Health status
In January 2022 I caught COVID-19 and have been experiencing significant long-term effects since, including severe fatigue and issues with visual processing. Apologies if I’m slow to respond to emails or DMs, extended use of screens is hard for me but I’ll try to get to them all eventually. I’m not currently accepting any engagements involving travel but hope to in the second half of 2023. More details on my long COVID journey can be found on my YouTube channel.
Last updated February 10th 2023
Speaking
Sometimes I talk about code and creativity at panels, meetups and conferences. If you’re interested in having me speak at your event, email me hi@cha.rs.
Pixels IRL
All Day Hey! Online
Taking the Web off the Screen
FFConf, Brighton
Beyond Tellerrand, Berlin
Craft on the Web
Material, Reykjavik
Timeline
| Date | What happened |
| July 1993 | Born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire |
| April 2005 | My first taste of programming, I built a small website to show off my Cinnamoroll drawings and the blinkie GIFs I made in Paint Shop Pro |
| September 2005 | Moved to Bath, Wiltshire to attend Monkton Combe School |
| September 2009 | Started my art and design inspiration Tumblr Pour Être Belle |
| May 2010 | Released my first Tumblr theme |
| July 2010 | The summer of hand-making chainmaille, but like, high-end chainmaille |
| April 2011 | Passed my driving test after six attempts |
| September 2011 | Moved to London |
| September 2011 | Started the Art Foundation course at Central Saint Martins, eventually specialising in Fashion Jewellery |
| September 2012 | Started Jewellery Design and Silversmithing BA at The Cass, London Metropolitan University |
| February 2014 | Started making videos about books on YouTube |
| June 2014 | First of three summers working at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in upstate New York, teaching jewellery-making and digital skills |
| September 2014 | Took a year out of university to develop my Tumblr themes business and do short courses in ceramics and glassmaking |
| February 2015 | Started my first adult job working as a web developer at ROLI |
| May 2016 | Completed my BA |
| September 2016 | Started Computational Arts MA at Goldsmiths University |
| April 2017 | Bucket list achievement of getting an IMDb page for prop-making on a music video |
| August 2017 | MA final show, exhibiting Hexatope project |
| September 2017 | Quit my job at ROLI to work on Hexatope full time |
| September 2017 | Started renting my first studio space in London Fields |
| October 2017 | Launched Hexatope Kickstarter |
| March 2018 | Launched Hexatope shop |
| May 2018 | Realised I didn’t like being a business person and decided to take on some part-time contract work while spending the rest of my time having fun in my studio |
| November 2018 | Gave my first conference talk at Material in Iceland |
| January 2019 | Created a mini-site about magnetic implants |
| April 2019 | Started a long-term contract at Farewill as the lead Front-end Engineer, building out the design system and engineering culture |
| September 2019 | Doubled my studio space by moving to Containerville |
| March 2020 | Launched a website for my book review videos, chareads.com |
| September 2020 | Started sharing weekly generative art jigsaw puzzles |
| October 2020 | Got my first dog – Huxley Barkman the miniature schnauzer |
| September 2021 | Moved to Brighton with my partner Brian |
| November 2021 | Started my first full-time job as a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub on the Design Infrastructure team, working on Accessibility and the Primer design system |
| January 2022 | Caught COVID-19 for the first time |
| March 2023 | Released my first NFT project, Ceramics |
Colophon
This website is made with Next.js hosted on Vercel, with MDX and Sass. Fluid design aided by Utopia. Typeset in Gentium Basic and Captain Edward. The full source code is available on GitHub.