simon @ thisdomain
I am a 27 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 in life, rock climbing and Guinness.
Through the week, I'm a professional web developer, and my core skill is Java/J2EE programming on a Jboss/Tomcat server with MySQL database. In my current position, I am responsible for just about aspect of web development work, from front end design to server management, as well as requirements gathering and first line support. I have two years of commercial PHP programming, which has largely involved migrating existing online Java applications to new PHP equivalent platforms on the Drupal content management system.
Aspects of programming I really excel at include data abstraction (inheritance, OOP, et al.) and transforming 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 large insurance databases has toned my MySQL query skills nicely, and I enjoy compiling complex reports and statistics as necessary.
Throughout my career I have often found myself with varying positions of responsibility. I had the task of hiring and leading a small team of developers at InsuredRisks, and have also found myself self-managing whole projects on my own to ensure they are delivered up to standard and on time.
When I am not solving the problems of the universe from my desk though, there are a few other places I'm likely to be found. One of them would quite likely be behind the lens of my Nikon D300 Digital SLR. Over the last few years, I have found a fantastic hobby in photography. I've owned a number of manual SLR cameras over the years, and I'm really glad I rekindled the hobby by going digital. I have specialised in music photography, both in a live concert and staged photoshoot context. There is a portfolio of my photography work available at Simon Lawrence Photography.
Other pastimes include playing pool, darts and cards, all of which I enjoy practising in the comfort of my local pub. I've entered small-time darts competitions, but am yet to register my first victory. I go rock climbing every week at one of Bristol's indoor climbing centres, and when the weather permits, I enjoy mountaineering, mountain biking, and mountainboarding in the great outdoors as well. Luckily, and amazingly, I'm also yet to register my first broken bone.
When it comes to enthusiasm though, I simply can't deny that I do see most things in terms of programming. When I get an idea for something I would like a website to do, I simply don't consider that it can't be done.
Page correct as of 14/02/2011