Welcome
Jonathan Brain is a web developer based in Brighton, UK. This is his personal site.
So, what is all this...?
Several things. That's the short answer.
I've been running my own website on-and-off since about 1995, most of the time as an exercise in maintaining an internet presence without actually having anything to publish. This changed in 1999 when, while travelling abroad in Asia, I adapted the site to relay stories and pictures of my travels to friends and family back home. For the first time I had some worthwhile content.
Sure, it was clunky (most of it was written on the fly in internet cafes during rainy days in India, with images captured from poorly developed photographs using whatever scanner was available), but when I arrived back home I taught myself JavaScript and gave the site an overhaul (including ditching the text and re-scanning the photos), creating what's now become Pieces of Asia (1999-2001).
A second trip, to South America this time, gave me the opportunity to create a similar site. This time I wanted to create an on-line diary - a blog where my wife, Cathie, and I could publish both stories and photographs from our travels easily and simply, and from where they could be read, equally easily, by anyone else. This second journal, Postcards from Latin America (2003-2004), was much more sophisticated from the start, and - changed little from the original - remains the most substantial content of this site.
...and what does it all mean?
Well, since completing Postcards from Latin America I've decided I want to do this - web development/design - full time. So, continuing from where I've started, this site is to be my initial attempt at creating a portfolio. Currently, I work for the New Media arm of ILN Group developing sites for GNER, South West Trains and others.
In the meantime, however, it continues to be somewhere where Cathie and I can pin-up our notes to the world.