Me
Life
Hi, I’m Johannes Maximilian Toball although this name is hardly ever used in its full length. Since my birth my parents always called me Max, a fact that often led to difficulties with all kinds of administrative officials on various occasions.
To avoid problems like these from the start, I only used one name in the Internet: the pseudonym Matonor.
Behind all this (pseudo-)names, there is always the same young man from the northeastern corner of Bavaria, the German Sibiria or the Fichtelgebirge. A area with many names but little importance except the importance of a nature-, health- and holiday-paradise it persuades itself to be.
Though I grew up amidst the forest, it was technology which I favoured ever since my early youth. I soon was not happy anymore to just use computers or the Internet, I wanted to understand them. Consequently, I started early with Webdesign and -development as well as programming in general.
Apart from that, I’m interested in history, politics, literature and languages. For example, I wrote the paper that is necessary for graduating here about “Modern English vocabulary and its historical influences”.
In 2008, I graduated from the German high-school equivalent and since October 2008 I have been studying Internet Computing at the University of Passau.
Works
As mentioned, I have always been interested in technology and since I got access to the internet I have been fascinated by the possibilities and interactivity of this kind of media. Soon I started to tinker with HTML and CSS and later came about PHP, mySQL and Python in search of ways to improve and extend the possibilities of my early sites. After some initial aversions due to the fact that the flash and DHTML overkill of the post-millenium web did not meet my idea of websites which always work, I finally also started using Flash and Javascript.
My concept of aesthetics did not match the typical website of the internet boom as well and thus I wanted to style websites according to my wishes and ergo I looked into design-related tools and techniques.
While it was only a fraction of the activities connected to my Ultima Online freeshard projects, the design and coding of Websites became increasingly important and soon was my major leisure activity. To pursue this activity in a more efficient way, I looked for a CMS to do some of the recurring work for me so I could focus on new stuff. After comparing dozens of systems, I found PHP-Fusion to be particularly simple to use and at the same time easy to modify and style for its relatively imperative code. I began working with PHP-Fusion and when my first Theme for it attracted a lot of interest in the community, I decided to launch a site dedicated to PHP-Fusion themes which was the first of this kind.
My themes were popular and before long I received the first offers for exclusively crafted themes and scripts, not only for PHP-Fusion. I did not only perceive these offers as a way to supplement my pocket money, but rather as a ever new challenge and a possibility to learn.
Skills
Over the years I gained a lot of experience, be it deliberately or under the pleasant force of a task. My areas of expertise are web design in general (including (x)HTML, CSS, JS and 2D graphics), web development (including PHP, Python, JSP, AJAX, XML-based webservices, SQL, spam-protection) and Linux administration. Furthermore print design, vector graphics and 3D graphics are nothing new for me and I also got experience in the engineering of desktop software.
In conclusion, I built up a decent wealth of experience and I’m always happy to extend it or delve into special aspects, depending on what my curent task is.