Hello.

This is my homepage, blog, site, or whatever you want to call it. I’m unlikely to post things here that often; I’m more likely to write on Medium or elsewhere.

First, my apologies: I know this site is weak. Sorry about that. I had a Wordpress-based site that I rarely updated, containing a lot of material that was rapidly becoming out-of-date. I was tempted to take the interesting stuff and paste it here, but after reviewing I realised none of it was really relevant anymore.

So, a clean start.

On the other hand, I’ve got a lot of other things to do, so I haven’t spent any effort doing this placeholder site either. Please don’t take the paucity of this site as a sign of what I’m capable of: I’ve made some very nice websites in the past, but it’s part of my day job so doing some more of it for a site no-one’s going to look at (except you) isn’t exactly my highest priority.

About me

I’m a geek living in Portishead, England, working at Starberry as their Chief Techie: a varied role, from strategic to technical, getting my hands dirty with development, architecture, documentation, training, operations, and just about a bit of everything really; working with a large team of talented developers and telling them they’re doing it wrong, ie. not the way I’d do it.

In my spare time, I geek out on various tech projects when I have the time, on a wide range of bits and pieces. I also watch a lot of movies.

Please don’t bother contacting me if you want to recruit me or add me to a database of people you want to get other people to recruit: I’m happy where I’m working.

Interesting (geek) stuff I’m doing

• I’m home-automating some things; I’ve motorised a venetian blind with a servo and an Espruino; bed recline motors; lamps and monitors around the place; and all controlled from a web interface, various remote controls, buttons, etc. all feeding into a Raspberry Pi.

• I’ve been 3D printing things with my CEL Robox which I was proud to beta-test.

• I’m playing with various ideas using nRF51822, nRF52, ESP8266, ESP32, Atmel, ARM devices to do various Internet-of-Things things.

• I’ve built (and continue to rebuild) an anglepoise stand for my iPad Pro, the iPad-Hold-a-Tron 2000™, which is on its tenth iteration (or thereabouts) after being upgraded and repaired several times.

• I’ve also experimented with three- and four-dimensional Lyapunov fractals, using OpenCL / OpenGL ray-casting programs of my own design; and I keep threatening to write a paper on the subject.

• I also have some big tech ideas that I wish I had the time and stamina to develop further. They’d change the world if someone gave me some funding and a team of people to help do it.

• I’ve also recently acquired a new hobby of fountain pens, collecting a bunch of cheap, fun, kitsch pens as well as some nice vintage and modern pens. And, consequently, I’ve also started getting inks, paper, and various pen paraphernalia; and even experimenting with making my own ink, grinding nibs, and so forth. I tend to favour flex nibs and write accordingly.

More

• Medium… various posts/articles I’ve written, in lieu of installing a CMS.
• GitHub… although nothing much there at the moment, to be honest.
• Twitter… although I don’t post much there anymore.
• Facebook… although I keep my friends list to people I know in real life.
• LinkedIn… although I usually ignore stuff on there, as it’s almost always recruiters.
• Flickr… although I stopped posting photos there when I stopped carrying a camera with me.

So yeah. I’m a ruddy social butterfly, me. One of these days I might actually pad one of those out a bit. Don’t hold your breath, though.

Saying that, I’m very personable and friendly, and if you say Hi, I’ll be happy to take time to talk… as long as you’re not a recruiter or a spammer, of course. I’m just apathetic about writing websites for “fun”.

In the meantime, here’s a picture I drew on my iPad.