Welcome to my personal web site and blog! My roots are in web programming and design; currently, I’m the Director of Interactive Services at MediaSauce, a digital agency in central Indiana. I keep busy with work, helping friends and family with their own online presence, staying up to date on the latest web business trends and techniques, and indulging my various hobbies and interests. Hit me up on Twitter @rogersmj if you want to see what I’m up to and what cool stuff I’m digging up from the ‘net every day.

I love design (of all kinds — web, industrial, home), gadgets and tech toys, computers in general and Macs in particualr, cars, various forms of music (I’ve also played piano for over 20 years), and have been getting into photography in the past couple years. On the odd occasion I escape central Indiana, I love the mountains and wide open spaces; the Austrian Alps and Montana’s Glacier National Park are two of my favorite places I’ve ever been. On the other hand, I go into withdrawal if I am without the Internet (or my iPhone) for a day.

On this site, I write about anything that catches my fancy (mostly tech and science stuff), and am always on the hunt for an interesting new project. I graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Computer Science, and my wife also came from Purdue but she’s the smart one — Dr. Amanda Rogers is a veterinarian. I maintain a small side venture for iPhone development called Magellan Media with my biz partner Chris Zelenak.

I designed the (somewhat famous) bPhone for BlackBerry iPhone look-alike theme back in 2007, which is one of the big things that first put this site on the map so to speak. It’s gotten over 2 million downloads, been featured on C|Net’s Download.com, and I was even threatened by RIM’s lawyers for brand/trademark confusion. Although I no longer update the theme, thousands of visitors still come here every day looking for it.

You’ll find I often have strong opinions regarding some of the issues I choose to write about; no matter if you agree or disagree though, I always want to hear your thoughts. Please use the comment forms.

Design

I also do light work (as in, one at a time) designing web sites on the side. I have a few of the projects I’ve done on my Design page, but there are more that I am not allowed to show the public (internal applications, that sort of thing). I have also worked on the design of IndyStar.com, Indy.com, IndyPaws.com, and IndyStarMedia.com, and led the design and development of the money-saving site Deals.Indy.com as part of the Innovation & Development group at The Indianapolis Star. Please contact me if you have any questions about web site or user interface design, SEO or Wordpress customization; however, I am not currently available for hire.

About the site

If you’re interested in the technical aspects of this site, I’ll tell you that it’s a heavily modified version of the wonderful Wordpress blogging software. I’m using a custom theme that I designed and coded myself from the ground up. I know the guts of Wordpress pretty well now, so if you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer them. After I’m done with my themes I try to de-customize them so they can be released to the public.