About me
I'm Paul. I live in Scotland, I've been writing software for a living since 1998, and my life outside work is a happy mix of school runs, muddy boots and a small boat on the Firth of Forth.
Job number one
Before anything else on this website, I'm a dad, and I do it full time and on my own. It is the hardest, funniest and most rewarding thing I have ever done, and nothing on my CV comes close.
It has also made me better at my day job. You learn to plan properly, prioritise ruthlessly, stay calm when everything goes wrong at 7.55am, and explain complicated things to someone who will keep asking "but why?" until you actually understand it yourself.
It does mean that family comes first. I think that makes me easier to work with, not harder: I'm organised, I say what I can do, and then I do it.
Four-legged friends
I used to volunteer with Bullies In Need, a rescue for English Bull Terriers. The rescue has since closed, but the dogs it helped, and the people who gave them sofas to sleep on, are not something you forget.
Around the same time, in the mid 2000s, I built bullmania.co.uk: a gallery where visitors could show off their bull terriers, with articles on training and health alongside. Rescue work took over and the site sat quietly for a long time, so in 2026 I rebuilt it from scratch. Every dog from the original gallery came along, and members now have their own blogs and galleries.
Bull breeds get an unfair press. In my experience they are clowns with big hearts who mostly want to sit on you. If you're thinking about getting one, please look at a rescue first.
Away from the desk
My boat is a 27ft Colvic Salty Dog, and home waters are the Firth of Forth. There is nothing quite like switching the engine off and letting the wind do the work.
Sailing is problem solving with consequences: the weather, the tide and the boat all get a vote, and none of them care about your plan. It is also the one place where nobody can ask me to "just quickly look at something".
Scotland makes this one easy. My favourite local hill is Dumyat: not the biggest, but the view from the top is worth every step. There are plenty of good walks on my doorstep too, the canal walk among them, for days when the legs vote against going uphill.
When the tent comes out, it is usually heading for the Trossachs or the Highlands. I can confirm that everything tastes better cooked on a camping stove, and that there is no such thing as too many dry socks.
Coding is my job and my hobby, which I'm told is a little odd. At home I get to build whatever I like, however I like: frameworks, server tools, websites, and occasionally a game engine.
Some of it is on the projects page.
A fun fact
My first career was as an apprentice horologist at Hamilton & Inches, from 1990 to 1995. Mechanical watches are tiny, precise machines where every part has a reason to be there and a clumsy fix shows up straight away.
I then studied software engineering at Napier University and swapped tweezers for a keyboard. The habits stuck, though: patience, care, and a strong dislike of leaving a loose screw inside the case.