I’m Stephen. I write software, garden and generally grump about.

I’ve loved making things for as long as I can remember, and wrote my first program when I was 9 years old, just a few weeks after my Mum brought home a Commodore 64 for Christmas that I taught myself to type on.

The only thing I loved more than computers as a kid was gardening. As a kid, I helped my Mum and Dad out in the garden. My brother and sister had little interest. It's a hobby I have carried into adulthood. I find it very therapeutic.

I love creating things. I love the process of taking an idea and turning it into something real. This is true for both gardening and software development. Both are highly creative processes that I find very rewarding.

Today, I work for $BIG_CORP, where I architect solutions in the cloud. Mainly on AWS and Azure. I've attained a few certifications during my time in the industry. I recently attained my AWS Solutions Architect certification. I'm currently working towards my Azure Solutions Architect cert.

I'm a big fan of open source software. I've contributed to a few projects. Before the pandemic, I was a regular speaker at conferences. I've spoken at PyCon Ireland 2019 and ElixirConf 2018. I've also spoken at a few local meetups and lead Belfast Ruby, Belfast Elixir and PyBelfast for a time.

This is my little corner of the internet where I can tinker on things. I'm currently working on a few projects, one of which is this website. I'm building this site using Next.js, which is a React framework. I'm learning as I go, so if you see anything that could be improved, please let me know (via a PR or an Issue)