Geoff Wagstaff's blog

Could I be any more original with the title?

So I finally decided to create a personal blog, the reason for which originates partly from a desire for something new and different, and partly because I’ve always known I would eventually and have procrastinated for too long. Yet most of all I think it’s because I spend much of my time programming and doing mathematical and logical stuff, and need to exercise my writing and literary skills more. I studied Maths, Physics and English Literature at A-level, and I think it’s important I maintain the literary side of that skillset as much as the ruthlessly logical and analytical mathematics, physics and programming I “indulge” in these days.

Let my introduce myself. My name’s Geoff Wagstaff (@TheDeveloper on twitter) and I am co-founder and systems engineer/developer over at GoSquared, which makes nice shiny things like LiveStats and the stuff on Liquidicity. What do I do? Loads of different things. My element is developing Web applications based on primarily open source web technologies (PHP, MySQL, Javascript (jQuery, mootools), HTML & CSS (of course)), with these applications often residing in, or working with The Cloud. I also dabble in systems administration, such as working with Linux servers and designing, developing and implementing scalable systems in the cloud. For example, GoSquared and all of its services have been built by us at GoSquared from the ground up to run on Amazon Web Services EC2.

While away from the web, I enjoy all kinds of sports particularly rugby, swimming and tennis and try my best to stay in shape. The beer belly has not got me. Yet. I also love spending time with the missus (she’s great, it’s not easy being a geeky tech-enthusiasts’ girlfriend!) crazy mental smash-ups with my friends, free stuff, posh dinners, going places (my recent international travels include Spain, Holland & France) TV whenever I get the chance to watch it, awesome movies and quality TV series’ like Peep show, Hustle and Gray’s Anatomy.

I am unhealthily obsessed with mind-numbing music such as Techno (any forms, tech-trance, minimal techno), trance, drum & bass, house and breakbeat but do enjoy some “normal” music from time to time.

Currently I spend most of my time working with James Gill (@gosquared) and James Taylor (@floopily) pioneering our new Web app, LiveStats, version 2 of which was released a couple of days ago. A lot of the stuff I write about on this blog will be related to GoSquared and our projects, along with other interesting things I encounter along the way that I consider blog-worthy.

While I know this sounds a lot like some kind of resume or personal statement, I hope it gives you more of an insight into who I am and what I’m about! I’ll try to blog whenever I can, or whenever I think of anything interesting to say. Whichever comes first ;) And maybe if anyone actually bothers to read my ramblings, they can comment and discuss them with me.