mcville: Mike Stenhouse Interview

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Mike Stenhouse Interview

Nov 11, 09:49 PM by Marko

Interivew with Mike Stenhouse at donotremove.co.uk

Marko: Heya Mike !
Mike: Y’alright there Marko?

Marko: For our reader’s could you tell something about yourself? (year old and other stuff)
Mike: I’m a recovering Egyptologist by training. Er, I’m quite tall. 27. Live
in London. I’m facinated by how people use the internet.

Marko: How are you doing these days?
Mike: Working hard, as always. I’m learning to say ‘no’ though so there’s a
very real risk of me having a life sometime soon. Still, it’s good to be
busy!

Marko: When did you first encounter a keyboard or computer?
Mike: My folks bought an old XT with a CGA monitor when I was about 8 and I’ve
been on PCs ever since. I started on games and had to start hacking the
autoexec.bat and config.sys files to squeeze performance, which was my
first experience of coding!

Marko: What is your favorite art work /website!?
Mike: This is a little cronyistic but my favourite artist has to be the mighty
Will Barras (www.willbarras.com). I first came across him on the cover
of Hip Hop Don’t Stop but he popped upyears later doing the artwork for
my mate Hint. You just HAVE to check out the cover of the Portakabin
Fever album. No ifs. No buts. Do it now.
http://www.willbarras.com/2005/08/31/hintcover/.

Marko: when you launched donotremove.co.uk are you happy with the result of the site?
Mike: I don’t like the design but as a website it’s functioned very well – it’s supplied me with a constant stream of work for the last 3 years…
I’ve been trying to redesign it for 2 years but work keeps getting in
the way. I’m about 60% through a redesign at the moment but only time
will tell whether that’ll ever see the light of day.

Marko: What do you do in your spare time (I do realize that spare time, in this context, is pretty relative)?
Mike: I used to travel quite a bit but I’ve had too much work on over the last
couple of years. Now I just listen to music mostly. After being a hip
hop head for most of the last 10 years I’ve been rediscovering guitar
music and loving it!

Marko: Do you have a favorite drink? How much of it do you drink?
Mike: I’m English so it has to be tea, doesn’t it?! If I’m out and about then
a blonde beer’ll do my just fine. Or a vodka tonic if I’m feeling bohemian.

Marko: Would you care to give us a brief overview of what a typical day is like for Mike Stenhouse?
Mike: Get up at 9. Go for a jog if I can muster the willpower. Drink tea. Head
for work at about 11. Stay there until 8 or so, drinking tea. Head home.
Have dinner. Watch a little TV. Start work on personal projects. Finish
between 1 and 2. Read for a while. Back to bed.

Marko: I am always wondering how people such as yourself go about getting work? How do you do it?
Mike: I got lucky early on in my freelance career, landing the front end build
contract for business.gov.uk, and that bought me quite a lot of credit
in the contracting game. These days people find me.

Marko: Who are some of your biggest influences?
Mike: Early on it was people like Joshua Davis and the other Masters of Flash
authors but later it was the Zen Garden folk like Shaun Inman, Doug
Bowman, Dan Cederholm and Didier Hilhorst. Then there was the whole
blogging scene, the other Britpack guys, and CSS Beauty. Steve Krug
changed how I viewed design though and he’s probably most responsible
for putting me where I am now.

Marko: Is your background in design? What was the progression into web development and design like? How did that take place and why?
Mike: Kinda. I was lucky enough to have a very forward-thinking computing
teacher at school so I was one of the first 10 kids in the country to do
Multiedia GCSE (Macromind Director 3 and Photoshop 3 when an A4 scan
took 40mins) and I did a multimedia CD-ROM project for A Level. Then I
fell out of it for a few years, getting back to it by accident – I was
taken on by a software house as a Java developer but I was the only
person in the office who could use Photoshop, so I soon started doing
the company’s print design. I’m a very untalented print designer but
that led me on to web design. It’s been a funny old route to where I am
now…

Marko: If you where not a designer/programmer what would you be?
Mike: Probably a journalist of some kind but I did consider doing woodwork
instead of multimedia for GCSE so maybe a carpenter!

Marko: How do you like our site mcville.net?
Mike: Yeah, I’m diggin tha black & white and enjoying reading the interviews.

Marko: If you could change something on mcville.net what would you change?
Mike: That left nav. I really don’t like the unfolding… If you indented the
sub levels it might help a bit though.

Marko: What kind of music do you fancy?
Mike: I kinda answered that one above. These days I’m listening to a lot of
guitar music: Jose Gonzales, The Kooks, Le Tigre, Bloc Party, James
Yorkston, TV on the Radio and G Love & Special Sauce but my favourites
include Fat Freddy’s Drop, Pavement, Braintax, Roots Manuva, Bonobo,
Hint and Hot Chip. I’m into anything that’s a little bit unusual.

Marko: What’s your favorite food?
Mike: Thai. Spicy, healthy, tasty. Mmmmmm.

Marko: Where do you get out on Saturday’s?
Mike: Mostly the bars around North and East London.

some relaxing question to follow

Marko: Chinese or Thai (food)?
Mike: Ah, answered that in the food question – Thai!

Marko: Coke or Pepsi?
Mike: Er, Coke. Pepsi just tastes too sweet.

Marko: html or asp?
Mike: HTML. No question.

Marko: Do you watch television? If so, do you have a favorite show?
Mike: Lost’s my favourite show of the last 6 months. Genius!

Marko: What would we find in your favorites bookmarks-bar?
Mike: A link to del.icio.us!

Marko: What inspires you? This doesn’t have to be design related.
Mike: Problem solving. Almost everything I do comes from trying to tackle a
percieved problem whether it’s design, interaction or knowledge.

Marko: Thank again for having this interview, cheers m8!
Mike: No sweat, it’s been emotional. Catch you later…

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Mike Stenhouse Interview

Nov 11, 09:49 PM by Marko