About

I am a software developer living in Indianapolis, Indiana. I have 10 years of experience working in .NET, specifically writing C# applications. I started writing Python code in my spare time starting in 2010, when I bought my first Macbook Pro. Since 2017, I have been writing Python Apps professionally, and am part of our Cloud Services Team, specializing in supporting Amazon Web Services infrastructure.

Since 2011, my wife and I have taken Ballroom dancing lessons. The studio we attend has events throughout the year that we participate in, and some of the videos we have taken can be found on this site and on my YouTube channel.

About This Site

Web host Dreamhost

Blog Software Jekyll The website is generated using the Jekyll framework, with the { Personal } Theme. I migrated my blog to Jekyll for several reasons:

1. To update the design of my site to something more modern
2. To decrease the load time of my site by using a generated static HTML site
3. I wanted a site that would be more of a landing page for me, but with the ability to add blog content, rather than being all about the blog, like my previous site was.

FAQ

Q: How do you pronounce ‘yanigisawa’?

A: Just how it’s spelled. Really, does it matter how one says it? Just shorten it to “yani” if you want to refer to it verbally. (though, I don’t know why you would want to, “James” is easier to say) The background for this nickname I use on twitter and around the web is that in High School, I played a Yanagisawa brand of saxophone. My senior year, I started taking lessons from a college professor at Indiana State University, that was amused by the name, and said it really fast, like the Micromachines guy. This amused me more than the actual name did. Later when I needed to find a unique name to create an email account (hotmail), I got frustrated trying to use my real name (since mine is so common, most derivations on it were taken), and refused to append a number, (e.g. jalexander1234) as this just seemed cheesy to me. So, I remembered “yanigisawa” and it has been a unique name for me everywhere I go on the net.

Q: Why are you blogging?

A: Mostly just for kicks I’m following advice from an An episode of Pragmatic Programmers and Scott Hanselman who both say that all software developers should have a blog, an on-line presence, and gasp, a personal brand. I don’t know about the whole personal branding idea, but having an on-line presence has allowed me to generate content that have helped others, and myself reference problems I have solved in the past.