About

Who Am I?

I’m Julian. Hello!

I am a software design engineer by profession, passionate about Matrix and other open source software and systems, and having recently been working on Subversion, the still popular open source version control system. You may find my recent Matrix, Android and Self-Hosting skills and my older CV and read more about my work on other pages.

I live in Nottingham.

What’s On My Blog?

Bits and pieces. Some ideas I’ve been thinking about for years. Some new ones. No unifying theme, though many are about software design. Many are rough and unfinished. Sometimes I go back and improve or expand them later and sometimes I don’t.

Why?

Sometimes I write just for myself. I’m finding it helps me develop my ideas, and writing them in public works better than in private (even if nobody reads them). Sometimes so I can invite others to read and respond.

I write on my own blog rather than on (say) Facebook so I can keep control of my writings both now and over the long term. For example I, not Facebook, control what kinds of content I can post and who can read it and who can reply, and I can present it at my own web address. See my post about the Indie Web.

Also I want to experiment with blogging and blogging software — initially WordPress. If you find rough edges in the system, this may be the reason.

Comments

I welcome your comments. Comments are moderated, meaning your first comment won’t show up until I approve it, usually within a day or so, though if I’m away it could be longer. Please bear with me. You don’t have to sign in but if you do the system will know if you’re already approved and will also let you edit or delete a previous comment.

Two Blogs?

I currently have a newer blog and an older blog. The old one is in WordPress, the new one in WriteFreely.

Some day I would like to:

  • migrate the old posts off WordPress, preserving URLs
  • use a self-owned/federated comments system such as Matrix-based Cactus Comments [done!]