User:Pigsonthewing

I am Andy Mabbett.

My background
Having programmed machines with paper tape and punched cards (at a very young age!), I'm glad to see things have moved on a little. I gave up programming many years ago, but have been involved in the design and management of pioneering, large-scale websites in the UK's public sector since 1994.

I am a published author and journalist - but (as anyone who's corrected my 'tyops' will tell you) I can't type.

I live in Birmingham and am a trustee, and webmaster, of the West Midland Bird Club, covering Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and the West Midlands county.

Web for all
I believe strongly in adherence to web standards, making web pages as accessible as possible, to everyone, and that it's important to communicate using the simplest language necessary, to convey ideas clearly.

Microformats
I am a keen user of, and advocate for, microformats (see my microformats profile), but I have some strong views on the way the Microformats process is governed (which are censored from the microforamt wiki and mailing list. QED)

I have published microformats on:
 * West Midland Bird Club including:
 * Diary events pages et. seq. (hCalendar)
 * What's New (hAtom)
 * Contact Details et. seq. (hCard)

Browsing
I usually surf with whatever is the latest formal release of FireFox, using far too many extensions (including Operator for parsing microformats), under Windows XP, on a 20" or 17" monitor at 1280x1024 resolution.