BIOGRAPHY

Dean Casalena provides user interface design and development services in ActionScript and internet programming languages.

Creativity in Art

I have a passion for creativity and have spent much of my life designing. This proclivity was at first applied to standard media - painting, drawing and writing. Later, I discovered what technology and new media could offer in the way of providing enabling tools to my craft. Web design soon became a hobby of mine but before long I was able to freelance my professional services.

Creativity in Mathematics

Having loved Mathematics from a young age, I participated in various lateral-thinking-based competitions throughout my school years (captaining the Western Province Mathematics Team while in my senior year of high school). Mathematics as a direction of further study in seemed fitting and I obtained a degree therein from the University of Cape Town, completing one semester on study exchange to the University of California: Berkeley. I have always considered Math a very high form of creativity. What can be created with Mathematic algorithm has potential far beyond, but not excluding self-expression. Furthermore, I believe the patterns of thinking developed in Mathematical exercise are invaluable in a multitude of seemingly unrelated spheres. I often hear people's disdain for Math on the basis that they believe it to be disjoint from the practical world, but I fervently disagree that this is the case.

Competitions

Mathematics Papers

Creativity in Engineering & Entrepreneurship

My converging affinities to design and problem solving led me to software development, wherein logic and algorithm are made accessible through styled user interface. Over a number of years I have built a working knowledge of web programming languages - PHP, XML, XHTML / CSS, JavaScript and specialized development expertise in Adobe Flash ActionScript 3.0, Flex, and AIR applications. In 2002 I formalized my freelance web design efforts and began under the name Immortal Design in Cape Town, South Africa providing the following services:

In 2004, Imagine Advertising with media partner Full Circle Media signed up Immortal Design as their information technology parter, and the team won creative pitches for the website accounts of various multinational companies including Yardley London (a brand of the AVI cosmetics group), Pioneer Foods, Bokomo Foods, The Bergkelder Vinoteque (a brand of Distell) as well as a number of smaller website design and ActionScript services clients.

Some of my more recent websites

I presently provide ActionScript services, user interface design and web development to BitGravity, Inc., a next-generation Content Delivery Network and interactive video services company located in Burlingame, California. Along with BitGravity's team I have developed a widely distributed Flash Video Player, and am listed as co-inventor on 2 of its features' pending patents.

New: Check out my new blog The Personal Blog of Dean Casalena