About

Hey, nice to meet you. My name is James. I’m a web developer in Gippsland.

For more than twenty years I’ve been designing, hosting, and developing websites and web apps. I started writing code in BASIC in the early 1980s and I’ve been trying to make computers do stuff ever since.

I’m a self-taught developer (at university I read Australian Literature) and I’m still regularly learning and refining. Mostly I work with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. I’ve had a lot of experience with WordPress.

Want more information? Here’s a timeline:

2022

Launched the rebuild of my website.

2018

A return to freelance work; start developing, designing and hosting a number of websites for clients across Gippsland and Australia. Manage VPS hosting for large clients and begin to provide ongoing WordPress maintenance support for clients.

2016

Start working for Latrobe Valley design studio, The View From Here. Initially brought on to develop their website, instead ended up building a real estate development web platform, a web app for social media content development, and a bunch of sites, large and small, for local businesses. Improved the development, deployment, and hosting of sites and helped grow their capability from small brochure sites to complicated sites, large applications, and government websites.

Settled down and bought a house in Gippsland. Forever walking the dog, mowing grass, and cutting firewood.

2014

Moved to Victoria. Refused to pick an AFL team. Began exploring Gippsland.

2013

Start working on a lengthy project for the Ministry of Education, Brunei Darussalam, developing online resources and websites.

Lots of travel; about eight trips to Brunei and two to Malaysia.

2012

Return to Orchard (as a freelance developer) to find they have grown exponentially. Work on websites and web apps for Fairfax Digital, NIVEA, Carnival Cruise Lines, Twentieth Century Fox, Zoetis, APN, and Pfizer, among others.

2011

Back in Sydney, working on freelance projects. Start doing pro bono work for Sydney Story Factory.

2010

Took a position at the Department of Education, Northern Territory, tasked with rolling out an online video platform and, later, an iPad learning program.

Moved to Darwin and lived in the improbably named town of Humpty Doo. Never saw a crocodile.

2007

Start work for Orchard, (their second hire) in a small shared office in Rushcutters Bay. Develop a lot of websites for brands including Ribena, Equal, Comedy Channel, Pfizer, NIVEA, Universal, and Beiersdorf.

Spent a month living in Paris X^e

2004

Completed BA at the University of Sydney, majoring in Australian Literature, English, and International Comparative Literature Studies.

2002

Moved, briefly, to Carlton in Melbourne, then back to Sydney.

2001

Consulting and freelance work including time with search directory Looksmart and agencies Gray³ and Euro RSCG. Decide to turn down a job at Yahoo! thinking that something better will come along. The dot-com crash is far more damaging than expected, leading to a few years in the wilderness followed by a lot of consulting and freelance work building websites for schools, businesses, and some big national associations.

2000

Started working for Sabela, an adserving company founded in Sydney by some clever guys from Ozemail. Specialised in “rich media advertising”, basically ads built with Flash and DHTML. In many ways the standard tale of a start-up in the first web bubble.

1996

First commercial website build. This was for a property development in Canada Bay in Sydney’s inner west. Awful site from back when the standard was HTML 2.0 and everything was built with tables. Start doing freelance HTML projects while studying part time.

Education & Certifications