About me

The kinds of things I get up to.

Filed under Personal

I'm Richard Goodwin, a web developer from Nottingham, which is in England. I like to create web pages that work on just about any computer or 'phone.

My career in computing started out with Acorn computers - the computers themselves, and occasionally the company that made them.

This led to designing and developing sites for early mobile devices (Palm III and V handhelds, WAP/HDML phones), and work with thin clients. From there it's not a huge leap to modern mobile devices.

Feature image

Games

A few old games I was involved in for the Acorn Archimedes range.

But even before I became a programmer, I started out as a writer and artist.  I wrote for the computer magazine Acorn User producing technical articles and reviews, then worked my way up to editor of the games page; I designed the artwork and levels for a Thames Water/James Pond game, as well as the accompanying booklet and producing illustrations for the teaching materials; I even helped write and code a disc-based magazine.  I was already putting interactive media on people's screens before the web and blogs were a thing!

Feature image

Website design

My early years in website making, mainly designing and producing sites for ArgoNet in Chichester.

I've worked in a variety of Internet-based companies: I was the lead developer at a South-coast ISP that produced custom servers for schools; worked in London in the dot-com era; and was a developer for one of the UK's largest hosting companies.

More recently I worked for Derwent Living, helping to make all of their online stuff mobile friendly, and writing new online systems.  I wrote their intranet system from scratch (and illustrated it), along with a customer portal, an online application form system, and their 50th anniversary website.  Then I did it all again, developing an award-winning all-in-one site that replaced the application and portal systems, along with the main website and anything else customer facing.

I also helped out with writing and editing their customer magazine, illustrated marketing material, and produced WWII-inspired posters for a demonstration in London that attracted national coverage.

When I'm not working I like to take photographs (usually with a bridge camera with a ridiculously long zoom), draw, watch movies, and shoot pixels in the head.

My days of killing Internet dragons is currently on hiatus.

Feature image

Computers

This was supposed to be a history of Acorn hardware but it just turned into a list of my stuff.

You might also be interested in my collection of old computers - I used to have quite a few, although I'm trying to cut down these days.

I used to write software for RISC OS machines in my spare time - and sometimes during work time as well!  So I ended up with quite a few systems and prototypes over the years.