About Me
I guess the first thing that springs to mind is to start with some sort of origin story, but the thought of seemingly trying to market myself using relatable human stories for wider audience consumption feels somewhat contrived so I'm going to skip it. Sorry ^_^. Instead, you can find more detailed information about some of my various interests below.
Critical Thinking & Learning New Skills
I'll start with this as a more broad interest, since it pretty much frames most of my other specific interests. Simply put, I quite enjoy troubleshooting, and as a result I like to improve my critical thinking and practical skill set at pretty much any opportunity. I should mention that I'm much more of a pragmatist than a perfectionist (which hasn't always been the case), so I tend to only learn skills up to the point that they're useful in a high percentage of situations. And when I state skills, I don't mean learning knowledge in the conventional sense. I rarely ever memorize knowledge explicitly unless it's required within a time-critical situation; instead I favour to understand the context of the subject, alongside where to acquire a reference to the knowledge should I need it. I also don't tend to make an effort learning things that are inherently transient, and instead prefer to favour learning concepts and theory. I do this a lot within the realms of software and IT; I'll chose to favour understanding how a particular technology works, rather than the implementation details for a particular product. This tends to result in me being able to pick up new technologies very quickly, which I consider to be a much more practical skill in and of itself. This will be touched upon more within other areas of this site.
My primary developer rig (rear wall). It's still a work in progress.
Software Development & Network Design
This interest is inherently born out of my interest of critical thinking, likely because it has the largest potential scope for applying critical thinking to real world problem solving; almost every problem can be manifested within software. My core interests are within artificial intelligence, something I hope to get back into researching (another interest in a long line of interests), but lately I've been concentrating more on the practical side of building a development platform that encapsulates my desire of learning things. More on this can be found within the business section the site. I've been fortunate enough in a previous job position to have been given the opportunity to design and implement a company-wide PCI-DSS Level 1 network, as well as handle the migration from the previous incarnation of the company network with no impact to the business. Again, the various skills that I acquired to be able to achieve this can be found within the business section of the site.
My primary developer rig. The standing desk and graphics tablet really come in handy during video calls
Music
I'm a huge fan of various styles of music, although lately I've been listening to a lot of old progressive rock and instrumental jazz fusion. I tend to gravitate towards music that has melancholic overtones, conceptual "movement", or that has some nostalgic value. As someone who played a lot of video games as a child, I have a lot of love for video game OST's, and so a lot of nostalgic video game music makes it's way into my daily playlist. I also enjoy learning to play instruments, and I have a project that combines my love of this along with video game music which can be found in the projects section of the site. I have some old recordings of short original compositions from about 10 years ago that I may make available, however I'd have to weed out the tracks where the tuning and intonation on the guitar aren't out (which is most of the tracks).
Still got a bit of work left in the drum corner.
Japan
I love Japan, maybe ever since I started watching Dragon Ball Z back "in the day". I'm mainly a fan of the manga and anime produced there (although I also read some manhwa from South Korea, so the media isn't strictly limited to Japan). I tend to end up reading a lot more "slice of life" stuff nowadays, so I suspect I'm deeper down the rabbit hole than a typical reader of Weekly Shōnen Jump... ^_^. I did start learning the language, but I can really only actively pursue so many interests before it becomes unmanagable, so it's another thing that's on the "to-do" list. I have been to Japan once on holiday, and I'm definitely looking for a second trip there soon.
Shinjuku, Tokyo
Rambling
Of course I mean in the outdoor walking sense. I like to go on countryside walk's when I can, mainly as a way to unwind from the more technical aspects of my daily routine. Of course walking won't necessarily stop me thinking about the technical aspects of work/interests, and I do often tend to figure things out easier when I'm out having a walk. Since I work primarily on a computer most of the day, it also helps me maintain my health to a degree. I quite enjoy sports (partaking more so than spectating), and would quite like to join a tennis club, but again I only have so much time in the day. In my school days I was a member of both the indoor and the outdoor athletics team, and was part of the Birmingham Edgbaston area team in an athletics event (I don't remember the details, I just remember being blitzed on the track by people who were much more invested in it than I was ^_^).
A visual metaphor, perhaps?
DIY
I have a bit of a passion for trying to accomplish things myself, and so no matter how big the task I tend to try and find a way of accomplishing it using the fewest resources possible. As someone who doesn't come from a well-to-do family, I'm very frugal when it comes to certain aspects of my life (the only real exception being single malt scotch whisky; Japanese single malt and Isley single malt scotch are a guilty pleasure of mine...). As such, rather than buying something that I require as-is from a shop, I tend to try and find ways to save myself money in the long term by building them instead. I stated "long term" because of course building one thing after purchasing lots of tools will most certainly yield a higher cost than simply buying that one thing. So I like to purchase tools, and then look to utilise them in projects that as a result yield a product that would generally be more expensive to purchase as-is. I also get to learn new usable life skills as a result, and so I tend to attribute the time spent on labour as the cost of learning those skills. An example of one of the larger projects can be found at the projects section of this site, where I built a garden office.
I also built the bench from some spare timber; the cat arrived pre-assembled.