jo'el: (n). Married to Nicky; one daughter since 10/2/02 (Ellinor), one son since 8/1/04 (Benjamin); living in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. Self-confessed computer geek since 1982, Internet user since 1986, Unix user since 1991. Cheese-pop musician, gadget addict, generally fun bloke. See also evil scumlord.

Rent-A-Geek Corner

The latest edition of my CV can be downloaded here, together with information for recruiters.

I am available from 1st September 2008 for contract work throughout the UK (long term in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Humberside regions; short term (2-3 week periods) in London). Skills include MySQL 4.1 and 5, PHP 5, AJAX, project management, perl, telecomms, database, web stuff, eCommerce, domain registry operations and general Linux sysadminery. Click to get in touch

Note to potential employers: If you're after me doing some work for you, or you are an employment agent, please contact me for the latest version of my CV: the one up here may be a few months out of date and does not contain employer names or full contact details [last update: July 2008].

Current things I'm working on:

• Building a 4-rank fairground organ. At least it's 4-rank to start with, working on Wurlitzer designs and the John Smith Universal Organ. And pipes I can find on eBay.
• Building an underlit disco dance floor.
• Writing an interface to an Agfa d-Lab.2, for automatic workflow printing and despatch.
• Back to telecommunications, implementing a reseller portal for a Wakefield-based LCR telco using BT's WLR2 and WLR3 implementations, interfacing with various telcos and soft-switches, and generally having a whale of a time with confusing telecommunications foo.
• Contracting for the occasional new media agency around Leeds, mostly doing LAMP stuff, fixing projects after previous staff have left or been poached, and writing a kick-ass CMS system based around object-oriented PHP5. End clients include several property development companies, a travel portal, and a sales dealer network.
• Together with my wife, we oversee the development of the digital photo gallery site Fotopic.Net, where people can post their digital photos and movies online. At time of writing it had just passed 23 million images online, and a not inconsiderable amount of effort has gone into developing it. The original version of the site was called photos.jml.net, and I recently added an album for impromptu pictures from my Nokia N70, 6600 and 7650 mobile phones (as featured on BBC News some time back. Wakefield Express said some nice things too.
• I'm an occasional contributor to cinema history websites such as cinematreasures.org, and take lots of photos of derelict cinemas.
• The evil BBC Micro Project involves Econet, hard disks, VoIP, modems and a lot of Viewdata software. It needs describing properly, which will happen some day, really.
• I work all over the place, depending on my mood. You can find me in all sorts of cafés around the Wakefield and Leeds area, but I still have connectivity thanks to my GPRS and 3G shenanigans. I also started a list of work-friendly cafés and bars in the area, but it's subject to very sporadic updates.
• I write music, usually formula pop for myself and other people. Now doing solo stuff: you can download some of it here. Music's a serious passion of mine, so much that I built a studio in the house, started collecting vintage synths, and began recording. Now we do all sorts of stuff in the Cheese Factory, our mastering facility in Wakefield. Update: I'm back in the studio recording some new material \o/
• Much of my music ends up with a partner-in-crime as the group Obvious Pseudonym - you can download our mega non-hit Keith Chegwin For A Day by looking our MySpace site - as featured on Have I Got News For You - and apparently was used as a theme tune for a programme about Mr Cheggers some time back as well. Rumours of the demise of Obvious Pseudonym have, of course, been greatly exaggerated.

Looking for older stuff? Click here for things I've been involved with in the past.