Bexley, England, United Kingdom
237 followers 220 connections

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About

I'm a low-level software developer and all-round geek who likes to pick apart and improve…

Activity

Experience & Education

  • Inkbunny

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Volunteer Experience

  • Open Directory Project Graphic

    Category Editor

    Open Directory Project

    - Present 17 years 1 month

    Arts and Culture

    I maintain directory entries related to furry fandom, covering comics, conventions, fursuiting, magazines, MUCKs and other roleplaying games, organizations and regional groups.

  • Anthrocon, Inc. Graphic

    Convention Operations Staff

    Anthrocon, Inc.

    - 3 years

    Arts and Culture

    Operations team staff member: handling requests from other departments, member assistance, emergencies, lost-and-found, and counting and securing registration funds.

  • Convention Operations Staff

    Furry Connection North

    - 1 year

    Arts and Culture

Publications

  • A Tale of Two Wikis

    Wikimania 2006

    The spread of wiki technology and Wikimedia’s restricted goals has led to the creation of separate community-focused wikis. Many do not reach their full potential through a lack of focus or leadership; others fail to attract stable contributors due to inadequate policies or promotion. This situation can be improved.

    Variations in topic, audience, and technical ability demand differing approaches when building and managing wiki communities. I provide concrete examples from two: Creatures…

    The spread of wiki technology and Wikimedia’s restricted goals has led to the creation of separate community-focused wikis. Many do not reach their full potential through a lack of focus or leadership; others fail to attract stable contributors due to inadequate policies or promotion. This situation can be improved.

    Variations in topic, audience, and technical ability demand differing approaches when building and managing wiki communities. I provide concrete examples from two: Creatures Wiki, based around an artificial life simulation for children; and WikiFur, an encyclopedia for the furry (anthropomorphic) fandom. I show community solutions to issues arising from policy decisions, and describe approaches to disruption, including legal threats, proxy attacks, and influxes of visitors – and vandals – from popular websites.

    I discuss the applicability of Wikipedia’s policies, and effective methods of online and offline promotion, recruiting, advertising, and monitoring. I outline the use of featured content in driving regular contributions and traffic, and note the importance of personal leadership and delegation, concluding that a respected community reference site can be created within six months.

    See publication
  • A Scripted Sample-Based Music System for Game Environments using .NET

    University of Bath

    Modern consumer hardware permits computer games to provide complex scripted music. We describe reverse-engineering the file format and scripting language of such a system in the artificial life game "Creatures 2", and creating a component-based music editor and player using an LALR parser compiler and Visitor-based interpretation engine written in C#.

    See publication

Projects

  • Yerf Historical Archive - Web Developer and Curator

    - Present

    Yerf (formerly the Squeeky Clean Furry Archive) was an art gallery founded in 1996. It underwent several crashes before dying completely in 2007. An existing archive of its content (written in Ruby on Rails) was to close; I wrote a simple PHP front-end to display the collection, and now handle administrative tasks.

    Other creators
    • Higgins / Allen P. (archive collector)
    See project
  • Anthropomorphic Research Project - Advisory Board and Reporter

    - Present

    The Anthropomorphic Research Project seeks to answer psychological, anthropological and sociological questions about furry fandom through quantitative means, including surveys at conventions such as Anthrocon, Furry Fiesta and Furnal Equinox.

    As an Advisory Board member, I contribute an external perspective to discussions of survey results and research questions. I summarize findings for fandom publication, and assist with survey distribution.

    Other creators
    See project
  • GameStop PC Downloads (Impulse) - Client Software Developer

    -

    The GameStop App and its associated website form the sales and fulfilment channel for GameStop's PC digital downloads. I maintained portions of the App's client-side components (C++, C#, Javascript), as well as its stub downloader, installer, and the build process (InstallAware, Dotfuscator, batch files).

    Other creators
    See project

Honors & Awards

  • Ursa Major Award - Best Anthropomorphic Website

    Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association

    The Ursa Major is furry fandom's equivalent of the Hugo Award, determined annually by popular vote.

    Best Website is awarded for community websites such as art and story hosts, social networks and wikis.

  • Ursa Major Award - Best Anthropomorphic Magazine (as editor)

    Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association

    The Ursa Major is furry fandom's equivalent of the Hugo Award, determined annually by popular vote.

    Best Magazine is awarded for "edited collections of creative and/or informational works by various people, professional or amateur, published in print or online in written, pictorial or audio-visual form."

Languages

  • English

    Native or bilingual proficiency

  • French

    Elementary proficiency

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