Richard Parker's blog

“Richard is a self-confessed, obsessive, technology geek.”

Hi there. My name is Richard Parker, and this is my blog.

So why did I start blogging? Ah, good question! I started this blog because I thought it was about time I documented some of the things that I spend my time on. I’m one of those folk who spend a lot of time building things, taking things apart, tinkering and fiddling until everything is ‘exactly so’. I have an innate curiosity about all things, principally technology and the environment. This blog is mainly for my own personal amusement, but, given the awesome power of Google, I am sure it won’t be too long before somebody stumbles across these musings and who knows, perhaps just one of those souls might find some of the stuff I blog about interesting, too.

Where’d it all start? I started my career as an intranet developer, writing some very bad code in ASP classic for a local council. Not long after that, the world was on the brink of the much-hyped Microsoft .NET previews, and I lovingly and happily converted from being an ASP geek into an ASP.NET geek. And that’s where it all started, really (I used to play with Perl/CGI too so I’m not entirely non-open source!).

In recent years I have focused much more on solution architecture and spend a lot of my time optimising software solutions (web or desktop based, or any combination of the two) to meet accessibility and usability standards. I am a usability evangelist and I like to make things as simple as possible (but not simpler, to quote a very clever gentleman).

Long story short, since then I have built over 50 small business web sites and now have a job working as Head of Development with the UK’s most promising startup company specialising in digital media delivery. In my spare time I consult on a range of projects and like to tinker.

I spend most of my time in the leafy London suburb of Greenwich, where I live, not far from “The O2″ (formerly the Millennium Dome). I also like to travel, when I have the chance, and my favourite destinations include Las Vegas and Flordia. Places I’d most like to visit include the Rainforest, New Zealand, Tibet, Japan and China.

When away from my PC and without any reception on my BlackBerry, I can usually be found either playing blues or honky-tonk style piano (badly) or dreaming about what it is I will be doing when I return to ‘civilisation’ and get my web connection back.

Thanks for stopping by.