| Date of Birth: | 2nd June 1961 | |
| Place of Birth: | Bromley, Kent, England | |
| Nationality: | British | |
| Status: | Single | |
| Leisure Interests: | Walking, Cycling,
Mountains & Wilderness Music & Theatre |
Projects for which I am solely or primarily responsible include:
Older projects include
Also noteworthy are my contributions to Apache within the core products at apache.org. I am inventor and principal architect of the DBD Framework for SQL integration, creator of the smart filter architecture for content-transforming proxies.
In addition, any prospective Client or Employer is strongly urged to check the Peer Review, available for me (and indeed anyone known on the 'net) at groups.google.com and www.google.com.
My education also included a year (1971-2) in which I lived and went to school in Anderstorp, Sweden.
Modelling & simulation, Operational Research.
Software Engineering for mathematical, scientific and engineering applications. "Body Shop" environment, with much of my time spent at Client sites in Germany and the UK.
R&D work in a new-venture environment, developing a radio tracking/positioning and monitoring system, with real-time geographic display. I was employed primarily as mathematician.
I was used primarily as systems expert, particularly in the company's move from VAX/VMS to a UNIX & PC network.
Research work in computer speech recognition. The project explored combining statistical classification methods (such as Neural Nets) with a probabilistic AI (inferential reasoning) approach permitting prior knowledge of the vocal tract and articulation of speech to be explicitly captured. My most significant contribution to the subject was in the development of information-theoretic techniques and measures in analysis and assessment (for which conventional methodologies were not adequate).
Software & Systems Development for Remote Sensing. I was contracted by the Engineering and Consultancy division of Serco at the ESRIN client site. Most of my work has been UNIX systems and software development, including image data processing and management, and Internet/Intranet development.
WebThing was incorporated in 1997, to promote use of the Internet for multi-user interaction and collaborative work, including distance education and telecommuting. The name was first used in 1995, for a suite of programs integrating threaded discussions and a collaborative, searchable database on a webserver: Thing is named after the old English/Norse Þing (Forum or Parliament).
Since 1997, my work has been in two parts: my own projects (see exhibits above), and contract work. The majority of the contract work is in systems development using Apache. Other consultancy work includes a major project in Web-based education for high schools throughout Europe (Sea and Space, 1998), and various Web standards and accessibility consultancy.
Deep knowledge of standards and protocols in general; I have been involved in the development of various Web standards, from CGI in the mid-90s to EARL today.
A wealth of experience ranging from low-level routeing and firewalls to higher-level services such as web and mail servers, proxies, etc.
"Distance is no object" - I routinely work with people and machines I never see. I led my first "pure virtual" project (later republished by the World Meteorological Organisation and others) in 1994/5 with an entire team I never met.
Long years of experience as user, programmer and system administrator; I was first "the company expert" in a move to Unix as long ago as 1989. For my own purposes I use Free Unices (Linux and FreeBSD) that offer a very complete development platform, but I am equally comfortable working with commercial unices such as Solaris, Irix, HP-UX or AIX for a client.
Reluctant user since the mid-1980s. Though not expert, I have sufficient general knowledge to install and run Windows, to develop software (including a port to windows of Site Valet for a Client in 2001), or to talk a Client through simple operations such as networking and routing - even over a phone whilst myself several miles from any computer!
Wide-ranging experience over 20 years, from embedded systems through server applications to the desktop. Languages in demand today include C, C++, Perl, Python, JAVA and SQL. I have worked extensively with both traditional software engineering methodologies and opensource methods, and strongly prefer the latter. See the exhibits cited above!
Expert knowledge of HTML, XML, SGML and RDF. I am developer of several leading tools for working with markup, and (not least) for cleaning up the mess produced by defective tools from frontpage or dreamweaver to vignette.
I am a long-time advocate (since 1987) of the Internet as a solution to social and economic problems; in particular it can and should reduce over-reliance on travel, and above all the daily commute for office workers. I am very interested in developing the infrastructure for teleworking and distance education.
Most of my professional work has been in scientific and engineering fields, many of which I find interesting in themselves. Amongst the disciplines in which I have significant interest and professional experience are Remote Sensing & Image Processing, Geographic Modelling and Analysis, Speech recognition, Language processing, and Evaluation and Assessment methodologies.