IT Experience

OK, it's time to be a computer bore ;-) I have wide IT knowledge across both hardware and software, familiar with industry-standard design, scientific and office applications including:

Since 2001 I have been Information Design Manager at Warwick Business School, working 100% in the marketing & comms team since 2004. Here I am architect and developer for external-facing web sites as well as creative director for print. So, most of my work these days is in Adobe Creative Suite and the Eclipse development environment, where I work in Java and ColdFusion MX.

Road map

So, how did I get here? Well, after many years valiantly claiming not to be a programmer, I found myself developing Delphi 6 Enterprise MIS and database applications as an Information Systems Consultant in Warwick Business School. Such is life. I was lead developer for the back-end systems that ran the relaunched www.wbs site in 2000, using Delphi and ColdFusion 4.5 application server for linux (back in the day). I then became lead developer for the first couple of versions of my.wbs (starting around 2001), the managed learning environment (MLE) developed in-house for WBS, and continued to have an oar in the coding of versions up to 6.2.

These days for work I knock together Java servlets and Javascript, although my guruhood is in CFML, on a foundation of XML & XHTML. At home, I hack PHP and bash. Apart from those, I can probably lay legitimate claim to experience in Fortran, BASIC and Object Pascal.

I run a server based on Mandriva linux, which handles mail for me (using postfix, spamassassin, fetchmail, courier-imap, squirrelmail), as well as being a personal video recorder using MythTV and blog platform.

I have many years use of RISC OS, DOS, Windows, Mac, UNIX/linux and VAX/VMS platforms behind me, with Internet experience dating back to 1991 and my first Web site design in 1993. I also use a Palm Tungsten T PDA and a T-Mobile mobile phone. I am an author on computer-based design and publishing. For some years I was a regular contributing author for Acorn Publisher magazine (ISSN 1356-1537), also featuring in Foundation Risc User CD magazine. My major interests are in typography and the psychology of design.

RISC OS

On the RISC OS platform, I am an experienced user of:

These days, I use a Virtual RiscPC to use my fave apps.

Resources

!IncSave applet
Ovation Pro applet providing a button macro for incremental saving of documents, with distinct filenames. Version 1.00 (01/Mar/01)
!StylePal applet
Ovation Pro applet adding line scope highlighting, state saving, button macro and RISC OS 4-compatible ticks. Version 1.08 (20/Dec/00)
!Marks applet
SHAREWARE Ovation Pro applet to enable document-specific control and saving of printers marks. Version 1.03a (20/Dec/00)
!Expert applet
SHAREWARE Ovation Pro applet to enable use of old-style figures in expert character sets. Version 1.03a (20/Dec/00)
Replacement !Imposit applet
Ovation Pro applet with amended Tile and Booklet scripts, to correct printers marks/bleed bug and to make half-section printing a menu option. Version 1.03 (21/Nov/99)
Replacement Imposition library file
Ovation Pro file to enable creep for pamphlet printing. Version 1.01 (21/Mar/99)
!FontEd 0.32
Application for font-editing, © Acorn Computers plc, patched for StrongARM compatibility (not by me - I just found it hard to locate elsewhere). It is freely distributable.
!Patterns 1.00
Application for producing Drawfile patterns, © Michael Windsor (1996), referred to in my article in Acorn Publisher, Volume 6 Issue 6.