I think that email as a communication format is dying, due to spammers. So please use my contact form for first contact. Thanks!
The short version
This is the personal web site of Makiko Itoh, a developer/designer of web and PDF related technologies. She is a principal of PRODOK Engineering, located near Zürich, Switzerland.
Born in Tokyo, Japan, she has lived in numerous places including the U.S., England, and Switzerland. She is fluent in English and Japanese and gets by in French and German.
Food is one of her passions, and she writes about her obsession at Just Hungry, a food blog, as well as Just Bento, a site dedicated to the bento meal-in-a-box. Her personal site is makikoitoh.com.
She counts amongst her many interests travel, languages, ballroom and latin dancing, design issues, art, food, reading, and all manner of crafts.
The long version
My name is Makiko Itoh. Many people call me Maki for short.
I was born in Tokyo, Japan (in Shinjuku Chuo Byouin, which is as central as you can get) sometime in the 20th century. When I was 5, my parents moved to England, and for the next 5 years we lived in London, then Kent, and finally in Wokingham, Berkshire. When I was 10 we moved again to the United States, and spent a year in White Plains, New York.
After that, we moved back to Japan where we lived mostly in Hachioji, a suburb of Tokyo. When I was in the second year of senior high school, off we went again - back to New York, this time to Long Island.
I lived, went to school (NYU, then CUNY-Hunter, with a few courses at the School of Visual Arts thrown in there) and worked in and around New York City, and then about 10 years ago I moved to Switzerland. For the past few years I have been going back and forth between Switzerland and the United States, but I'm currently more settled in Switzerland. It's nicer out here in many ways!
I work for a company called PRODOK Engineering, near Zürich, Switzerland. I am listed as a principal. The company specializes in what we called "workflow solutions". We work on projects such as converting from a paper-oriented to digital data gathering solutions. My partner Max Wyss is one of the leading authorities on "smart" PDF (scripted PDF documents).
I do like living in Switzerland a lot, but who knows where my wandering feet will take me next?
I think of myself as a designer slash developer. Although my formal education (with the exception of a few computer science/programming courses - Pascal, C++, Assembler and (gulp) dBase) is in fine and liberal arts, I do like the programming bits. Anyone who thinks that programming is non creative just doesn't get it. Let me write that in an impassioned matter some time. However, I am also a designer and I hate to be pigeonholed either way. In terms of credentials...well I have been doing print design since about 1992, and web/online design since about 1995.
(2008 update) Actually, I am starting to define myself as a writer first and other things second these days.
Hobbies and interests
I have a lot of hobbies and interests. I probably dabble in too many things. The one thing I spend the most money on is travel. Most of my travelling up until now has been in North American and western Europe. Closely related to travel is a rather obsessive interest in food. I have disturbingly clear memories of food consumed in the deep past of my life. I have a large collection of food-essay type of books (think M.F.K. Fisher) and travelogues. I read a lot of other things too, in a wide variety of genres.
I like to create things. In an effort to get away from using the computer as my sole 'creative tool', recently I've been doing some things like needlework, sketching and painting, and messing about with clay. I want to find more time to garden.
I used to take ballroom, latin and swing dance lessons regularly, but have been neglecting that interest of late, much to my regret. I hope to resume the lessons and the weekly dancing as soon as possible.
I am a big Star Trek fan. DS9 was my favorite Trek series. I have autographed photos of all the captains except for Jonathan Archer/Scott Bakula. My favorite Trek captain is Sisko. My favorite sitcom of all time is The Mary Tyler Moore Show. My favorite currently running TV programs are, in no particular order, most BBC documentaries, most BBC how-to, real estate and antiques shows, Project Runway, Top Chef, The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Apprentice UK (the US/Trump version has now gone down the toilet), Heroes, Lost, Life on Mars, Hotel Babylon and Hustle. I've lost interest in most of those favorite shows I listed a couple of years ago. Hustle was pretty bad last season; hopefully, with the return of Adrian Lester, it will get back its magic. The only reality-competition show I still enjoy is So You Think You Can Dance. Of scripted shows, I like The Big Bang Theory a lot, and The Mentalist is not bad. I'm just watching way less TV than I used to, and watching more movies, reading more books (or listening to them) and so on. Oh, and that darn internet thing sucks up a lot of time too.
my book, and other writings
In 2002, I wrote a book called "JavaScript + CSS + DOM Magic". The book site is here. Some parts are rather out of date with current 'best practices'. Some of it should still be useful.
The book was not intended for rank beginners, nor is it intended for code warriors. I aimed it intentionally at people who are probably working professionals, who are either too busy to find the information they need online or learn best by doing. (Since the latter description fits me, I guess you could say I wrote the book that I would have wanted to read.) The book is project-based, and addresses topics like converting a page that might have been laid out with tables to CSS, CSS positioning, using JavaScript together with CSS-layouts, and that sort of thing.
To my mind, CSS and JavaScript (with a valid markup backbone) should coexist together peacefully, and the projects in the book try to illustrate that. I know that some people have an aversion to anything JavaScript these days, but hey - there's nothing wrong with it, if used in an intelligent manner.
There are various other articles I have written, or were written about me, in the past floating around, though most are now out of date. If you are interested in reading my past articles, try Googling me. I have recently resumed writing, but on an informal level for now, for this website and my food blog.
This site
The site was redesigned in March 2004, redesigned again in February 2005 and October 2006.
The primary software tools I use for site creation are:
- BBEdit (user since version 4.x)
- Textmate
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator, and other parts of the CS4 suite
- Transmit (FTP)
The backend is
- Drupal (since October 2006); Movable Type for old content. Since I didn't take the time to import my MT entries into Drupal, I'm afraid links to older content are rather messed up.
Advertising, cookies,etc.
This site does not participate in link exchanges of any kind.
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The domain is not for sale.
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Standard Legal Disclaimer
All opinions expressed in the articles here are those of myself and not of any other organization, including my employer, or individual. Opinions expressed in comments are those of the commenter.