Photo by Carina

I want to visit the stars, change the world, do something - just so long as I can get off of this planet...

Welcome to my vanity domain. I am currently porting all the interesting technical stuff over to Open Research. When that's done, I'll come back and write a much simpler introduction to me than the old one.

In the meantime, here are some projects I'm involved with:

For a living, I work part time for Frontwire Ltd developing and maintaining their bespoke customer relationship management / messaging system. In the rest of my time, I'm available for hire to do amazing technical things with computers, under the auspices of Snell Systems. In my remaining spare time, I pursue my own projects (most of which I am now releasing source for as Kitten Technologies, and experiment with metalwork when the weather's good.

My wife Sarah and I share a blog, www.snell-pym.org.uk, so our mutual friends can keep track of us. However, I've been putting rather a lot of technical ramblings up there, so I've divided it into categories. For stuff purely to do with me, visit http://snell-pym.org.uk/categories/alaric/; for stuff relating purely to our mutual affairs, instead see http://snell-pym.org.uk/categories/the-family/.

You can find more about me by exploring my FOAF.

My Amazon wishlist contains A tiny subset of the things I want

One day I'd like to:

Go rock climbing frequently.
Build a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, a Tesla coil, a compulsator-powered railgun, and an Explosively pumped flux compression generator, amongst other things.
Implement all of Open Research and ARGON.
Build a wearable computer.
Master metalcasting, blacksmithing, and machining.
Write lots of technical books.
Invest in the stock markets and all that.
Open a Swiss bank account.
Be a gentleman scientist, spending all my time doing bizarre and eccentric research out of pure curiousity.
Establish a habitable colony offworld.

Here's my geek code:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/CM/E/S/TW/O d+(-)>x s+: a- C++++$ UB++++$ P- L- E$ W++$ N+ w>--- 
PS+() PE Y+(++) PGP+ t 5+ X R+++>$ tv-- b+++ DI++$ D++ 
G e++ h--- r+++ y+>++++ 
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Click here for a decoding

Here's my OmniCode, too:

---------------------- OmniCode 0.1.6 -----------------------
sxy cm180 kg70 skb86435 ha382720 ey292a1f es#.{L} sp= Ag1979 rl? LAEN Crc(5)
anE hdd Lo51,48N-2,12W ZoA RlM Kd0y1x PeC.black&C.black_and_white&C.black_and_white MBINTJ FHS IN12 Edc
AdO.Learning PrToo_many_to_list(8)^(9).See_'addictions'_section. MvD.Van.Ford_Transit
----------- Omnicode http://www.gadgeteer.net/omnicode/ -----------

Click here to decode it.

Lastly, I of course have a PGP key. My key ID is 7371086A, my fingerprint is 306D A79D 37DE 29DE 1781 AA59 460C FF58 7371 086A, and my public key can be found on subkeys.pgp.net.