About
“Our own depth of character and breadth of skill is reflected in the diversity of the people we encounter and our ability to assimilate their knowledge and experience into our own.”
Skip down to how to get the most from this site…
Preface
This section is intended for you to read like a preface to a book, explaining the authors reasoning and approach to writing this blog.
Perhaps it’s easiest to start out explaining what this blog is not. There is certainly no intention for me to write things here on a regular basis, as I’ll be adding things as and when I have the time and then only publishing when I feel the work is of a sufficient standard to be useful. The second thing I do not intend is to monetize this site or any other resources I produce. I subscribe to the value that knowledge should be freely available to all, this is not just because I have a great respect for Aaron Swartz and what he stood for. I have also worked in Open Publishing (for eLife Sciences) and can see the immediate benefit for all involved. Keep an eye out as I’m sure there will be a post explaining more about this in the future. Finally, I want to note that this site will not directly use ChatGPT to blindly produce articles. Each article will be thought through and reasoned to stand on its own right.
That just leaves what I do intend to write. I’ll start by sharing a little about what motivates me as a person and how my education and vocation has evolved to where it is today.
From an early age I’ve always been fascinated about how the world works. After a school lesson on learning to measure things, which I can remember so vividly with it being in mid 70’s and the teacher was complaining that everything was now metric. Anyhow I digress, after the lesson, I became and sort of still am, with the question of what is the smallest thing we can measure? This really sparked in me a real interest in the world, and with physics from the time of Galileo till now still wrestling with how accurately we can measure… its hardly surprising I left my education with a PhD in experimental physics.
During my teenage years, I started to program in Z80 assembler. I got hooked at my local Computer Club in Chorley when we got a ZX Spectrum and my brother and I started typing in long BASIC programs that we found in computer magazines. Again, I wanted to find out more, I wanted to understand how the computer worked, so the next step was assembler. Later on I would also study electronics, this also was very satisfying for me to understand more about how computers worked.
Growing up where both my parents were teachers, there was always a strong emphasis on not just being able to understand but also to explain. Which to this day, I appreciate as a strong foundation for ongoing respect and excellence I strive for in communication. When I enrolled at University I did so to become a teacher, this is a career I have a great respect for. The plan altered when I realized I could get a science degree and a teaching qualification in the same time it took to just get an education degree. This plan altered again when I paid position to do research after my degree, I realized I could become a lecturer which at the time seemed like the dream job. But, you guess it, the plan changed again while I was doing research, I became a Dad and there was a huge reduction in positions in Universities in the UK as Polytechnics were being merged and the whole system was being turned into a business (I’m sure you’ll hear more from me on this topic)… I needed to find a job…
I guess this is where my blog starts, as a scientist starting a career in software, which was not uncommon at the time. Again my interested was sparked as now as I’d just finished in a laboratory where I’d spent a large amount of time automating measurements using software. The interest was in how the world was changing with this new found “power” of being able to control and automate the world. So here we begin, I hope you enjoy my posts as I write about my discoveries and explain my learning experiences throughout my career as a software developer/engineer.
Getting the most from this site
There are three ways to use this site:
- To find something specific, then just use the search by clicking on the icon above on the far-right.
- To look through all the topics of the posts then you’d be best to browse the tags to see if there are any topics you’d find of interest.
- Finally, for a focused reading experience you can read posts by the categories below.
Technical
Most of this site is dedicated to software development and its process to deployment on various infrastructure.
This category contains posts on topics such as working in teams and communication including documentation.
Interest posts are passing including, woodworking, pottery, etc. These posts will be opinionated.
Each post in the learning category is a personal record of resources and output from exercises. Hopefully you will find these useful if embarking on a similar topic to learn.
Other things…
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Please see this git repo for information on how this site is built.
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For any other information about me and the my work in the Open Source community, please visit my github page.
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My publications in the field of organic semiconductors.