Biography

Hi, my name is Shawn Yisiou Wu, most of people call me Shawn, some call me Isho (short for Yisiou) and some call me Krozz mostly from back in my recording studio days, of course can’t skip my online handle nanasnumber (NaN as Number, which is joke about NaN value in JavaScript), which is consist through out different platforms. I am a husband, father of two boys, programmer, skateboarder, beatmaker, record collector, well the list goes on, but most importantly a tinkerer with hacker mindset.

Early Life

I was always a tinkerer, aways curious about how things work under the hood. One of the key person in my discovery journey was my grandfather, he was an electrical engineer, the first person who show me how to work with tools, connections and basic logic. Not long after I pick up those knowledge, I sure got into trouble for dismental my cousin’s play car, because I was curious about how the connection managing all the blinker signal, of course I put it all back to working order, but nonetheless the horror on my parents’ face when they saw the “in the middle of a job” scene before the toy car rolling again.

The first computer I was expose to, was a 80386 intel PC back in the early 90s when I was in primary school. It ran MS-DOS, needed to boot it from a 5.25 floppy disk. My uncle was the one who kindle my interest in computer. I was 10 year old at the time, I will follow him everywhere to maintain other people’s computer, he taught me how to put together a working system, how to debug, how to install a system, how to resolve memory module conflict and such, and yes, there was my first introduction the to BSOD(blue screen of death) from a Windows 3.1 system, and from there, I always have computers in my life, be it for my own tinkering or help relative and friends to resovle system issue.

Influences and Education

Around the same time, I managed to convince my parents to let me attend local computer workshop, I was sort of the odd ball in mix, it was a group of people comprised of mostly office worker and such, I was the only kid in the class. This workshop was where I exposed to text editor P.E. (Personal Editor by IBM) and learn how to write Batch Script (.BAT) instruction. Fast forward few years, the summer after I finished my middle school, I got a summer job at a computer repair shop, I work along with two guys that just a bit older than me, we primaryly work in the back room, this back room fits the perfect decription of man cave but for computer repair and maintenance work, just for the visual reference, there was a CD stereo system basically we put together from “broken” or “retired” parts, but most importantly, this was the place I got exposed to Linux, it was a copy of redhat Linux. It was odd at first, as all of us growing up on MS-DOS and Windows, little did I know, it eventually lead to me using Linux as my daily driver and within my professional career nowadays.

Soon after, I got accepted at Cheng Shiu University for Electrical Engineering associate program. It was a five year program which comprised of first 3 year focusing on high school equivilant curriculum with STEM field focus, and the last two year focus on in depth industry study and research. Here was where I build up my foundation in programming and infrastructure. During this time was also my early exploration of music technology, It was the class where we learn how to program a Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller, there was a chapter call M.I.D.I. (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), and along with Public Address System Design (PA system), it eventually become my final year reasearch project.

During the last two year in the engineering school, I was still in discovery phase in terms of what I would like to do as a career. I was working part time as stage technician, getting hands on experiences for PA system design, this experience eventually lead me to explore other career potential in Media Production, which lead to me study prerequisite credits throughout the last year at Cheng Shiu University. After graduated from Cheng Shiu University, eventually got accepted at Chang Jung University as a transfer student for Mass Communication major, which allow me to join a 4 year university program but consider the first year completed.

It was exciting time for exploration, I met people from all different background, it change the way I look at technology. I used to look at it almost like a person who live in a technology bubble, but now with all the different people I study with, work with, it become a quite different. The technology experiences that I carry with, is what I bring it on the table to work with other, it’s a tool to help us convey bigger ideas. During this time, beside the initial study focus on Media Production, I also focused on Media Psychology and Social Study, which lead me to utilized my techinical background to digitized the some paper process like conducting a survey, which at the time was still a norm to use paper survey.

Early Career

During the last year in Chang Jung University, I got a opportunity to intern at a radio station for producing in house radio commercial, not long after, I landed my first media production job at a recording studio that handles audio post production for TV shows, I got the chance to work with quite a few talented people between differernt studios, and my techinical skill and programming chop always comes in handy in various situations, be it for large batch of audio file coversion or manage digitized video source that tracked from Betacam. In the media field sometime could be quite seasonal, having part time gig doing odd jobs was quite a norm, sometime I have gig to compose commercial jingle, doing sound design, sometime would be making website for advertising and such.

Career Transition

Eventually, I started gravitated towards to gigs that need website, I was still working at the studio at the time, but all the low season gigs I took on were mostly website work. This was when Flash still a thing, ActionScript days, interactive media heavy website was the main stream, at least in media production circle. This was also the time I met my wife, we were in the discussion about moving to Canada, my wife’s home country, as we want to raise our children in Canada. Mind you at this time I have not yet travel much, it was a big move for me. But since the clients I was working with at the time was all remote, other than managing timezone, the move to Canada was actually feasible.

After moved to Canada at the end of 2012, I took time off from working while waiting for my work permit, it was a tough time in my career, I took this time to reflect on couple of things in my life, what my next 5 to 10 years going to look like, what do I need to get there. I started study programming that focusing on morden web develpoment. After I finally got my work permit, I resume some of my work in making website within media circle. Finally, in the begining of 2014, I landed a fulltime job as Designer and Front End Developer for a online media company in Canada. A lot of important things happened during this time, both my sons’ birth and I finally become a Permanent Resident of Canada.

Professional Life

My technical background and the experiences from working within media production industry had lead me to become a professional in software development, more importantly in front end development, and I have been working in the field ever since. Over the years, I’ve accumulate valuable experiences from working with clients from different domains, different team with different expertise, and I understand that my role extend beyond just a programmer that who work on the projects, I am here to help solving business problem from a technical perspective, it is essential for what I do as a professional. I am always a tinkerer with hacker mindset, always like to explore the area of unknown, try to understand it and learn from it.