About me
Photo © Josiah Peters
Hello. I’m a web developer and designer based in London. I design and develop the front end on IRCCloud, a web-based IRC service I founded with Richard Jones. Our office is in the BRIG, in Shoreditch.
I write open source software, take photographs, and of course I’m on Twitter as @jwheare. I worked at Last.fm from 2007-2009.
Work and Toys
I work on quite a lot of side projects. Most of these are built with PHP, JavaScript and a little framework I wrote called Borax. Occasionally I'll use a bit of Python/Django.
- Mollusc—Archive and browse your Oyster card history.
- Eyeballs—Mac System 6 eyeballs in JavaScript
- Twitshift—Follow yourself on Twitter from a year (or more) ago.
- Exquisite Tweets—Save and link to conversation threads on Twitter.
- Scrobarcode—Visualise your listening history.
- Bleepie—Review games and see what your friends think of them.
- xspfy—A liberal XSPF to JSON parser.
- Myth Journals—Annotated story transcript of Bungie's Myth game series.
I was also involved in the mostly backburnered Playdar project; I built and maintained the Playdar.js JavaScript library, and I made a playlist service called Playlick.
History
I started making web sites in around 2000 while still at school. I was a pretty obsessive fan of Bungie games and got involved in their online community, working on several fansites that were popular in their day.
I left school in 2004, and in between a failed attempt at an architecture degree at the University of Bath, and a quaint attempt at freelancing, I got more involved with the web development community and started experimenting with new tech.
In 2006 I made LiveBus.org—a website that shows local bus stops on a map and tracks arrivals in real-time. My work on this website was recognised at the New Statesman New Media Awards 2007 where I was named Young Innovator of the Year.
In late 2006 I interviewed at Last.fm for a front end developer job, and in February 2007 I joined the web team. I stuck around after the company was bought by CBS, made some great friends, and learned a lot over the ensuing couple of years. But in November 2009 I decided I needed some time off to work full-time on my own projects again and handed in my resignation.
So here I am today; taking a break, trying new things and seeing where they take me. Uncertain, hopeful, and excited.