, I bought a domain and then changed my own name as this seemed the easier, cheaper option. Luke, because the world should not be deprived of the opportunity to use my name in hilarious Star Wars references and Dingle because, well, everyone likes a laugh don’t they?

I am 24 years old, single @luke: be sure to edit this so you’re not pigeon-holed into the stereotypical, single-white-programmer niche, in a steady relationship and work as a website programmer in Hobart, Tasmania (which is in Australia next to Uluru, the beach and Paul Hogan’s house). In my professional life I program backends using PHP and Python (Django specifically) and work a lot with JavaScript, as well as the obligatory SQL, HTML and CSS.

The story of how I became interested in web programming and website building is literally a case of sibling rivalry. Not long after I bought my first computer (age 18), my little brother started bragging about the websites he was building using HTML. I wasn’t having a bar of that so I decided to learn. My little brother got over it after a while but I was loving it (making Javascript alert boxes say rude things at him and building 3D models out of tables), I continued and decided to make a career out of it.

I love web development and design but not nearly as much as I love being an idiot, so for the sake of brevity I will only go through a small list of the other things I fill my time with.

In April of last year (2007) I started juggling, I continued to practice (finding many hours of idle time at work to toss the balls around) and have managed to get my ability up to a confident 5 balls and a not nearly so confident 7.  If I break too many things in my house juggling, I’ll put the balls down for long enough to play the piano and sing a tune. After the police have arrived and advised me of the noise complaint I may work on my accents (to present company or random passers-by). Once the police have dealt with the matter of xenophobic stereotyping called in by the irish backpacker up the road, I usually play a game of Texas Hold’em poker.

I could go on but if you’re like me, you probably stopped reading this ‘About’ page after ‘My name is Luke Dingle’ so I’ll leave it there.

I have put up LukeDingle.com as an outlet for my stupidity, a way to combine two of my loves — web development and playing the fool. Hopefully you’ll enjoy seeing me fail as much as I will enjoy messing it up.