About Me

My name is Nick Sampsell and I am living in Elmira, a small decrepit town in upstate New York.

I am currently a junior at Elmira College working towards a degree in Elementary Education. I have always enjoyed going to school and wanted to became a teacher of some sort. In tenth grade, I was placed in the class of one of the hardest English teachers in the school and there I found my love of Literature. The ability to “rip apart” literature for themes, motifs, and symbols, despite what is commonly believed, is something anyone can do with a little knowledge and a lot of reading.

Outside of my obscene love of literature, I also suffer from a computer/internet addiction. In reality, I came to become interested in computers by my Grandfather early in my life and I have been addicted ever since. In 2001, I created my first website for my sixth grade team at Ernie Davis Middle School. I received a great amount of praise and attention from the website (despite it being a hideous Geocities Page Builder website) and I believe this attention is what kept my going initially. By 2002 I was hand-coding websites and they were a slight improvement from the Geocities website, they were still pretty bad. 2005, when searching for free web hosting, I found some based from Road Runner, called on the site “PHP: Personal Home Pages.” Stupidly, I assumed it meant you had to use the PHP Programming Language. In hindsight, this mistake turned out to be one of the best things I did web wise.

In 2005, I created a number of “dynamic websites” ranging from a Groups Website to a Blog Website. I then became acquaintances with Chris Van Patten, Jacob Peddicord, and Peter Upfold and they encouraged me to stretch my knowledge of programming and internet-technologies, including JavaScript, AJAX, User-Interface Design, and Usability Testing.

Currently I am still pushing myself with PHP and embracing new programming languages and methods. I gained a sturdy understanding of Object-Oriented Programming and the Model-Viewer-Controller Architectural Pattern. At the suggestion of Jacob Peddicord, I discovered the Django Python Framework and out of my own interest I became experimenting with Flash and Actionscript 3.0.

I am currently looking to further my experience and knowledge of programming languages and methods. If you think I would be useful in any web-based endeavors, do not hesitate to contact me.