G'Day. This is a site about Dan Woods.

Hey, I’m Dan and I love travel, new experiences, and the first sip of coffee in the morning that about convinces you all is right with the world. When I find the time, I write about the shiny, sparkly things that catch my eye on tinear.net.

I’m regularly seduced by the travel bug, and become fixated with traveling to the ends of the earth, stumbling around a place I’ve never been, and massacring whatever local language I’ve tried (and failed) to learn in two weeks.

I was born in Perth, Western Australia. Perth is often referred to as the most isolated capital city in the world and if you look at a map of Australia, you’ll see why. Sandgropers live closer to Jakarta than they do to Sydney, and both of these cities lie some three thousand kilometres distant. This isolation contributes to Perth’s laid-back vibe, sheds light on its explosively talented local music scene, and may explain residents’ ability to travel to a sandy beach 15 minutes from the city centre and still be the only person on it. These are all things that make Perth great, so I made a website about it.

As much as I love the West, it can be suffocating to be that far from, well, everything. I escape when I can and am currently living and working in Canberra, Australia.
Bill Bryson once claimed that the nation’s capital needed to rebrand itself and, while his suggestion: “Canberra – Why Wait for Death?”, captures elements of bush capital’s charm, it’s honestly not that bad. The air is clean, the bike paths numerous, and the best snow in Australia only a hop, skip and jump away.

For three years, I lived in a tiny mountain-side closet of an apartment in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, and in winter the pipes froze and neighbourhood kids threw snowballs at me as I wobbled down the hill on his bike. During my time there, I rode on so many trains I can remember most of the station jingles off by heart.

My favourite type of sushi is Engawa, my favourite sake style Nigori, and my favourite onsen town, Kinosaki. I revel in new tastes and will eat anything once, and have been known to go out of my way to do so. While this is usually a good policy, I’ll admit that the crab brains in raw egg did, initially, cause me some consternation.

I run a company called amoeba design and we create websites, illustration, and other beautiful things. I think that accessibility, usability and user-centred design are way more important than people think. I hate poor CSS support in browsers, am a huge typography nerd, wish that people would pay more attention to kerning, and think hot pink is awesome, even if I won’t admit to this in public. I’m an active member of the Australian Web Industry Association, an advocate for open-standards, and wish that we would all be nicer to each other on the internet.

I’d love to hear from you, so drop me an email.