About
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Welcome to the codeBrane blog! This is my online publishing engine for software development and philosophical musings. I’m Senior Software Engineer with the University of the Highlands and Islands, based at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye, as well as an Associate Lecturer with the The Open University. Over the years I’ve developed all sorts of systems and applications in a variety of languages. I started in development writing PCL XL printer drivers for Windows, from 3.11 up to 2000 at OKI (UK) Ltd. in a mixture of Assembler, C and C++. At the same time, I also wrote installers for the drivers using COM and InstallShield, contributing open source code along the way, so I’ve been involved in OS since around 1995.
I mainly develop integration systems in Java, C++, C#, PHP, Ruby and Python, with specialities in Shibboleth and SAML. I’m heavily involved with XML, web services, XMLSchema, SOA and Agile development using Axis2, Spring, ActiveMQ, Camel and XMLBeans to name a few of the systems in which I have an interest. I’m particularly interested in XP, AMDD, TDD and DDD. Although I’m a software developer, my early background was in software testing so I have a soft spot for test technologies and I like to keep up to date with the field.
Integration and mobile applications, especially on the iPhone, are my pet subjects these days and I’m also an Associate Lecturer with the Open University on M887 Web Systems Integration.
I’m also a part time mountain guide, fluent in Scottish Gaelic, really enjoy fingerpicking on the guitar and am a member of the Institute of Physics and the Mountain Leader Training Association.
If you see any interesting sites on cakes, why not drop me a line? Why cakes? This is why.