Originally a Yorkshire lad from Sheffield, I now live in Leicester, UK with my wife and son. Web development has pretty much accounted for 90% of my working life. My career began in Nottingham, where I started working for Broadband Communications Ltd (currently known as Souk Ltd) where I was a senior developer for 6 years. During this time I developed a whole host of systems, and I even had a book published entitled "Foundation Coldfusion for Flash". This taught experienced flash developers how to connect to databases using Coldfusion, this was before flash remoting appeared. You cannot get a copy anymore, but for a while, I had a book for sale in Waterstones! :-)

Whilst driving down to watch Lemon Jelly at the Birmingham Academy, I decided to leave the comfort of a salary and brave freelancing. I prepared for a quiet period where I would spend most of my time networking and pitching for work. I was wrong. There has not been a moment when I have not had work, and (touch wood) long may it continue.

I suppose the secret is the way I have built up a long list of skills, OK, you can describe me as a jack of all trades, but this has kept me in good stead. I believe my main strength is in the way I can turn my hand to pretty much any tool, language or system in both server and client side development. Truth be told, it is what I thrive on, the challenge of taking on something new and delivering to a high standard.

When I am not being a professional geek, believe it or not, I do not like to play games. My main interest is in photography. On a recent trip to Singapore I purchased a Nikon D70s digital slr with a flashgun. This replaced the Canon EOS film camera which I used to take then process black and white Ilford film in my darkroom. You can see samples in my blog. In fact, over time, you will see more of what interests, bugs, amuses and damn right pisses me off in my blog.

My work is home based where I have a neat little setup which has suited me and my clients well. Generally, I would prefer to work from home. If on site work is required then that would be possible but only for local assignments.

Communication can be managed using several digital solutions, or if, like me you prefer to just talk, then pick up the phone.

You can get a hold of me in any of the following ways:

Tel: 0116 2103410
Mob: 07968 311978
Email: hello@nextbigleap.com