About

Hi, and thank you for taking the time to visit my web site. My name is Aaron Allport, and I am a software engineer and web applications developer originally from Colchester, UK.

The Story

Growing up in Colchester, I was never exposed to computers until the age of 14, where my father gave me free reign of his 1995 Packard-Bell entertainment computer. With only 8 megabytes of RAM and a 500 megabyte hard drive, I used it to create my first HTML pages and surf the web on our 56k internet connection. I used to spend hours creating music tracks on my Sony PlayStation, and would then record them into the computer and upload them to the web. I really can’t believe I used to sit there for up to an hour for a single mp3 file to upload! One of my songs was played numerous times on that web site’s internet radio station, so at least my efforts were rewarded with some exposure.

I used my new found exposure to create a track for a Levi’s jeans commercial as part of a competition, in which I reached the semi-final. The winner had their music track used in the commercial. Reaching the semi-final resulted in me being approached by a London-based record label. As a 15 year old, that’s not too bad! A shame really as the record label required all artists to be of age 18 or over. I concentrated on my school work and ended up leaving school with 10 GCSE’s.

I decided to increase my I.T. skills as it seemed everyone was talking about the wonders of “surfin’ the net”. I enrolled at Colchester Institute, a college offering practical qualifications in many industry areas. Deciding to go for an AVCE in ICT, I realised after 3 months that formatting Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets wasn’t for me. I decided to enrol again next year on the BTEC National Diploma in Software Development, concentrating on programming until then. As my college taught Visual Basic 6, I gave that a go.

I thought the first year of the BTEC was fascinating. I learnt QuickBasic (insert laughter here) and Assembler programming languages. I also learnt how to take a computer apart and put it back together again. The second year saw me learn Java, as well as web skills such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Very proficient with object-oriented computer programming at this point, I decided to apply to universities to get a degree and make my mother proud. I got accepted with Staffordshire University (which I was particularly impressed with given their vast facilities) and began a Bachelor of Engineering (with Honours) in Software Engineering in September 2003.

During university I had picked up numerous programming languages (such as C, C++, C# and more Java), and learned about all sorts of theory regarding computers. I have picked up a vast knowledge of web application design and maintenance, and was lucky enough to spend a year on placement with a company called Syngenta (based in Basel, Switzerland), maintaining and improving their weather-based web applications.

I have since left university, which included a final year project entitled “A Web Based Java Integrated Development Environment”. I am the proud owner of a First Class Honours degree. I joined a company called Accenture in August 2007, marking the next step in my journey through life. The rest, as they say, is history…

Who I Am

Some could describe me as a bit of a joker and light hearted. I tend to take things in my stride and always endeavour to do my absolute best. I am somewhat of a perfectionist, in that I have an order for things. I enjoy playing my xbox 360, jogging, cycling, and am learning to play guitar. I am also a bit of a gadget addict. Since receiving a digital camera for my 21st birthday, I have developed an interest in photography. I am a keen traveller since spending 13 months in Switzerland, taking me to sights all over Europe. I also love music, be it to relax to or to get deafened at a live concert!