// LOADED 1983 - STILL RUNNING
BSc · CITP · MBCS
Still coding. Still creating. Still wondering, “What if I built this…?”
Hey there! I'm Ron, a software polymath, product builder, and long-term survivor of multiple tech extinction events.
I've been building software since 1983, from the early days of 8-bit machines to today's AI revolution. I've lived through every major shift in modern computing and built software in all of them.
I'm a veteran full-stack programmer based in Solihull, England, with four decades in the commercial software trenches. I've delivered products for leading UK and global companies, built SaaS and e-commerce platforms, and founded a string of my own micro-businesses along the way.
Now I'm embracing the next big shift: AI. These days, I've teamed up with fellow tech veteran Phil Spilsbury as The Software Mavericks, building AI-driven engineering pipelines, a connected sci-fi RPG universe, and browser-based developer and marketing tools.
I've reinvented myself every decade so far. No plans to stop now.
In my younger days, long before the microchips took over, I tap-danced my way to a Gold Award and recorded a 14-track Christmas cassette album with a little help from a then-unknown Steve Craddock, now of Ocean Colour Scene. Then the home-computer boom burst into our living rooms, and everything changed. A few decades (and countless keyboards) later, I'm a proud life Member of the British Computer Society and a Chartered IT Professional.
By the late '80s, I was working with UNIX on a STAR Mightyframe before moving to one of the UK's biggest energy companies, surrounded by early IBM PCs and ICL mainframes. Lotus 1-2-3, dBase III and Clipper. Names that still bring back memories. Those were the days! I still remember writing complex QueryMaster queries on dumb terminals, green text glowing on black screens. Come the '90s, I'd gone pro at a proper software house, hand-coding Micro Focus COBOL for some of the world's biggest financial institutions.
As the millennium approached, I helped fend off the Y2K bug and even rescued an ageing newspaper distribution system, making sure the morning papers kept rolling! Then came the web revolution, building early browser-based applications when the internet was still dial-up and dangerous. The 2000s brought more adventures, including co-creating an early Windows Mobile app that let users switch SIM cards without rebooting.
Meanwhile, since the late '90s, I've been at the heart of the evolution of System21, an enterprise software product running on IBM's legendary AS/400, later known as iSeries, System i and now IBM i. I've played a major role in transforming its user interface from green screens through Visual Basic, Java Swing and Jacada to HTML5, powered by WebSockets and IBM 5250 comms. All while navigating an endless parade of technologies promising to change everything. Some came and went. The coding never stopped.
Along the way, I've also found myself wearing the hats of technical architect, development lead and application security specialist, tackling everything from single sign-on and system migrations to software vulnerabilities and supply-chain security. Because apparently, writing the code was never quite enough!
Over the years, I've worked across just about every sector going: banking and finance, energy, logistics, hospitality, retail, manufacturing, software and more. I've written code for organisations of every size, from global blue-chip corporations and investment banks to mid-sized firms, startups and my own micro-businesses, both in the UK and far beyond. If it needed software, chances are I've had a go at it.
The Software Mavericks started life back in 2014 as The Covert Formula, later becoming TCF Software before adopting our current name in 2023. Different name, same habit of building things!
Loading project manifest… 8 projects found:
The code is disposable
A more persistent way to build software. Describe your application once, then generate, replace and regenerate the code beneath it. Games, apps, worlds, ideas: map it first, implement it second. What if an application could outlive its source code?
One persistent world
A connected science-fiction RPG universe set 300 years in the future, spanning Earth, Minerva-6 and beyond. Mine, trade, survive and influence a living industrial civilisation built around systems, not scripted set-pieces. A world that keeps moving whether you are there or not.
orebituary.com →Obfuscate & Minify
A browser-based build tool that minifies and obfuscates HTML, CSS and JavaScript together, with no install and no build server. Encode strings, flatten control flow, apply code virtualisation and hardening presets, entirely client-side. Currently in-house only, but we may go public next year!
Your social posts, supercharged
Upgrade your existing membership of TextZformatter to Eliza, the built-in AI assistant, to write brand-new social posts from scratch or sharpen the ones you already have, so you always stand out from the crowd.
textzformatter.com →Free software tools
A little collection of useful online tools, built by The Software Mavericks and completely free to use. From Unicode text readers and normalisers to speech dictation, word counting and AI-powered emoji bullet lists, there's something for anyone who works with words. No subscriptions, no complicated setup, just handy little utilities doing what they do best!
thetoolsfoundry.com →Stand out from the crowd
Ever wished you could add a little personality to those plain-looking social media posts? TextZformatter brings Unicode formatting to the rescue, with bold, italics, fancy fonts, thousands of emojis, special characters and even a built-in screen reader. Create, format, copy and paste into your favourite social platforms. Who said text had to be boring?
textzformatter.com →Smarter link sharing
Why settle for shortening a URL when you can make it work harder? zubbit.io took link sharing to another level with branded short links, custom domains, call-to-action adverts, retargeting pixels and automated social sharing. Turning ordinary links into little marketing machines. Not bad for something that started with a URL!
zubbit.io →Email data mining
Why hunt for email leads one at a time when you can let software do the digging? Developed under The Covert Formula, this Windows desktop application used its own search algorithms to extract publicly available email addresses from Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. With keyword searches, geo-targeting across 200+ countries and exportable results, it turned hours of manual searching into a few clicks. A digital gold rush, without the muddy boots!
tcfemailminer.com →Digging through the archives… these are just some of the creations from decades of coding adventures. Some retired, others still going strong!
Taking the guesswork out of software supply chains
A Java-based command-line tool I designed and developed to simplify Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs). Originally a CSV-to-CycloneDX generator, it has evolved into a comprehensive toolkit for generating, validating, comparing and scanning SBOMs for vulnerabilities. Built to solve real-world software compliance challenges, it generated over 1,000 SBOMs in its first 15 months and continues to be used by multiple development teams. Not bad for a little command-line utility!
More than just a pretty website
Developed under TCF Software for a holiday accommodation client, this project involved redesigning and rebuilding their existing website, complete with SuperControl booking system integration. The new site launched in 2021, but our work didn't stop there! We still host, maintain and support it today, keeping everything running smoothly behind the scenes. Proof that building a website is sometimes just the beginning!
exclusivelyuk.co.uk →Old software, new tricks
Giving an established HR and payroll system a new lease of life on mobile. Developed under TCF Software, we designed and built an HTML5 mobile web app, backed by VB.NET microservices working alongside the existing desktop application and SQL Server database. Built for a specialist HR software provider and adopted by a major outsourcing company for its national clients.
Thousands of digital products
In 2011, Cosmicsoft took ownership of an established digital-products membership website and set about modernising it. Originally built on Joomla, I migrated and evolved it into a WordPress membership platform offering thousands of downloadable products. Still alive and kicking after all these years!
plrsifu.com →When maths meets poker
A real-time Texas Hold'em poker odds calculator I created in C# and .NET. Using a custom algorithm to simulate millions of possible hands, TexanBuddy calculated your chances of winning as the game unfolded. Because sometimes a little maths beats a poker face!
texanbuddy.com →Dual-SIM before it was cool
Long before dual-SIM smartphones became commonplace, we coded a Windows Mobile app under WiViT that let users switch between SIM cards without rebooting. Written in C++ for devices like the O2 XDA, it supported automatic PIN entry, multiple languages and even independent GSM radio control. So popular that the software pirates eventually came calling!
github.com →Booking holidays before booking platforms
When my family ventured into holiday letting in Cornwall, I designed and built the website and booking system from scratch. No ready-made booking platforms, no fancy website builders, just HTML, CSS and a little ingenuity. Even handled the online marketing, back when getting noticed on search engines was a whole lot easier!
Keeping the presses rolling
Developed under Cosmicsoft, this project involved modernising a 15-year-old COBOL newspaper distribution system, converting it from single-user to multi-user, connecting three locations and preparing it for Y2K. Keeping the morning papers rolling into the new millennium!
Stock control, DOS style
Armed with a Leading Edge N3 laptop, MS-DOS, Clipper and dBase III+, I designed and built a complete stock control, accounting and reporting system for our family dried-foods business. No cloud, no subscriptions, just a home-grown system that kept the stock and the numbers under control!
My coding saga kicked off in 1983 on a ZX Spectrum, followed by the Commodore 64, an Acorn Electron and finally the BBC Micro Model B. I spent hundreds of happy hours typing code listings from magazines, then hacking the BASIC or Assembly to add my own quirky twists. The nostalgia bug never left.
Now I've brought a few classics back from the dead, recreating Asteroids, Pong and Spacewar using JavaScript. Three old-school favourites, resurrected for the browser. And this is just the beginning. More blasts from the past are on their way.
Initialising retro arcade… 3 classic games loaded. Insert nostalgia to continue.
Blast rocks, dodge flying saucers and try not to become space dust. Atari's legendary 1979 arcade classic is back for another round.
play →Two paddles, one ball and absolutely nowhere to hide. Atari's 1972 classic proves you don't need fancy graphics to get competitive.
play →Two spaceships, one gravitational nightmare and a battle for survival. Born in 1962, Spacewar helped kick-start the video game revolution.
play →Establishing uplink… find me on these channels: