Today we've got an interview with website and graphic designer, Ben Debnam. Ben lives in Kent, England and is primarliy a designer but codes alot of the time too. With further ado, I will introduce the interview! Please also keep your comments coming, you guys are awesome!

1. First of all, Could you lead us through a brief history of your life? Where you live, what you do?...

Sure! My name is Ben Debnam, I have been a freelance web designer for a few years now, my company is Goo Creative (http://www.goocreative.co.uk). I live in Kent, England and absolutely love what I am fortunate enough to do every day! For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in creative topics, whether its anything design related, animation, music or building weird random stuff. However, my journey started whilst at Disney World and I was peering through the glass on the Animation Tour at what was MGM Studios, now Hollywood Studios. I'll explain how in the next question..

2. How did you get started out on the web and what inspired you to get into coding?

I had always loved animation since a very young age (like, 20 years ago!), and when I found out about this thing called Macromedia Flash 3 I wanted to create my own short movies. I found that when I had finished, I wanted to publish my movies to the web, which got me started with Frontpage Express and a trial of Dreamweaver 3. I discovered putting my thoughts on the web in a way of visually communicating ideas was something really interesting to me. As time went on and I had my first couple of flash jobs I was becoming more interested in the html side of things and less in the Flash. I have to say, I did enjoy the design side more than the coding side and still do to this day but I found people wanted to pay me for building them websites. This at the time was strange as it was a geeky hobby of mine, could I actually make a living out of something I enjoyed?

3. What languages do you code and which one do you think is more 1. powerful, 2. simple and 3. you enjoy more?

Well I'm primarily a designer and a front end developer, which I think is something all web designers should be nowadays. I code in XHTML, CSS, some PHP and some jQuery. I also use Expression Engine as my CMS of choice. I think CSS and jQuery are incredibly powerful. jQuery I feel is still finding its feet. There are a lot of people doing some really great stuff with it but I have a feeling there is more to come! I love the simplicity of XHTML, CSS and Expression Engine. Everything neatly fits together, if you do something stupid then you'll get stupid results (most of my IE CSS problems are where I've tried to cut corners or have been sloppy). EE has stolen my heart when it comes to doing something more than your few page static site. I'm so grateful for it's flexibility and I thoroughly enjoy working with it. My clients seem to love it too, http://www.shearsgreenjuniorschool.co.uk and soon to get an update http://www.hygienesolutions.co.uk.

4. What sites you use for inspiration and do you recommend any to our readers?

I have just over 300 site feeds in my RSS Reader, most of which I use for inspiration. I currently like the tuts+ network nettuts aetuts psdtuts etc. They have some great articles. Smashing Magazine is another great one, and have some of my work featured in there a couple of times (thanks guys!). I always find Apple's site a great source for web gui, and keeping things simple! Other inspirational sites are just where ever I land that I like and then take a peek through their source code. Other sites worth checking out (design) would be ffffound and of course amazingcoders (Cha-Ching!)

5. Do you have any other hobbies? If so what are they and why do you enjoy them?

I've been a pianist since a very young age, my piano has been my life long friend. I'm also a very keen photographer! My other hobby is collecting Pixar Toys & other designer Vinyl Figures and have a couple of shelves full of Vinyls (it gets expensive!)

6. Do you run a PC, or a Mac, why?

Mac. For me, its a no brainer. The Mac has always suited me perfectly, I love the experience, the Apple Stores are fantastic places to be when I visit, plus I love their design. However like my friend Dan Philibin, I use VMWare with Windows XP for Cross Browser testing.

7. What software couldn’t you live without and could you name 3 reasons?

OSX, iTunes and Photoshop. OS X because it is the nicest OS out there. I love the way it just works, looks beautiful and has really crazy awesome features. iTunes because I wouldnt be able to concentrate if it wasn't for my 600GB iTunes library. Photoshop because it is where I spend most of my daily hours!

8. What’s the program you use to code in? What is so good about it?

Coda - everything in one place, superbly built app - and the guys at Coda are seriously talented folks! I used to love the code view with built in FTP that Dreamweaver had. Coda just removed the bits I didnt need, and made it really really great to use.

9. When you first started out, how did you promote yourself? If at all?

Friends of family and friends of friends. I promoted myself with a credit on each site I built. I used to talk to businesses and places I used to regularly visit and offer them a website. It was a great way to get started as you could pick and choose the work you wanted.

10. What was the first coding job you ever got?

Coding up a site for a local sheet metal firm. This was about 9 years ago and not online anymore.

11. Finally, Where can we find you on the web, Be that you're twitter, portfolio or other?

You can find me at my portfolio, Goo Creative or at my twitter.