the Résumé
of ALAN BELLOWS!
Page printed from www.alanbellows.com

summary

I’m Alan, nonfiction author and founder of DamnInteresting.com, home of long-form articles about science, history, technology, and psychology. I’m also a full-stack web developer, editor, illustrator, designer, and voice actor.

bio

My career has been an interesting intersection of writing, editing, coding, and graphic design. I have built websites in Perl, Java, Python, and LAMP-stack, both front and back, on Windows and Mac. I also enjoy researching and writing true stories from science and history. Probably too frequently. Yes, that sentence was 100% adverbs. This sentence no verb. Perhaps most importantly, I am one degree from Kevin Bacon.

skills

Web Design/Dev

10+ years
  • LAMP/PHP web development
  • MySQL, MariaDB
  • Front-end design and dev (HTML, Javascript, CSS/LESS/SASS, etc)
  • WordPress themes, plugins, etc.
  • Experience with AWS, Shopify, and Stripe
  • Python + Flask
  • Responsive design for phones, tablets, and other devices
  • Automation tools
  • RESTful APIs

Graphics Design/Illustration

10+ years
  • Hundreds of illustrations in a variety of styles (see artwork samples page)
  • Print media (posters, invitations, business cards, product packaging, etc)
  • Logo design
  • Skilled with Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)

Interactive Design & Development

10+ years

Professional Writing & Editing

10+ years

Podcast Audio Production

10+ years
  • Podcast narration
  • Adding music, audio clips, and sound effects (sound design)
  • Composing atmospheric music for episodes
  • Sample track

Browser Extensions

5+ years
  • Extensions for Chrome and Firefox web browsers

Project/Personnel Management

10+ years
  • Lead Web Developer at a non-profit educational research institute
  • Founder and managing editor for a high-traffic website
  • Organized a collaborative book (published by Workman)
  • Acted as a team supervisor for a tech support call center

experience

DamnInteresting.com

Founder, Managing Editor, Developer, Designer
September 2005 - Present
  • Managing Editor and primary author
  • Ultimately responsible for copyediting, artwork, and podcast production
  • All design and development work, based on WordPress
  • Podcast narration, sound design, and music composition
  • Social media engagement
  • Maintains detailed author/editor guidelines
  • Leader of an international league of authors
  • See samples page for more information

The Healthy Internet Project, Incubated at TED

Full stack web developer
October 2019 - September 2021
  • Development of browser extensions
  • Python-based API
  • Database design
  • Cloud data management (AWS)

Midwives College of Utah

Full stack web developer
July 2012 - July 2021
  • Sole developer and IT individual for distance-learning non-profit
  • Maintenance and improvements of proprietary software
  • Integration with third party apps and services
  • General website development (PHP+CSS+jQuery)
  • Server administration/IT

Stotion - Design Agency

Full stack web developer
May 2016 - October 2019
  • Converting designs into interactive websites
  • WordPress themes, plugins, etc.
  • Web server administration
  • Shopify templates

Waterford Research Institute

Full stack web developer
January 2012 - July 2012
  • Managed web developers in foreign office (Romania)
  • General website development (PHP+CSS+jQuery)
  • WordPress themes, plugins, widgets, and shortcodes
  • Usability improvements
  • Web server management

Eli Kirk - Design Agency

Full stack web developer
November 2010 - January 2012
  • Building custom WordPress themes based on provided designs
  • Tailor-made WordPress themes, plugins, widgets, and shortcodes
  • eCommerce
  • Eli Kirk is now known as EKR

CodeNutrition.com - Startup

Full stack web developer
December 2007 - March 2010
  • Developed a system to analyze DNA samples and assign nutritional supplements based on the results
  • Developed the customer-facing website
  • Created automated software to generate custom DNA reports, printed materials, shipping manifests, etc.

8one8 - Startup

Full stack web developer/designer
January 2006 - November 2008
  • Designed and developed BounceBase, an experimental consolidated search engine (no longer maintained)
  • Developed an API called “MixedResults” for third parties to use Bouncebase’s consolidated data

SirsiDynix

Full stack web developer
October 2000 - January 2007
  • Developed Perl, Java, and PHP-based library tools such as a catalog search
  • Designed custom themes for customers
  • Designed/developed children’s library search tools

recognition

hobbies, etc

Apart from the above, I enjoy cooking, drawing, music-making, technology-tinkering, and I love a little alliteration. I am married and living in Salt Lake City, Utah with a delightful young daughter. I was also the Time magazine Person of the Year in 2006.

contact

Please feel free to drop me a line at alan@alanbellows.com.

If for some reason you need to send a physical object, I can accept letters and parcels at this address:

Alan Bellows
PO Box 16551
Salt Lake City, UT 84116

I do have a profile on LinkedIn if you’re into that sort of thing, but it’s mostly centered around my technical/programming skills.