Nate Marler

I work in IT for the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two. I started out with a computer from Radio Shack, then graduated to a PC that booted to DOS, built in the sketchy back room of a fly-by-night joint. Between the two, I spent most of my free time in junior high and high school writing about fifteen programs, two of which I actually finished. (And they didn't do anything terribly interesting.)

I'm Apple-certified (ACSA 10.6 and ACTC 10.7), and cut my teeth in the consulting field on Macs, but I've branched out, because everyone experiments in college. My high-school chemistry teacher told me to "get a Mac, a real one; you don't need color." So, I did–and never looked back. My first dabblings in Photoshop were as Digital Darkroom 1.0, editing color GIFs and JPEGs on a black-and-white Mac SE. I'm still not sure how that was supposed to work, but it did, and that made it all the more magical.

My formal training is in education, and I use it everyday to help people understand why we have these things in our pockets and on our desks, rather than checkbooks and Selectrics. I love technical documentation, and I write it for human beings to read. I'm convinced that a better future awaits if we can teach everyone how to think about technology, and what place it really holds in life.

My passion is making stuff more understandable–and work better–for more people.