Overview
As can be seen from my curriculum vitæ, I left my job as a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University in December 2005. Despite having wanted to be an academic for almost ten years, I did not find the position at Oxford Brookes to be using my skills to their best advantage. I thus decided to leave, and spent some considerable time re-evaluating whether the academic life was for me or not. At the moment, the jury's still out on that one; however, it clearly is not for me at this point in my life. I have various possible ideas for things I might like to do in the future (and other areas of this site showcase some of the things that I think I'm quite good at, and which I might wish to feature more heavily in my future professional life). Some of these things are very embryonic and undeveloped ideas, but I think they would be extremely worthwhile, as well as providing a valuable service to the world.
In the meantime, however, again as can be seen from my curriculum vitæ, I am free-lancing and using some of the other skills that I have developed over the past fifteen or so years. In particular, the areas in which I particularly work, and in which I am keen to take on more work (preferably of a paying nature), are as follows:
- Web design, development and hosting services. I designed my first website (a rather minimal site) back in 1994. Since 2004, I have been helping various clients to develop or improve their websites – for a glimpse of the sites I have been involved with, please click on the above link.
- Software development. I've been writing programs in a variety of languages since I was six years old. These days, I tend to like to write cross-platform code with pretty graphical user interfaces. I'm particularly keen on finite element and mathematical modelling software.
- Copy-editing and type-setting. Having copy-edited and type-set three books now in print, I feel fairly confident in offering my services here. I'm particularly skilled in the use of LaTeX and its attendant programs, so if you need something done in that and are struggling, please read the above link and get in touch.
- Photography. This is partly something I do in conjunction with various of the above services, and partly something I'm increasingly doing for its own sake. If you've got a project that you want to see happen, have a look at my work and see if my visual eye fits in with what you have in mind.
This list may get expanded as time goes on – in fact, if you can think of anything that you know or imagine I would be good at doing, please do get in touch. It may just be that I've forgotten to include it in the the above list, rather than I'd rather not do it!