Who

Ok not my greatest portrait. Or mine at all.

I’m a 23-year veteran of technology stretching back to shortly after the web was invented (not the internet – the web. Let’s be clear on that point). My first job was writing tools for architects and surveyors in Microstation and AutoCAD, using AutoLISP and C++. A company near my university town offered to take me on full-time and pay for my part-time university fees, which at the time to me seemed a bit of a no-brainer.

Lots of cool toys like tripod mounted laser rangefinders were made to map rooms automatically via RS232 ports. Lots of Star Wars jokes likely still exist in that codebase (if it still exists). Imagine if you will…

(foreach Ewok '(list cons 8 Endor)
  (setq ArmWithSpear 
      '((-3, ("GondolaShelf", (1000 . productName))))
  )
  (setq ArmedEwok (append Ewok ArmedWithSpear))
  (entmod ArmedEwok)
)

Okay so that was a reconstruction rather than reproduction, but you get the idea. On reflection I don’t think “proud” is a word I would associate with that codebase. The development communities and forums were a lot smaller, and only a handful of people were working in this area. You just had to figure it out yourself, whilst the sales guy was promising demo’s and product in the background. I worked very long hours for very little money which slowly sent me a little crackers. Lots of lessons to be learned there.

Although I worked for SME consultancies with ISV aspirations, my last job was at a proper full-one ISV in Nottingham. There I wrote new UX components and worked on customised products for new clients. We supported developers at customer organisations doing development on our products – I even did a spot at the annual developer conference in my last year there. Good people.

Spent most of my free time in PKA Kickboxing, Aikido, Bushido or Taekwondo.

I finished out my permanent career creating and running a development department at a multi-national gambling firm; gaining essential experience in performance, optimisation, security and the JFDI methodologies. It’s not for everyone and has plenty of challenges but I enjoyed most of it.

For the majority of the decade since then I’ve been working for myself and focusing on architecture consultancy.

At the moment I’m working along on the design and development of Ringo Dingo, although I’ve asked friends who’re well versed in subjects such as security and business analysis for input. Those people will get pestered throughout the course of the product journey for advice and input.

Apologies are likely due in advance.

I’m open to offers for contribution at this stage, but we’ll have to get to know each other a bit first. Plenty left to do although the design is complete from vision & principals down to opportunities and solutions.