5 years ago I wrote Rgeo, a small Go package for reverse geocoding (you input some coordinates, it gives you information about the location). Today I am putting the projected on an indefinite hiatus.

I’ve been working on web backends in Go for the past 5 years, and on various projects of covering a range of ages from brand new greenfield projects to one built on top of a core that predates the Go language. The needs of these backends tend not to be overly complex, handling user management, payments, and a relativly simple product. They’re maintained by teams of 2-20 backend engineers and work with a SPA web frontend communicating with JSON over HTTP.

With my most recent work being mostly greenfield, I’ve been thinking more about how I can apply what I’ve learned from my colleagues working on older projects, and avoid decisions made in the name of moving fast which cause a lot of pain further down the line.

This year was, unlike the previous few, without any major travel. Although I did move from the UK to Switzerland, which did give me a new place to explore and photograph. Even with that I took a fraction of the number of photos I usually take in a year in 2020, which left me with not much to choose from for this selection. I chose to still put it together though because I like that this has become somewhat of a yearly reflection (even if it does take me the better part of the next year to put them together) and I thought that given it was somewhat of an interesting year it could be nice to have this record.

August 01 is Swiss national day, and one of the few days of the year that it’s legal to set off fireworks here in Zurich. I decided to head out in the evening with my digital camera to see the fireworks and take a few photos, primarily just for myself and maybe to put a few on my Instagram story (hence the vertial compositions). In the end I thought I had a nice little atmospheric photo series which would fit nicely here.

2019 was another active year for me, with a trip to Venice in July and then a long trip to Barcelona, the U.S, Vietnam, Thailand but mostly Taiwan. I only shot colour film in Vietnam and Thailand so those won’t appear here, and my film from Thailand was actually the first film I’ve posted to a lab due to running out of chems and Corona, and they were annoyingly lost before they made it there.

I was recently looking through all the photos I took during my 4 years living in Nottingham to see if I could come up with some kind of series out of them. After cutting it down to all the black & white images that turned out reasonably I had just over 200 photos so I needed to come up with some more specific ideas. One theme I tend to shoot a lot is where nature meets the built environment, which lead me to put together this series. I got the title, and some inspiration, from Robin Friend’s Bastard Countryside (watch this video for a good introduction).

Just 15 months after I posted my Singapore Architecture photo series, I have decided to revisit this theme with some photos I took in New York last September. Despite what this series might suggest, I did explore beyond Manhattan but not as much because I found Manhattan to be the most interesting photographically.

Rgeo is a fast, simple solution for local reverse geocoding, Rather than relying on external software or online APIs, rgeo packages all of the data it needs in your binary. This means it will only ever work down to the level of cities , but if that’s all you need then this is the library for you.

It’s 5 months since I posted my project Campus Lights. Sadly I didn’t manage to make any progress with getting anything changed on campus, the person I’d emailed didn’t get back to me and my exams & dissertation took precedence so I didn’t pursue it any further.

Having finished my last portfolio at the end of 2017 I can now start doing them yearly, so this one covers 2018. This includes two trips to the Canary islands, one to Gran Canaria in March and another to Fuerteventura in December as well as another long trip around Asia in the summer.