Who is Chris Barr?
I'm a 23-year-old web designer and developer living in Pensacola Florida. I grew up in Winston-Salem, NC where I attended church and school at Calvary Baptist Church from preschool all the way through high school. While at Calvary I got involved with the media ministry for the youth services where I would set up and take down equipment every week and also run the computer for displaying song lyrics on the screen.
A good friend of mine got interested in this around the same time I did, and at one point we decided to make some websites together. We made an extremely informal "company" we called Netarco, and we had a total of one website we made where we earned $100. We never made any more sites, but that experience really got me interested in doing web design. Through the years I made various simple websites for family members and such, but nothing major.
When it was time for college, I made the decision that I wanted to do something related to media and technology, but I wasn't sure what. After many decisions and some divine guidance I ended up deciding I wanted to focus my efforts on the web. I'm trained in many areas, but I didn't want to be the "jack of all trades, master of none."
I lived in Panama City, Florida for about 2 years and my good friend Derek Boggs and I co-own a little company we call Eject Media. We do web design, graphic design, and photography — and it's all been working out for us pretty good so far. More recently I've moved to Pensacola Florida to work for AppRiver where I am an interface designer.
Education
I attended Belmont University in Nashville, TN and majored in Audio/Video production. After a year, I decided that this wasn't the program for me, and that this school didn't really offer exactly what I wanted.
I had known about Full Sail in Orlando, FL for some time by then, but my parents were against the idea because at the time they didn't offer any bachelor degree programs. After my year at Belmont though, Full Sail finally released their first bachelor degree program so I was now able to attend!
So I moved down to Orlando, and moved in with a friend from high school that was already attending and I began my associates degree in Digital Media which I completed in 15 months. After that I took a 3-month break back home in North Carolina. During that time I worked at The Woodbine Agency, a large Winston-Salem based advertising agency. After that I came back to begin my Digital Art and Design bachelor degree completors program, which I completed in 9 months. Full Sail taught me so many things, and I'm very grateful for the experiences and projects I had in my time there.
Personal Life
Even when I'm not working on websites, I spend a lot of time on the computer. I love catching up on the news around the world, reading about new technology, and learning all that I can.
I love music. I listen to all different genres whenever I can. My favorite band of all time is without a doubt Radiohead. I don't like most of the music that's played on the radio or considered "popular" by most people. I try to listen to a lot of lesser known indie bands if I can. I'm always looking for something new to listen to, so if you have any suggestion please let me know! If you want to see what I've been listening to recently, check out my last.fm profile. Also, you can listen to a few of my favorites on my Muxtape.
I love movies. My taste in movies is somewhat similar to my taste in music. I don't like a lot of what is pumped out by Hollywood, and some of the smaller indie flicks are among my favorites. Every now and then there's a major movie I really love, but I try not and judge a movie before I've seen it. If you want to see what I've been watching recently, check out my Netflix Queue.
I love photography. My first year in college I took a black and white film photography class, which I despised. The teacher was bad, I had lots of camera problems, and I just really hated the class. Even with all of that, I really developed (pun intended) a love for photography. Ever since then I've always been taking photos, and more recently I was able to get a Nikon D80 - the camera of my dreams. With this camera I've really been able to take my love for photos much farther. You can check out some of my better photos over at my Flickr page.
I really enjoy skiing, or I suppose I should say snow-blading. I'm not amazing at it, but I have a lot of fun doing it. Unfortunately I've moved to Florida and haven't had a chance to do this for a while now.
This site
I've wanted to have a personal website for a long time now, so that's why this site exists. Right now it's mostly just a blog, but I hope to turn it into a bit more than that someday. So for the time being, this is just my place to talk about things I've done, or things I find interesting.
This site is built around the fantastic Expression Engine CMS, and I actually learned how to use it while building this site. All the XHTML and CSS were coded by me, by hand. I try my best to validate all my code, but if you try and validate the site it may not be perfect due to some embedded YouTube videos or something. Don't blame me.
Sure I hand coded this site, but that doesn't mean you still can't use nice programs. I've recently fallen in love with Coda by Panic. It's still got a few minor bugs, but I realize it's still an early release and they'll be taken care of eventually. It's a great way to manage multiple sites, and not have to deal with multiple programs for CSS, FTP access, etc.
All the cool effects you see on this page are due to my favorite javascript framework/effects library, Mootools.