Joel Hooks
m 817-657-2474
What I do
Crashing cars, trucks, planes, and trains has been my primary occupation for the last 6 years. The past 12 have been spent as a 3ds Max (and 3ds prior to that) artist. The other half of those years have been spent creating computer based training (CBT) for the aviation industry. This includes work at Southwest Airlines, Flight Safety, as well as Camber Corp, where I worked on a real-time 3d maintenance trainer for the F-18 Super Hornet.
Throughout my career I've always been on the artistic/design side of application development. The programming side of the process has always fascinated me. My 'continuing education' has been focused on application architecture and development. While at SWA I was able to introduce myself to Actionscript 3 and the Flex framework. Since that time I have integrated the AS3 with the Django (Python) framework on the server side, and focused primarily on utilizing the PureMVC framework on the client side. These, coupled with Flex and AIR, have provided me with a well stocked toolbox to draw on for creating applications. One step at a time, the knowledge is slowly starting to seep in.
That is why I've titled this space 'building blocks'. It is like building a lego set, one tiny brick at a time. If you keep building, eventually you might have something. Every now and then, you have to smash it down and start over. That's half the fun, no?
Other things
My wife Kristina and I also own a photography studio, Visual Empathy. Kristina is the primary photographer, and I am her goto nerd for business, website, and other such technical needs. We shoot weddings as a team, which is a lot of fun. Here is our photo blog of the kids, Cree, Haze, Tripp, and Cyan, as well as our various pets ( 1 dog, 1 turtle, 5 cats, and 3 poison dart frogs ). One of the fringe benefits of a photography business!
fig. 1 scooter riding