Hello there. You have reached my little corner of the web. My name is Engel Sanchez.
I am a software engineer living in the great Jamaica Plain
neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, with my wife and two little daughters.
If you think you may have a job or freelance work for me,
check out my resume and my projects.
If you are my friend and haven't done so yet, connect with me on
Facebook.
For anything business related, LinkedIn
is best.
You are also invited to sort through the ramblings on
my blog.
If you were looking for that other Engel Sanchez who runs a bunch of
spanish media web sites, he's over there.
When attempting to define themselves, people tend to enumerate the things they like,
and I'm no different. First and foremost, I love developing software.
That is what I do for a living and fun and I don't want to ever stop doing it.
As many other computer people I know, I love music and playing musical
instruments. Luckily, you can actually make money writing software, because my
musical skills would not have taken me too far. I love
Salsa dancing, playing
chess and learning French and
Portuguese, without a doubt the two most beautiful languages in this planet.
I love writing software. All kinds of software.
I have done applications for the web (UI and back end), desktop
and embedded devices, and I have programmed and tuned databases. I don't
have a real preference when it comes to computer languages. Solving problems
is what makes it rewarding, not using the language of the day. I have
seen many approaches to the software development process work as long
as you have a team of smart and dedicaed people.
It is easy to let work take over your life, and raising happy children
requires a lot of your quality time. This year I am determined to find
a healthier balance that includes more time spent on fun, fulfilling projects.
The free software
community is teeming with people willing to sacrifice some or their personal
time building great software and sharing what they learn while doing it. I have
learned a great deal from these people and their source code. The following projects,
besides being learning tools and fun to work on,
are also my attempt to give back to that community and build things that will hopefully
be enjoyed by some.
A 3D open source PC game. Clear the forest of the evil wolves that have invaded it.
Run around the 3D forest day and night and dispose of them with your trusty bow and arrows.
Hunter is my tool for learning about 3D graphics, game AI, 3D modeling and sound programming.
Evolving Hunter into a bigger, better game will surely bring me lots of fun for years to come.
Using:
Find your muse, compose your own melodies and songs and share them with your friends.
TuneOut is my excuse to experiment with mixing my love of music and the possibilities of social networking applications.
(Online soon!)
Using:
XHTML,
CSS,
Javascript,
Prototype,
Ruby,
Ruby on Rails,
Facebook Connect,
Facebooker,
restful_authentication,
Jim's Midilib,
Ubuntu
My beautiful Jamaica Plain
is a diverse and very green neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.
We have the Jamaica Pond,
Franklin Park,
the Forest Hills Cemetery,
the Franklin Park Zoo
and the astoundingly beautiful Arnold Arboretum.
A strong sense of community prevails, and people around here are very
politically active and extremely environmentally friendly
(a bit too extreme at times, actually :) ).
People of all races and sexual orientations are welcome and live together very nicely here.
It's a wonderful place to live.
Trees and rocks at Franklin Park
Arnold Arboretum
Small pond at Arnold Arboretum
You may take a virtual tour of Jamaica Plain using Google Maps' Street View:
(If the street view widget below is not working, you need
Firefox)
I did not put a single toe on the dance floor until
well after graduating from college but, by George, when I did it became an obsession.
And the obsession never fully went away, but after marrying my dancing partner and
having two kids with her, well... Let's say it's on hold right now.
There is a very active, very enthusiastic Salsa dancing community in the Boston area.
My wife and I took our first Salsa dancing lessons from Seemore and Cristina,
then some more from Johnny and Kelly.
Man, I wish I could go more to the Havana Club
these days.
SalsaBoston.com is a good source of information about
classes and clubs around here. Luckily the internet has plenty of videos with moves and
lessons for those of us who are a bit stuck at home, like this one with Solomon and Kelly,
who teach a class in Houston:
I learned to play chess online, while in college, on the then free
Internet Chess Server
shortly before it became the commercial
Internet Chess Club.
Luckily other free chess servers starting popping up shortly after.
Now, I am not claiming to be a good player. In fact, I claim the opposite :).
But I have been known to get the students in our data center at school and my
colleagues completely hooked on chess at times. It's the greatest game ever.
Since I spend so many fun hours on these free sites, I might as well promote them a bit:
Chess.com is definitely my favorite now.
I love their Live Chess web interface, where you can play interactive
chess directly on your browser. They also have an awesome
Youtube channel with
plenty of tutorials.
