About me

My work – my skills, my passions

Greetings and welcome to my tiny corner of the Internet. My name is Simon and I am a Bristol based freelance website designer and developer operating from the South West of England. This is my portfolio; a place where I get to showcase my work and let you know what I do best. Above all it allows you to get in touch if you'd like to discuss a project.

The passion within my work lies with being creative, so designing websites and establishing branding/identity is something I do well. Having spent several years working with the web and watching it evolve I have developed a good understanding of how it works. Knowing what makes a comfortable user experience is something I am interested in and applying good design with best practices (Web Standards) goes hand in hand.

Over the years I have learnt several programming languages but mainly focus on those connected with the front-end of a website (HTML, CSS and JavaScript). Although I have dabbled in programming, my strength lies in creating what you see when you browse the Internet, how you experience it and the logic behind it.

The world of Linux and the Open Source movement was properly introduced to me by a few friends while working full-time at a digital web agency in Bristol. That day installing a clean Linux distribution as my primary OS is one that I'll never forget! A friend said to me that Linux is not without it's challenges but you'll learn so much and never look back. He was right! I like how a community behind Open Source can pool resources together to build awesome software and if you're stuck on a particular problem there is a great deal of documentation and resources out there to help you. I especially like the freedom some Linux distributions give me, like being able to customise my working environment to suit me. Above all I've enjoyed learning about various Open Source technologies that I can use to build complex websites, in particular the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). I also use version control software (Subversion) and call upon BASH when necessary.

For the last four years I've been using Drupal (a free Open Source software package maintained and developed by a community users and developers) to build content managed websites. Delving into Drupal has allowed me to experiment with PHP and the Drupal API. It has made me appreciate the intricacies of the Drupal 'Theming Layer' and it's complexities.

Outside of work – my life, my passions

Some may say I make a bass guitar sing. Well, that's not necessarily true; I sometimes make it wale and plunge to the depths of despair. Growing up with fast heavy metal and watching my favourite bands perform live is something that's not left me - it's still one of my favourite things to do.

Being a bit older now my tastes have refined slightly; like a good single malt whisky it's matured over time. I love all music, appreciate musicianship, style, technique and will give any genre a listen. I've been going through a phase of collecting vinyl (mainly for the artwork so I can appreciate them on my wall).

I'll take walking over driving - it's healthier and better for the environment; visiting Scotland and exploring the hills is something that I really enjoy and picking up the odd bottle of hard to find single malt whisky makes me happy.

Time spent with good friends accompanied by food and drink is an offer I never to turn down. The same applies for getting my head into a good book with a proper coffee, or when I'm out attending to my plants in the garden. Last summer I won a Good Garden Certificate for making an effort to brightening up the neighbourhood and I have every intention of getting another this year! The plan of attack is to stick with what I grown best – strawberries and tomatoes, I will also grow some some flowers and herbs and take it from there.