So you came to read a little about me? OK, this is my Portfolio. 

The beginning

After leaving school I went to college to study Mathematics, Physics, Electronics, English Literature and, er, Drama.

On finishing college I joined the Royal Navy. I studied Mathematics, Power electronics, C++ programming, Electrical & Electronic principles, Building management/control systems and Systems Stability. During my studies I became aware of a growing electrical problem in computer based office environments. It was 3rd order, Zero degree Harmonics. I created a Fourier model mathematical analyser in MSExcel and a calculator in C++, then went on to read "Harmonics" for my finals as an engineer.

During my studies of Harmonics I realised there were few study resources outside the internet so made the web my "study home". Numerous requests to share my knowledge prompted me to start my first website. Before long I was asked to design websites for other Mathematicians and engineers. Not being a Graphic artist or anything flashy I put together some rather plain looking "content rich" pages that somehow found their way to the top of a few Search Engines.

Into the net

The Search Engine ranking puzzled me and being an engineer from the inside out, I "had" to find out how they worked. I began gathering data and putting together an algorithm to echo the results. I built a structured analysis flowchart for my results then found the SE's regularly adjusted their algorithms. All rather simple to pinpoint on the flowchart. Obviously there were minor elements that I couldn't account for but the model I built seemed to be close enough that I built a website around  a "catch all" formula. That is where I stumbled into the design engineering aspect for websites. 

I began looking at websites from several angles, not just the Design, or the Layout, or the Search engine Friendliness but other aspects, who was the target audience, what were they using et cetera and of course, branding.

I tried my ideas on myself to begin with. I had a unique name that does not appear in any other language or country. I wanted to see if I could market the makrobicz technical documentation with maximum subtlety and then increase blasé exposure to monitor the results. 

I soon realised that I could massively increase the readership if my website was available to any viewer, including the blind. I learned HTML and hand built a website according to the world wide web consortium standards spec. After resubmitting the site to the search engines, I tripled my traffic in under 2 months. India. Somehow my new work had been picked up and included in many search engines in India. I trawled through some market stats and found that India (generally) has a very different requirement for websites. The connections are slower than I was used to, the browsers were older and several other interesting items.

With the accumulation of knowledge of india I moved on to other large internet usage countries. But there was something missing. It was in the mail I was sent by the residents of India. They had a totally different way of introducing themselves than I had been used to. A cultural variable if you like. Again I conducted research on this and moved the research into other countries. 

There was still too much ambiguity for a final analysis. Suppose the introduction and messaging styles were peculiar to engineers and scientists? Suppose people mainly read my website at work and pasted in their headers, as opposed to writing freely from home? Suppose the web access equipment at work was more antiquated than they had at home, or vice versa? Suppose the majority of English speakers were engineers and few else had cause to learn the language. Suppose my style of writing (copy) was offensive? As you can see, there were a myriad of issues to be addressed. It was time to move out from the engineering industry and set up some tests.

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