About Straw Dogs
[Who ?]
The Straw Dogs site is maintained by one man by the name Doug Bromley. I am a web developer resident in the UK whose first experiences started with Amstrad BASIC in the 1980’s at the age of 4. Although I spent a good few years without an IBM-compatible PC when I did get one I sure as hell made up for it by moving through the system languages and learning everything I could; C, C++, Bash scripting onto Java at university. After uni I went into working on Python, Ruby and PHP.
Its 6 months after uni I discovered Agile development, Extreme programming, my favourite text editor - Vim, test driven development, etc. Along with various related technologies such as Rails, Django and Ajax.
[The Tao of...?]
I’m interested in Daoism & martial arts and their relation to modern day psychology & physics. Its this reason I’ve gravitated towards Pragmatic Programming and test driven development as they seem to flow more naturally than the more traditional waterfall approaches and its this flow that resonates with Dao and The Way.
[What ?]
The blog was originally set up as an extension of my old site which was simply put online to allow people to download the GDS OHC and some of my university projects (no longer available). Since then I took the old site down and simply use this now as its far easier to work with.
[Why ?]
I've always found the most effective way of learning and developing is to teach or talk about a subject to others. Having a blog spurs me to produce content and talk about my work and what’s going on in the industry. I can’t produce content unless I’m reading, working and learning new skills. The main site was originally produced to put my wares into the ether. Scripts and apps I produce are often released under BSD license and when I have time I’ll often write some simple mini-tutorials for anything I feel may be lacking.
[Straw Dogs ?]
The name Straw Dogs comes from an ancient Chinese text called the Dao De Jing and to put it in context is the following verse:
Heaven and Earth are not humane; they treat the people as straw dogs.
The sage is not humane; he treats the people as straw dogs
I’ll let you make your own interpretation of it but you can get an interesting idea from this book: Straw Dogs by John Gray
[Releases & Projects]
- Asterisk PHP API - A much needed high-level API for the Astersk open source PBX.
- Mobile SMS component for CakePHP - Enables you to send text messages to mobile devices from your CakePHP app.
- emocrud.com - Satirical site along the same lines as chavscum.com.
- Google Desktop Search: The Opera History Component and YourMP - for UK GDS users to keep stock of their MP's activities.
[Contact]
You can find a range of contact methods on my dedicated page.
