Welcome to my blog

I dedicate this blog to those people that wonder why I don't make it out to the pub on a Thursday night, or in fact on any other nights. The reasons for this are not too numerous to mention for those that know me, indeed they are 3. All very good reasons I might add, but still very young and with a tendency to throw themselves at me, or more specifically my ankles, when I walk through the door.

So, who am I?

Well as you can guess from the title I am Simon Mather, and to those for whom that means nothing or at least nothing new, I am father of 3 and Head of Software Engineering for Ufi / learndirect.

This blog is mostly work related, hardly a surprise I guess, but it wont all be. Well, it's a blog after all.

I am of the "spectrum generation", which apparently is a good thing (http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/sinclair/clive_dt170998.htm). Anyway, thanks to Clive Sinclair I believe I have now been programming computers for one purpose or another for over 20 years. The weirdest system I have worked on would be programming a laboratory robot and ICP-AES when I was at polytechnic. However, the norm these days is for me to work on large online applications written in Java. It's not so unusual a claim today perhaps but then it pays the rent a little better.

Back to the plot: I joined Ufi in November 2004 to setup and lead the development team and became father of 3 in 2005 (told you). I have the responsibility for bringing to fruition the next generation frontline software solution (LSE) for learndirect and to provide ongoing development and support for the not insubstantial finance system which the team inherited. We are 30 strong now and are 12 months, or one and half releases, into the venture.

As this was only intended as a brief introduction I shall stop right here. Coming up shortly, notes on the JBossWorld 2006 conference in Berlin ...