Welcome

I’m pleased you’re here! My name’s Andy, and this is my personal website, though I have to say I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least attempt to sell my skills a little here. After all, why pay for the domain name?

I’ve been a software engineer for a little over a decade, with a half-dozen years experience contributing to popular open source projects (notably WordPress and its React-based block editor Gutenberg). Part of the fun of working out in the open is that you can literally see most of my professional work by browsing my merged PRs, or those that I’ve reviewed. Scary, huh?

I really love the arts and technology and find myself swinging between the two areas throughout my life. Fortunately I’ve been able to combine these passions in my career, from working at a film museum for many years where I built ticketing and exhibition websites and interactive VODs, to Automattic, where as a WordPress contributer, I build tools to help creators thrive.

Ironically, the most popular thing I ever made was a Jekyll template for a static site audio guide for museums. It’s 10 years old now, but still going strong and used by museums around the world. Which just goes to show that sometimes, old and boring technology can still win.

This website is part unexpected travel blog, and a way to share photos without boring anyone, and part experiment — it’s running a small block theme I built a while back, and this site gives me a place to test out new WordPress features. And besides, sometimes it’s just nice to write and wonder who might be reading your words.