Matthew's Story
Both my father and grandfather worked on electronics and computers, so naturally I was drawn to technology. Beginning at the age of five, I was glued to a 486SX 25Mhz computer and a crappy old CRT screen where I was continually breaking them, reinstalling the operating system, gaming, and learning what made them tick.
By the time I was 13 years old, I had migrated from playing MS-DOS games on 5½ floppy disks to Windows 98 era with more advanced gaming and an introduction to the internet. Following this, I began teaching myself various programming languages starting with Perl and HTML where I made my first website about a game I was playing called Command & Conquer Red Alert.
Soon after, in a drastically odd fashion, I switched over from Perl and HTML to Visual Basic, 32-bit assembly, C/C++, and finally PHP/JavaScript.
In 2004 shortly after graduating from high school, I enrolled at Cape Breton University in the Bachelor of Information Technology program. A few years later, I was hired by NovaStream as a developer to make websites and applications.
Fast-forward to today, working at NovaStream for almost ten years as Lead Developer — I am constantly expanding new technical and interpersonal skills, growing a sizable portfolio and still learning something new everyday.
The Analog Side
In my free time when I'm not doing something digital like coding, researching, or stuck to some type of screen, you can find me in the woods on my Kawasaki Brute Force with some good friends, or just laying low with my three year old German Shepherd, Ace.
My Memberships & Certifications
- CIRA Membership
The goal of CIRA membership is to help shape and influence Canada's digital future. Learn more about CIRA memberships. - Digital Nova Scotia
Digital Nova Scotia is a membership-driven organization with goals to foster the growth of the digital economy throughout Nova Scotia. Learn more about Digital Nova Scotia. - cPanel University Membership
I will be studying as part of the cPanel Certified Partner Program which gives partners the opportunity to acquire accreditation, displayed prominently alongside their company's name in the partner directory. - ISC2 Candidate
I am currently studying to be ISC2 CC certified by enrolling in the ANAB accredited Official ISC2 CC - Certified in Cybersecurity (Online Self-Paced Training) course and in the future become certified with other designations offered by ISC2. - Deque University scholarship recipient
I will be studying and taking courses through Deque University on accessbility to eventually get my IAAP Certification. - W3C WAI0.1x: Introduction to Web Accessibility course
I became certified in less than two hours with an above passing grade (83%) of 70% in this 4 week course which has over 60,000 students enrolled. My certification is publicly available here.
My Interests
- Camping / Hiking
- Call of Duty / Video Games
- Fourwheeling / ATVing
- Self-hosting / Homelabs