Hi

I’m a Mortgage Professional by trade; approaching my tenth year in the finance industry. When I’m not solving financial problems I can be found coding web applications, practicing my photography, or responding to 999 emergency calls for the local Ambulance service.

I’m a typical geek, obsessed with tech, gadgets, sci-fi, and like to back projects on Kickstarter to help bring them to life.

I love tech. I’ve ran online communities, chat servers, game servers, and even taught ICT.

Coding

I typically write PHP, usually using a MySQL database, but having recently learned JQuery, I’ve become interested in learning more languages so I have started to dabble in Python and C#. In the past I have been known to write ASP, LUA, Perl, TCL, and Visual Basic.

I love writing scripts that make life easier by automating often mundane tasks; I’m a fan of IFTTT but often find it a little too simplistic and wish they’d start pushing toward how Microsoft Flow works.

Those old enough to remember the IRC heyday may be familiar with Eggdrop bots and *Serv bots such as ChanServ – this is where it all started for me. Starting on MSN chat (back when Microsoft ran IRCX servers), I’d write copious amounts of scripts for mIRC (a popular IRC client) and had dozens of Eggdrop bots, most of which were connected to a huge European botnet. I eventually moved to IRCD when Microsoft shut down their servers, ran my own server, and began hacking the *Serv code.

Volunteer

I currently volunteer for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust as a Community First Responder (CFR).

What that means is when a 999 emergency call is taken by the Emergency Operations Centre, if a patient or patients are having difficulty breathing, a stroke, heart attack, or in cardiac arrest and they are in my area, I am dispatched to the scene with a kit bag carrying various items, most notably oxygen and a defibrillator.

The idea is that a CFR has a smaller patch to cover than an ambulance, so they can be on scene with the patient quicker and begin treatment while a fully equipped ambulance is still en route.

Just last year (17/18 fiscal year) YAS CFRs were dispatched to over 16,000 emergency 999 calls, and over 800 of those were cardiac arrests. In total, CFRs provided over 300,000 hours of cover across Yorkshire, all voluntary.