About Brian Hamburg

The Hamburgs in Walt Disney World in 2026

I’m a software engineer, designer, and musician. Most of my days are spent working and playing in Philadelphia where I live with my wife, Andrea, and twin daughters, Elizabeth and Louise. But this is just the tip of the Brian Hamburg iceberg. Within these pages you can learn more about what's going on in my life professionally and recreationally.

Father of Twins
Implementer of Interfaces
Purveyor of Pixels 
Strummer of Strings
Wrangler of the Web

Ultimately I'm just trying to balance being a father, husband, son, web professional, musician, nerd, colleague, friend, and decent human being in the crazy world we currently live in.

Beyond the bio, I try to keep a couple of pages up to date that give a more dynamic picture of who I am and what I'm working with. The /now page is a snapshot of what's going on in my life at any given moment — inspired by the nownownow movement started by Derek Sivers. The /uses page is a running list of the hardware, software, and tools I rely on daily as an engineer, musician, and general tech enthusiast. Both are worth a look if you want to keep tabs on what I'm up to.

Résumé

With over two decades of experience building user interfaces for the Web and providing technical support, my focus has always been to remove friction from the user experience with an appreciation for both accessibility and aesthetics.

Music

Oh, the places you’ll go... with a banjo!

When I'm not behind my laptop, you can often find me behind my four-string, plectrum banjo, plunking out traditional jazz favorites written circa a century ago. The style I play is less Country Bear Jamboree and more Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue, if that makes any sense.

I've been a member of the world-renowned Fralinger String Band for over 25 years, a perennial favorite in the New Year's Day Mummers Parade. Fralinger has traveled literally around the world with performances that have taken us to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and as far as Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year celebration. I've also been fortunate to have played with some great traditional jazz musicians as part of hot jazz and Dixieland ensembles in the Philadelphia area.

Other Hobbies

Besides keeping this site up-to-date using the latest tech, I also helped build the String Band Database, which is a searchable listing of string band themes from the Mummers Parade with videos and parade data. It was a good exercise in using a Google Sheet as a RESTful backend.

I'm always trying to read more. Mostly sci-fi, pop-sci, philosophy, and the classics, but I'm open to anything. It's hard to find the time, but I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with my reading list. Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene are two of my more recent favorite authors, and they have each led me to some great authors who inspired them.

I like to think playing Super Mario Bros. and arcade games in the late 80s, and tinkering with DOS and Windows 95 to get multiplayer Doom going, is what initially drove my interest in technology, and specifically interactive digital experiences. I find myself gravitating towards games from and inspired by that 8- and 16-bit age of pixel art. The heavily-syncopated, early-jazz-inspired soundtracks of the games from the NES/SNES era definitely affected my musical tastes as much as the concise UIs built for limited resources affected my design sensibilities.

If any of this resonates, you can find me on GitHub or Threads. I'd love to connect.

The Legend of Zelda on my PVM via MiSTer FPGA