hyperbole, conjecture, contradictions, salacious details, embarrassing moments, transgressions beyond reason, lonely secrets, undiscovered emotional landscapes, and, hopefully, some nudity.

Officially, professionally, and otherwise, Mina has been working as a web developer since the turn of the millenium. Although formally educated as a Computer Engineer at the University of Waterloo, the creative possibilities of web development offered a tantalizing combination of the rigorous formality of engineering and the open-endedness of the user interaction and presentation aspects.

Over the years, Mina garnered a fairly diverse resume of experience in the web development sector. Most recently, after three years working for T4G Limited as a Solution Consultant, working on projects for clients as diverse as Bell Canada and Tourism British Columbia, Mina decided it was time to branch out on his own in the form of fightingtheboss.

fightingtheboss is also a film production company. Mina loves movies for the same reasons he was drawn to the web: the synthesis of creativity and collaboration with a very technical world. Since 2001, Mina has written, directed and produced several film productions. His most recent film, Regret, played at several film festivals in Canada and the USA. Mina is an active member of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) and participates in the bi-monthly script reading series Lift Out Loud.

Mina's interest in photography started pretty early with his father, who was an avid amateur photographer with a beautiful Pentax Spotmatic F camera. In the early days of his infatuation with filmmaking, Mina realised that a familiarity with the still image would help to visualize stories and the world around him in a practical way and took up the study of photography in earnest.

Mina posts a limited selection of his photos on Flickr and plans to showcase his photos on this site in the near future.

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Mina currently lives in the very home he grew up in. He is fluent in French, has a passion for travel, architecture, urban planning, politics, public transportation, and using his imagination as much as possible.

The name fightingtheboss came from a conversation with Mina's good friend Scott, where they reminisced about how one of the greater joys of their 8-bit childhoods was reaching the end of a video game and "fighting the boss". It serves as a reminder of those halcyon days before responsibility, where sheer joy was mixed with excitement, a sense of accomplishment and a determination to prevail.

The design for this site was created by Mina Mikhail, with a lot of helpful input from Ryan Ming. This is the fifth redesign of fightingtheboss.com, and the goal was to create something that fit the nebulous idea of "Urban Sophisticate". A clean, modern, useable interface that allows the content to provide the flourishes was the practical aim.

• Created on a MacBook Pro (named Delorean)
• Published using Wordpress
• Hosted by Dreamhost
• Creative Commons License