Hi. I’m Chris.

I’m a software engineer, architect and product manager.

I believe in

• Ethical, appropriate and sensible application of big data and AI.
• Robust, yet pragmatic automated testing (100% test coverage is worthless if it doesn’t do what it was designed to do!).
• Designing systems that minimise carbon and energy usage during their operational life.
• Being accountable for the products you build.
• Empowering users to achieve their goals, rather than mollycoddling them.

My super powers include systems interface design and domain modelling, particularly for esoteric legacy systems.

One example of this are my personal projects, where I’ve interpreted the Network Rail Datafeeds or the Temporary Speed Restrictions notifications. Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to play a musical note every time a train passes a signal, in real time? I did - so I made one.

At work, I have built systems that aggregate the various datafeeds from dispirate systems within in BBC Radio which are brought together through a product called Fenchurch.

Here I am talking about it with my colleague Luke at the UK’s Radio Tech Con

(video by Broadcast Bionics)

It was also recently featured in the EBU’s tech-i Issue 44 (see Page 7) which segments, transcribes and tags live radio as it is broadcast.

This ‘blog’ catalogues my various analyses and opinions of things that I find interesting, or projects I’ve undertaken.

Recently, I made the (somewhat contraversial) decision to move from Android to iOS. And whilst for the most part this process has been polished to a high sheen by Apple, desperate to make the transition frictionless, there are a few notable gaps.

One of those, is WhatsApp message history - which is not possible to port between OSes. This missing feature has unintentionally spawned a plethora of questionable third party software solutions, and some even more questionable marketing techniques.

In this post, I’m going to explore why the problem exists, why it’s not easily solved, and the “opportunity” that these software providers are exploiting, and perhaps the people too.

Drone safety is a topic which has had particular interest after recent incidents. Whilst there have yet to be any cases of a drone actually colliding with an aircraft, there’s a definitely feeling there is a percieved risk of this occurring - which is sufficient that seeing a drone anywhere near close to an airport will immediately cause mass chaos as the entire airport is grounded until it has been removed.

I make photographs in my spare time. Although often they’re on film, but as part of my hybrid workflow they almost always end up going through a digital process at some point.

This post explains how I manage my photos from capture to archive, and how I manage backups.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve decided to move to Joplin for my note taking needs. One of the last features I was missing was the ability for me to share a note with other people - as I do with Google Keep at the moment.

I’m not the only one missing this feature, there’s a thread on the forum requesting this that’s been open for a long time, and has a lot of views. So I decided to try and help develop it.