Welcome
Welcome to my web site. My name's Chris Davies and I'm an undergraduate studying at the University of Southampton for a MEng in Computer Science. I'm also hoping to continue at the same institution to complete a PhD within the field of biologically-inspired computing. This site is a collection of some of my thoughts, articles and photography.
If I had to list the key topics of my articles and notes -- which are probably what 90% of visitors will be here to find -- I'd say: algorithms, biologically-inspired computing, the philosophy of Free Software and GNU/Linux.
If you're simply a friend or colleague looking to see what I'm up to, you might want to check out my recent activity or photography.
Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what this site's about. Thanks for visiting.
About Chris
As I've mentioned above, my name's Chris Davies and I'm currently studying at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
I'm 21 years old and I'm an enthusiastic, passionate computer scientist. I've been wandering the vast planes of software development for over 11 years now. While I've had experience with a number of different languages (including QuickBASIC, C, C++, Intel x86 assembly, PHP, Java and Scala) and environments, the most comfortable to me is Java on GNU/Linux -- the combination I've been using for around 3 years now (however, as of June 2008, I consider Scala to be my primary programming language).
Wearing my "hobbyist" programmer hat, I've explored a number of fields within computer science, including cryptography, scripting-language development, 3D rendering, game engine development, dynamic web applications and general purpose utility development. I should note that my last encounters with most of these areas occurred many years ago -- I don't claim to still have any working knowledge of them!
As a "professional" software engineer, my interests lie in developing web applications in Java. I have quite a bit of experience in developing with Eclipse, Maven, Wicket, Velocity, iBATIS, various Apache Commons libraries and the Spring Framework -- in fact, during the summer of 2008, I worked at SpringSource as their very first intern, developing in-house dump parsing, analysis and visualisation tools.
My academic interests lie heavily in biologically-inspired algorithms and artificial life; emergence intelligence, particle swarm optimisation, artificial immune systems and self-organising maps I find especially interesting. Nature is a great source of inspiration to me, which is reflected by these interests.
I'm not a religious person. I am, however, very interested in both Stoic and Taoist teachings. As well as this, I believe very strongly in the GNU Free Software Philosophy. I'm an avid user of Gentoo Linux and generally work in a clutter-free environment, favoring software such as Fluxbox and vim to their heavier counterparts.
Outside of the realm of computer science, I love surfing, wildlife, keeping fit and escaping as far away as possible from technology and civilisation (sometimes). I live in constant awe of the beauty of nature and its processes, and I love life.
Public PGP Key
I'm a firm advocate of the use of PGP in every-day society. Personally, I recommend using the excellent GnuPG tool to assist with this (since it also satisfies my beliefs in free software).
If you receive an e-mail from me, it will be signed -- and if you're of the same school of thought and would like to contact me securely, please use the following public key (you can find my e-mail address on the contact page):
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) mQGiBEi0WS0RBACS/nRhGnD71GQ9PoHZe+xG67pKAswdQzX7bsDPR5uqoCTDrGaH dyg6WwPmKuALMZ5IDMGSgKZF2jczVsOri6rhNtFJ8I1RW8v+bQ6fiIfEFcQoWWjY Vq/xmd+BmwOdJZtUOOzbeJOvxY0AFIgfeAXyoY8izHO4PiQkwn6FemeHCwCg1ajx dtca6norEsth61NUpY0TBRMD/iezicwGnd/x7LLPDI5sa/w9ZdW5rtvU1kJsqjTt zFE2r8CFYpNos5n+T32hPJLa8eKtcNzyw3I+2JBoGZhhYJ80s7voqqaegVdnh/BX r4Y6R+Dk9UOQ0Q5kDRYfcVPpz9sspMaBAuoKVjtgxfE0s4PIT5qUhgognd0iPzVE G+bfA/0aCpbxU2i5F4+9uPHfgdprnDoitB8hLRXXukpeELyeDORnDJJGOxpFhH7z vk1+6MJ6j1xufajDIP5ApCQyGNzDm3lrGG/cCcAtd9fhKd6bA8HRmT83g6Sdo2Vc Ol+LvlWYYcMtZy52ymVTwFa/5oWYpNFi3KhHhbUPeYQMCZPzCbQqQ2hyaXMgRGF2 aWVzIDxjaHJpc0BzZWFzaGVsbHNhbmR4bWwuY28udWs+iGAEExECACAFAki0WS0C GwMGCwkIBwMCBBUCCAMEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAAKCRDF3300pN1f3BPlAKCPB09mU/4m tF5sBtenQL8cGMa4VwCdEC46efsPg0xreS2KqAy24UWK2q+5Ag0ESLRZLRAIALYa QMEpSqWdeOewAyOQDMgQtNYdTjGj+MXT8EyK6F/9mTLzSaQYSUiDxyfwsrHn4kTL BIAK8bHXh6kRXHLzOyW7sgA+w5T5aVdTYLmmdLlE/f5y8NlVdERBWpqHdkb5uObV RVArhzEsKOrT5+N8NI4VMBsm1Msw3kSA+yKpgr0htu5ogEbm/HZhfZmwAKzuliMe wCeDU7rt/29mJYKBm9/AnhRWCLE+TM5bs+58AsQAC5zI54HcJbjW2kJElQLB14rS 6Mt0vFFiY9Rs6Y9qSBkoah7PtCkCiHkGeDW4kzW2wMD2U1Avind1B9uMLp3TdXRI tUISOih4NOuvOKSV8CsAAwUH/A+GQG/B39Cc9wfnY1q2iyOwsfdTOesEPLM9z3T4 lgwV9opzLx8UPUAvjx/ShETAietNJNRf2RDYa6y1k9oF3S271DJuTUw0kD1OI59p Bt/GOBANyyuMlsKQXCgZZamQjgLaAXOr2jyjYyWX9Q6LPGq/3GJdv7fA4H563T7L X+BG4xItMM1/0ZjJCy0R7UeWeiH98O7pXxuSF41hrSs3tx24vYNZ9Lnz9e/sNSwk zXBmfpE6G8i8sJrjNCXSlEwbmhv0hzd5VGHUVRJjj56gwfS/0ufIpmf2opDggWGl a7L1+Kl2zP2QqOl5GS4528DT9c0ziRgJwadPgM/NP3xug9qISQQYEQIACQUCSLRZ LQIbDAAKCRDF3300pN1f3GBdAKDNYt99Z0+0S3aVTLg6FufW6Rn5MgCeJl5anzOH 0AU4bk8Whrzt5R4LNMI= =AxfO -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
You will always be able to find my current public key at: http://key.seashellsandxml.co.uk/pubkey.asc