I'm a 40-something year old self-thought computer hacker. I run a business solutions & consulting firm and in my spare time create and ship products (mostly web apps).

More about me, what I like and what I do

• Travelling, for the last 10 years I've been travelling around the world leading a largely nomadic life.
• Technology – I’m passionate about Computers but anything of a technical nature interests me. I like figuring how things work, and tinkering with them.
• I am also a member of the Irish Radio Transmitters Society although I haven't used the radio waves for some time now...
• Music – I love music, and cannot be without music for extended periods of time. I’ve been told I have a broad taste in music. When coding I’ll normally stick on a pair of comfortable headphones and probably listen to something like Radio Paradise, or SomaFM's Groove Salad or Beat Blender.
• I love Snowboarding but unfortunately it doesn’t snow much in Ireland so I'll usually find a foreign snowy mountain cap or two to Snowboard on once a year at least.

Work (& play)

I have been programming and hacking with computer systems for over 30 years. I'm a big supporter of the free software movement and open-source. As a result I work primarily with open-source technologies, mostly Ruby, Rails with Coffeescript. However I've years of experience with the usual suspects too, such as PHP, PERL, Javascript/jQuery etc. Most of my work these days revolves around the web but occasionally I may still whip up a traditional Windows based Application using C# or Borland Delphi. I'm a huge Linux/UNIX fan and spend the majority of my time in a terminal - my editor of choice is a heavily customized Vim. My primary operating system of choice is Debian Linux.

I am a big UNIX/Linux and FSF enthusiast. I work with and administer a host of Linux systems on a daily basis. Back in the day I struggled with patchy dialup connections to the internet from my home location but then once broadband began rolling out in Ireland, I eventually figured something out.