Written word
I wrote my first novella at school and I haven’t really stopped since. I’m working on becoming more focused, playing around with outlines in article writing. This winter I’m also hoping to resurrect some of my poetry and reinvigorate my blogs.
Photos
More than 20 years as a photographic recorder for Woodland Trust Phenology study. This involves taking photos of the same trees from the same angle and position each month and trying to capture such phenomena as leaf burst, first leaf, first flower, ripe fruit, turning leaf colour, full leaf colour, first leaf fall and bare tree. The macro modes on my Olympus C5000Z and Nikon P80 helped in this task enormously but have long since been superseded by a decent camera phone. The weird looks I get add to the amusement factor, so many people apparently can’t get their head around the idea of photographing a tree just for the sake of it, not because there is something more interesting in it.
Work (in 2022)
Senior software engineer for a public sector consultancy: lots of technical coaching, software delivery in multiple languages, legacy code migration, dev ops, hiring and line management.
It’s nice to give something back after a few years in the saddle.
Work (historical)
Distributed and event driven systems plus loads of cloud dev ops in the insurance industry. Driving architectural and organisational range at principal level.
Data visualisations, UI and API software delivery, cloud and data center dev ops as well as OAuth and SAML integration in the payroll industry.
Server side code for a hosting company. I’ve done php, java, delphi, c# and python. I still can’t decide which is my favourite and I swear at all of them for different reasons!
Freelance front end web development based on HTML4, CSS and PHP. Then I was playing with HTML 5 and CSS 3 but I never did crack the perfect system across all browers, even allowing for ditching the ‘one look to rule them all’ philosophy. I used to build whole websites under the trading name ‘Crataegus Design’ up until 2011.
Play
Photography, writing, music, Iai, Tai chi, gardening, walking & mouldy old stone spotting, VR puzzle games.
Home
Happily married to a very supportive Nick.
All in the middle of the beautiful Midlands countryside.