Urban Giraffe

This site has been created by me, John Godley. For my sins, I am a professional software developer living in Guangzhou (Southern China) and originally from the North of England. Over the past few years I've lived and worked in both Prague (Czech Republic), and Oslo (Norway) and enjoyed taking part in and experiencing other cultures immensely. Before my hair turns grey (or falls out) I'm hoping to get a few more places under my belt - almost anywhere will be considered!

What started as a method to learn new technologies has turned into something of an obsession, and has proved a very suitable avenue for me to express my need to write, and where I can include random things that amuse me.

A side-project has been creating Best Of Guangzhou, a website for the city I currently live in.

Technical Details

I use WordPress (a superb and very popular weblog system) to publish this site. It has been supplemented by a selection of my own plugins, along with WP Cache, Search Everything, Spam Karma 2, and Sitemap Generator.

Everything is automatically deployed and versioned using a combination of SVN and a custom set of scripts based upon Capistrano.

The site design is my own, after first moving from Kubrick, to Giraffe, and settling with Guangzhou. As far as I know the site should work in all modern browsers, and I've tried hard to make sure it cleanly validates and is accessible.

The site is currently being hosted on DreamHost.

Thanks to Eman for the wonderful portrait - the sandwiches are a nice touch.