Hi! I am Jaime González García and I am a software engineer and UX designer. During the past few years of my career I have been slowly but surely specializing in front-end development and user experience, and somewhere and some time along the way I fell in love with JavaScript and the web. I still enjoy developing in the full stack though, bringing ideas to life, building things from nothingness, beautiful things that are a pleasure and a delight to use.

I want to make the world a better place building awesome software. I haven’t figured out how exactly to do that just yet… so I am getting by with building meaningful products that help people, working as a front-end software engineer at Google designing the future of work, teaching and sharing what I know, and at a smaller scale by being kind to those around me, joyful and funny :).

I live in Sweden with my wonderful wife Malin and kids Teo and Li, and devote my hours to being a great dad and husband, writing software, reading a ton, writing, drawing, walking in the woods and lifting heavy weights.

If you like what I write or any of my side projects, follow me on the twitters where you can get the latest updates.

Long Version!

Hmm… that’s a tricky one… let me think… Am I a software developer? Does that concept describe and capture my whole self being? Am I a telecom engineer? A lover of fantasy, sci-fi and historical literature? A nerd? Patrick O’Brian #1 fan? A charming spanish chef? A Firefly fanatic? A faithful lover? An RPG addict? Hmm… I guess I’m all of them and none at the same time. And that’s for answering a question with another question. Let’s put an end to this mental diarrhea and go with the regular version XD.

Hi! I’m Jaime, nice to meet you too! ^_^ I’m from Spain, from a tiny yet beautiful county in the north called Asturias. (see that gorgeous photo right over here?)

I am a Telecommunications engineer and although I really like telecommunications I have recently discovered that my real passion is programming, I really love coding and solving complex problems with elegant solutions. It is amazing, that moment of self-awareness when you finally realize what you want to do for the rest of your life, and you discover what you are really passionate about. Haha, anyway, if somebody had told me that I would feel like this about software development during my academic experience I would have had a good laugh, but world spins and as a friend once said “the wheel weaves as the wheel wills and we are all but threads in the pattern”.

What are you doing right now?

Well, right now I am in Sweden among snow and vikings!

How the hell did you end up there so far from the warm spanish shores you might be asking yourselves right now… and I’m going to be fair and answer you right away. I first came to Sweden in my academic years by means of a wonderful education program that you might have heard of called Erasmus, more concretely to Linköping. I had a blast, it was an awesome experience that will remain for ever within my heart and I met my beloved life companion Malin Olofsson (doesn’t she look gorgeous in that photo?).

Time has passed since then, and I have come back. I’ve always wanted to try my luck and work outside of my comfort zone in Spain. I hope that working in Sweden will be an enriching experience just as much as my Eramus year was, broadening the horizons of my mind and dissipating the clouds of closeness and ignorance.

Why have you built this site?

I have to say that I’ve been entertaining the idea of building a website to manage my stuff for quite a long time now. I really love reading interesting people’s blogs, I have a huge number of feeds I am subscribed to and all of them are a great inspiration to me. At the same time, I love what the Internet, and the web has become and I kind of feel the need to be out there, if you know what I mean, and share my ideas and projects with the world.

So when opportunity and time met in the right solstice I started building this project. I really hope you find it useful or interesting!

Why “barbarian meets coding”? What does “barbarian” have to do with anything?

Well… when I started building vinCMS some months ago, my mind began working (brainstorming anyone?) as well trying to figure out a nice, catchy name for my website…

One day I was smoking a cigarette in one of those peaceful moments, late at night, alone in the vastness of space and time, communing with the universe and suddenly I just came up with it. I though it sounded funny and after all, I am a proud descendant of celts and visigoths.

Oh… And I love Conan tales by Robert E. Howard. When I was a child/teenager I think I must have watched “Conan, The Barbarian” and “Conan, The Destroyer” tens of times. I love the extract below, every time I read it I get goosebumps.

Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and in the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars — Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold.

But the proudest kingdom was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.

Who the hell is “vintharas”?

You might have noticed that I frequently use vintharas as a nickname in some other websites and you may be wondering what?¿

Ok… Let’s make a brief trip to geekland to explain this swiftly. A loooong time ago, I used to play to a MUD (MUD stands for Multi-User Dungeon, yep the predecessor of nowadays MMORPG’s) called “Reinos de Leyenda” (Kingdoms of Legend) and my main characters was an… aragorn-like tanis-like half-elven ranger called Vintharas. ^_^ So there you go, mistery unveiled!

So… it’s time to go and enjoy the site!

So, that’s pretty much the story. My first plan still remains somewhere in my project backlog, but, for the moment, come and visit; make yourself comfy.