About me
Photo © Josiah Peters
I’m a computer programmer based in London and Oxfordshire. I design and build websites, and I’m learning to write desktop software for the Mac. I worked as a web developer on the team that built Last.fm. Now I’m a hobbyist and troublemaker at large. Here’s my CV.
My main obsession at the moment is Bleepie. A website for sharing video game reviews with friends.
I’m one of the core team on the Playdar project; I built and maintain the Javascript library, and I’ve also been working on a music playlist service called Playlick.
I publish open source software, take photographs, and of course I’m on Twitter. Also on Twitter, I curate web TV recommendations and Carl Sagan quotes.
I cut my teeth on the web in around 2000, while still at school, an avid gamer and Bungie fan. Before their later successes with Halo, Bungie had released a series of games called Myth. I found my way into the online community that sprang up around these games, and soon found myself working on several popular websites devoted to them. Many of these have since faded from the web, but some are still going strong. Myth Journals is an annotated archive of the Myth story, using the original text, imagery, sound and video from the games to recreate the atmosphere that got me hooked in the first place. Project Magma is a community of developers, modders and artists who are still releasing updates for Myth, modernising a game that’s no longer being maintained by the original developers. I designed their website. And I also designed The Tain—a download archive for Myth mods and expansions.
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 technologies.
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 next 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.