I am a 26 year old web developer, currently living and working in Bristol. I was born and raised 60 miles north, in Worcester, and went to Essex University in Colchester when I was 18. At university I studied Computer Science, and also discovered two of my real passions, rock climbing and Guinness.
To get some of the geekery out of the way, I'm a professional web developer, and my core skill is Java/J2EE programming. In my current position, I've found myself responsible for just about every aspect of web development, from HTML, to configuring whole linux servers. I have a solid grasp of design practices, such as CSS and W3C complient code, as well as using many standard, third party, and self writen Java APIs. I've recently taken an interest in PHP programming too, both in personal and work related projects, as you can see from the TDS and Intranet projects in my portfolio. I'm currently getting to grips with the PHP framework CodeIgniter for upcoming personal projects.
Aspects of programming I really excel at include data abstraction (inheritance, OOP, et al.) and converting concepts and ideas into functional layouts through XHTML, Javascript and CSS. At university I enjoyed file handling and processing applications as well as image manipulation, which I encountered at its highest form in a Computer Vision second year module. Working commercially with a huge insurance database has nicely toned my MySQL query skills too, and I enjoy compiling complex reports and statistics as necessary.
For the last two years I have enjoyed the technical responsibility I have at work, and am the joint most experienced member of development staff. I have also had the pleasure of hiring, training and managing three other graduates.
When I am not solving the problems of the universe from my desk, there are a few other places I'm likely to be found. One of them would quite likely be on the other side of a lens on my Nikon D70 Digital SLR. Over the last year or so, I have found a great hobby in photography. I've owned a manual SLR for years, and I'm really glad I rekindled the hobby by going digital. I have a portfolio of my photographs available at Simon Lawrence Photography.
My main muse is photographing gigs and festivals, I've kitted myself out with a 300mm lens for the latter, and I absolutely love the challenge of shooting in the dark environments of gigs, not to mention the number of free entries a photo pass can get you to see great bands! Through this hobby, I have actually found myself the sole photographer at a friend's secret wedding, with the pressure of being the only person who was documenting this event for both the bride and groom's entire families on my shoulders!
Other pastimes include playing pool, darts and cards, and it's no conincidence that they are all pub sports...! Part of 'the dream' would be owning my own pool table. (funnily, I've managed to integrate the other two into my home already). I'm a very popular character out and about in Bristol, as I'm always willing to participate or help organise events, and I can normally bring something quite unique to anything I turn my mind to.
When it comes to enthusiasm though, I simply can't deny that I do see most things in terms of websites. When I get an idea for something I would like a site to have or do, I simply don't consider that it can't be done. A quick, and immediate example of this is my age in the opening paragraph. It's automatically generated based on the server date, which saves me the embarrassement of forgetting to update this site ;o)
Page correct as of 05/04/2009
simon@srlawr.co.uk