Hello. I’m Michael Mistretta, and welcome to my weblog.

I am 15, and live in a beautiful little town just north of Toronto, Canada. I am a full-time student, currently entering my junior year of high school. Most of the things I’m passionate about are outside of school however: this weblog, the Discovr podcast, and a new endeavor—The Plank. Aside from my online projects, I travel each year across the world on missionary trips with Global Expeditions.

I’ve been to South Africa, Panama, and Zambia; I love to write; I love to shoot and edit videos; I have a sister that adores animals; I won the Scrabble championship at my school, and I’m 6′ 3″.

I am also a Christian—which in this day and age can mean many different things. I don’t know what kind of Christians you’ve encountered, but I’ll give you the biblical definition: Someone who believes that everyone has “sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God”, thereby recognizing their need for a saviour. Someone that believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and who died and rose again to save us. Someone who chooses to follow Jesus Christ in everything he does. That is who I am.

Publishing

I began MichaelMistretta.com on January 1st, 2008. It is powered by the excellent WordPress CMS, and hosted on Site5 (soon to be Media Temple). WordPress is the only CMS I’ve ever used over the long term, and it does everything I need while remaining extremely flexible. I use Mint to track my stats, and Feedburner to publish my RSS feed. All articles and linked list entries are written and edited in MarsEdit.

This blog is built upon people that can write much better than myself. Through their consistent writing, they have inspired me to author a weblog of my own. I write MichaelMistretta.com for a second version of myself, attempting to make every word a living reflection of who I am, and what I’m passionate about.

Macintosh Workspace

My desk is where I can sit down and work—from editing photos to reading my favourite blogs, to writing articles from MichaelMistretta.com. My main machine is a 15-inch MacBook Pro and is my first Macintosh after switching from a crashing and error-prone PC. It’s served me well, although the 15″ screen is limiting when it comes to photo editing, and now has me eyeing the ACDs quite closely.

My desk is always clean and minimalist, and I find it hard to focus when it’s not. I require loud music, ambient lighting, and turning off Twitterrific in order to enter the Creativity Zone.

While I’ve tried to organize my thoughts on paper, there is a block somewhere between my mind and my hands. I use Things for all my task management—an outstanding application from Cultured Code which can simply be defined as productivity for the rest of us.

On the go, I bring my iPhone everywhere, and use it as my primary communication hub. Phone calls, emails, and tweets all come to my phone. I also scribble blog post ideas and thoughts down on it during the day, and use it to catch up on RSS when there’s bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way home from Toronto (hopefully not while I’m driving).

Photography

While photography has always been a big part of my life, I’ve just recently discovered my passion for it by purchasing my first digital SLR, a Nikon D40x. I’ve been thrilled with the selection and quality of Nikon products and lenses, and highly recommend them to any aspiring photographer.

I travel every summer on a missionary trip to some remote village on the other side of the world, and photography is a big part of that. It allows me a means to bring what I saw back home. I’m looking to upgrade to a Nikon D300 in the near future, as the low-light performance and advanced AF would help when shooting in intense conditions around the world.

Contact

The best way to get in touch with me is email. You’re welcome to contact me if you have a question, comment, or just want to point out a typo.

You can also find me on other sites across the Internet:

• Follow me on Twitter
• View my photos on Flickr
• Add me on Facebook