Me, here ...

My name is Simon Ward, and I'm a software developer based in York, UK. Any resemblance to other individuals named "Simon Ward", living or dead, is purely coincidental (in fact it would be bloody amazing).

In terms of work, I currently develop psychometric profiling software in Java (strictly server-side, making heavy use of Spring and Hibernate), with additional coding done in a mixture of Ruby, Perl and PHP depending on the job at hand. My 'other' language of choice is Perl, although I'm using Ruby a lot more nowadays. Once upon a time, I developed numerical simulations in both C and Fortran (with a bit of Python thrown in) but it's been a while. I used to work in the semiconductor industry, but I'm fully recovered now, thanks.

I don't maintain a portfolio of work per se although for people interested in such things I generally point them at Velo Vision and Electric Bike magazines, for which I wrote the display and admin engines (the new sites are almost entirely PHP, the older ones are some ossified yet still functional Perl)

Because of the proprietary nature of a lot of the work I do I am often unable to provide code samples, but amongst the more interesting projects I've undertaken (besides the two sites mentioned above) are a purchase order processing system written in Perl (plus an as-yet-undeployed Java version) and numerous applications for processing psychometric profiling data. I've even done a couple of 'in house' iOS apps and act as a captive sysadmin for a couple of SMEs.

My operating system of choice is either OS X or Linux - I've been using the latter since around 1991 ie. a long time before it came trendy. I don't consider myself to be an artistic genius (this site alone should be proof enough of that) but I can feel my way around HTML and CSS should I need to.

Contrary to popular belief, I'm a nice person really.

Me, elsewhere ...

• You can email me, of course, using this link (it's ReCaptcha'd to prevent spamming, but get it right and it'll reveal my valid email address)
• I like taking photos as well - you can view my Flickr account here. There are some nice pictures of Shimano's 11-speed Alfine hub there.
• Even better, I have a Twitter feed.

I like to ride bicycles ... rather a lot.

Over the past 15 years or so I've covered over 100,000 miles by bicycle, with a peak annual mileage of around 35000 in 1996 and 1997. Despite my best efforts, I've not been able to regain that level of enthusiasm and my mileage of late has dropped off quite significantly, largely as a result of health reasons. That said, when time permits, I like to get out and about. Since 1997(ish) approximately 90% of my mileage has been on a fixed gear.

Once upon a time, I used to organise calendar events for Audax UK but finally called a halt to that in 2006 when I decided I was fed up with paperwork, stupidly low entry levels, riders who wanted the moon on a stick and more paperwork. I still organise a few permanent rides though, and these are detailed elsewhere. I've never ridden PBP, and have no plans to do so in the forseeable future even though I love riding in France.

I'm a fan of simple transmissions (ie. I ride fixed a lot) and am also a big fan of hub gears. Slowly but surely, the number of derailleurs in my possession is dwindling. My current 'project' is an off-road touring machine with an Alfine 11-speed hub gear which, with any luck, will be ridden across Australia in a few years time ...

I own other hub-geared bikes: my 'main' commuter has an Alfine 8-speed hub (highly recommended) and my 'main' Audax bike is a Dave Yates custom with a Sturmey-Archer S3X 3-speed fixed hub gear (nice hub, shame about the price). I also have a 'regular' fixed gear (a Genesis 'Day One' - excellent bike for the money) and my Gary Fisher 29er is currently in bits in the shed.

The obligatory link between cycling and technology is that I've been the web developer for Velo Vision and Electric Bike magazines since their respective inceptions.

• Tour of the Wolds 200 [PDF] [Google Maps] [GPX]
• Dales and Wolds 300 (hilly) [PDF] [Google Maps] [GPX]
• York-Stamford-York 400 [PDF] [Google Maps]
• York-Cambridge-York 600 [PDF] [Google Maps]
• White Rose 600 [PDF]
• Anglo-Scottish Rides (1000km+) [PDF]
• Eastern Peak and Plain [North PDF] [South PDF]. These rides have been replaced by DIY permanents which I also administer - entry is the same as for other rides. If you already have EP&P cards, they will still be validated but in future DIY cards will be issued. The old nodal maps can be used for route planning.

• Cycle Sense of Tadcaster deserve a mention for accomodating my left-field tastes, but also because Dave let me take his Alfine-11 equipped Koga for a spin :-)
• My S3X 'review' - my first impressions of the Sturmey-Archer S3X hub. I also wrote a short review for Velo Vision magazine.
• First impressions of the Alfine 11 - still waiting for mine to be delivered though ... however, it's a very impressive piece of kit.

• Low-power computing is of considerable interest to me, so I'm a big fan of devices such as the PogoPlug - at some point soon an article will appear explaining why I have four of these devices in Mission Control (including one hosting this very site). For an excellent example of low-power computing in action, this article on The Register is essential reading.
• I'm a fully paid-up fanboi too - I own, amongst other things, a Mac Mini, a MacBook Pro, an iPad and an iPhone. I've written a number of apps for the iThings (7, at time of writing), most of which take advantage of the CoreLocation API to do interesting, and not so interesting, things with location data. They're all available on the App Store and, as far as I can tell so far, work fine with both iOS4 and 5.
• This site is kept under version control using git.

When it comes to programming languages, I'm an inveterate tinkerer - I've been known to use the following:

• Java - most of my current work stuff is done with Java, but quite a bit of it is now making way for ...
• Ruby - I've dabbled with Ruby on and off for a few years now, but the release of the Rails 3 framework means that I'm using it a lot more nowadays. For developing web applications it's pretty hard to beat, and I'm even using Rails outside the web environment for other projects too (ActiveRecord alone is worth the entry fee)
• Objective-C - for the iThings, you understand. I've also done a few native OS X apps. Despite the seemingly endless square brackets, it's not too bad a language to use. For native Mac stuff I'll be moving over to MacRuby, however.
• Perl - I've been using Perl since I started my PhD in 1992; for file processing and one-liners it's pretty hard to beat. However, my experience is that it doesn't scale particularly well so many of my larger projects have been in Ruby or Java.
• PHP (occasionally) - I have undertaken projects in PHP (in particular the Velo Vision and Electric Bike magazine sites) but I'd not say that I'm one of its bigger fans.
• I've also got experience with C, FORTRAN, Python and goodness knows what else - this is mostly knowledge from the past that has settled on my shoulders. Rather like dandruff.

• If you're interested in my mad l33t PHP skillz, then you should probably head over Velo Vision or Electric Bike Magazine.
• If you're interested in what I've done on the iDevices then you can either have a look in the App Store (searching for my name is good enough) or head over to GitHub where I've open-sourced a number of my older apps.
• My only native OS X app (at present) is also on GitHub - it's a disk cataloguer inspired by iOmega's FindIt application, which doesn't run on current versions of OS X. It's open source, and given the lack of complaints from my co-workers it appears to work as well.