Terra Firma - Turtle Crossing.

Welcome to my online home.

My site is like the local government roads department. It's always under construction somewhere.

Java

This is my coding weapon of choice these days. Having grown up on C/C++ I've now moved onto the bleeding edge side of life with Internet related products. You'll notice that there is quite a bit of code just on this site alone. Of course, adhering to the Internet philosophy, all the source is available for you to play with and develop.

Java is quite important to a lot of what I do. Not only is it helping me to achieve some of my own dreams, but I also spend very large amounts of time devoted to working on various Java API's and with Sun themselves. I also write books about it so you can see some natural bias...

I run a number of rather large Open Source projects that are written in Java. One is very well known, Xj3D, a toolkit for allowing applications to integrate X3D and VRML content into their applications. Another of my favourite projects is Aviatrix3D, which is a 3D scene graph API aimed at the visualisation and training markets (read very expensive computing systems). Finally, check out the Java 3D community site that I run j3d.org.

Linux

I've been a user and fan of Linux for a very long time. In fact, I can proudly claim that my first kernel version was waaaay back in the dim dark days of 0.12. I was introduced to it by a mate (Dave Monroe) back in second year CS. Since then I've migrated through hundreds of kernel patches, various hardware boxes and linux distros. Everything from Slackware to Redhat has been installed on my machines.

Linux is by no means the only x86 based unix that I've spent time playing with, having professionally used and developed on SCO, Solaris and various BSD flavours. Linux is by far and away my most favourite of Unix environments (I've also had to deal with most other commercial flavours too). Having spent so much getting from the Linux community, you might want to read all about it and the various site lists.

Books

One of the things that I do to fill my copious amounts of spare time is to write books. No, I'm not an attempted novelist, I just write technical books. You know, the sort of stuff that you see down at your local computer store. The latest one is The Java 2 Bible - a beginner's intro to Java that I co-authored with two other guys. There's more on the horizon too.

This started by accident and has since gone from there. Originally it was just pure VRML books. Now my latest effort is a solo book on Java networking. I know, there are hundreds out there already, but I cover things in a completely different perspective - I tell you the things you need to know to get your job done more efficiently. No "Java for Dummies" nor some archane technical book, just plane common sense, pratical knowledge built from 3 years worth of commercial Java development.

X3D/VRML

Apart from just colonizing the Internet, I'm doing my fair share of building too. You see, I do a lot of work with a language called VRML, which is otherwise know as the Virtual Reality Modelling Language. This died, then grew up again as X3D, which is now becoming very popular as an interchange file format and for integration with web services. I'm very active in the various working groups, writing the ISO standards and extensions to it.

Unfortunately, you are less likely to find amazing, blow you away, worlds that I've written. I'm particularly into the infrastructure part of it. Marrying X3D/VRML with other technologies like Java. I build the odd world every now and again, but not for public consumption. Almost all my world building comes from automated systems, dynamically generating visualisations on a server.

About

Finally, what would a homepage be without some decorations about the owner. Find out what I do, how I do it, and when I do it. Lots of other useless stuff like Resume, some pics of my toys and stuff.