About

 

I have been professionally developing software and leading IT teams for over twenty years in various industries from telecommunications and home entertainment to social media and bitcoin trading. Working for such prestigious customers as Mars, Sony and Racal I have gained extensive experience of the full development cycle.

In the last ten years I have focussed on developing software for the web. I started off hand-crafting sites in HTML/CSS until I discovered all of the amazing Free/Libre Open Source Software out there (big fan by the way) and moved into JavaScript and PHP. 

My main foray into JavaScript has been with Google Apps Scripts – a cloud based scripting language for adding any functionality Google haven’t come up with yet; tying together the Google Apps (Calendar, Docs, GMail, etc). I contribute to the open source project Flubaroo, an quiz marking/grading script. My most significant features to date have been automatic grading (as submissions come in rather than once all the submissions are in) and number range answers. And I have personally developed Rose Task Manager, a team task manager that has a Google spreadsheet at its heart and uses GCalendar to schedule regular events, and Colour Scales a script to automatically colour a range of cells depending on their values.

The PHP work has mainly been with Content Management Systems: I have created sites using CMS Made Simple (CMSMS, my favourite up to a couple of years ago); Typo3 (a bit techy but incredibly powerful); a couple in Joomla and Drupal and, my present favourite, WordPress. I resisted WordPress for a while because of its blog roots and stuck with CMSMS, but it finally won me over and it’s my CMS of choice these days. In more detail my PHP work has involved customising  WordPress All-In-One-Event-Calendar plug-in and proprietary geolocation plugin (wp_easy_geo) to add geo-location functionality and display the event time local to the user, I’ve also made various small tweaks to PHP code in customising CMS templates.

I spent the first ten years of my programming career developing embedded software in data communications, set-top boxes, card-payments terminals and vending machines. These were developed in a combination of ASM, C and C++.

Other solutions I have created are:

• Windows based Card Payments/APACS test program in Visual C++/MFC;
• Animal sanctuary management system using an Access database/Visual Basic;
• Loyalty card system using an Access database/Visual Basic;
• Talent management website with an Access database/ASP backend.

My main development machine runs Linux Mint.

You can find more details of specific projects on the Portfolio page or in my CV/resume.

Please get in touch if I’d be able to help with any of your projects.

A little personal history …

I grew up not too far from where I am now, in the Welsh  border town of Oswestry. I graduated with a first class degree in Mechanical Engineering from Warwick University in 1990, then took a year out to travel before starting work as a software engineer in Basingstoke. I went freelance in 1997 and settled in West Wales, however this involved a lot of working away from home so in 2003 I decided to see if I could make a living locally. I did some IT and Maths tutoring, a bit of gardening, living willow sculptures, sold all of my surplus on eBay and finally settled back with PCs doing repairs and website work. With the development of the online freelancing market things have come full circle and I’m now back to my first love, programming, working as a web developer.  When I’m not at my laptop, until my daughter is old enough to take paragliding, rock-climbing or snow boarding with me,  I’m hanging out with my family, reading or hill-walking. I have also got an interest in meditation and anything to do with maths or science.

Should have hung onto that MZ80K.

Contact me!