About Me

I am a well-mannered, polite individual who is able to work hard and apply himself to any given task efficiently. I enjoy expressing myself and working as part of a team, while still being able to apply my best effort when working alone. I am enthusiastic about helping others and pride myself on setting a good example to others.

Skills

I have been developing applications for Google’s Android operating system for over 10 years, from the release of 1.5 “Cupcake” onwards. Most recently I am currently developing a Snooker scoreboard application with the aim of keeping my skills fresh with Android’s more recent features such as Material Design, and to improve my focus on automated testing via JUnit and Espresso.

I have many years’ personal experience of working with Linux-based systems in both a desktop and server environment. I use a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian to perform various tasks on my home network such as DHCP, DNS and a Google Cloud print server. In my previous role I have used this experience to help determine hardware specifications and configure multiple linux-based build servers, resulting in an increased build capacity of 50% and reducing build times per server by 33%.

While Java and Kotlin are my primary languages, I am also able to write smaller applications in C and C++. For example, in my current role I was able to provide additional networking functionality to AOSP 4.3 by creating small system-level services that are started up at boot time. I also have experience of cross-language communication between Java and C++ via the Java Native Interface (JNI).

More recently I’ve been looking into containerisation of home services via Docker.

Education

Hobbies

I am a keen distance runner (or at least I was prior to Covid-19), having participated in various events over the past few years including the Southampton Half Marathon and the Great South Run. Prior to Covid-19 I was regular participant at parkrun on Saturday mornings. I was a parkrun tourist, often visiting different events in the South of England, as well as occasionally volunteering to help with the running of my home event, Southampton parkrun.

I enjoy both listening to and creating music, with a small collection of Synthesizers.

I am also currently learning Mandarin Chinese; My wife is Taiwanese, so my aim is to overcome the language barrier that can sometimes be an issue when visiting her family in Taipei.

While I tend to stay away from the “day job” of software development in my spare time, I do occasionally take time with other personal projects, mainly infrastructure for my home network. Anything of particular interest will be posted here on my blog.

Activism

In my spare time I campaign for the improved provision of Cycling and Walking facilities within the city of Southampton and southern Hampshire. I am a member of the Southampton Street Space campaign, and I also create videos for the Cycleways of Southampton YouTube Channel, documenting the creation of cycling infrastructure around Southampton.