Hi! My name is Raphael, and this is my homepage. Thanks for stopping by!
I was born in Canberra, Australia, but I've been living in the UK since 2015 with my wonderful wife Harriet. She has a brilliant eye - this website was designed almost entirely by her, and this really cute photo was taken by her too:
Me outside Alley Cat Books in San Francisco, 2018
I've been working as a software engineer since 2020. Currently I work for Spruce, a startup building tools to help heat pump installers, moving the UK closer to net zero and cheap, green heating for every home.
I've been coding since I was 9. I cut my teeth on GeoCities and the Redwall Online Community (one of the earliest Internet fandoms!). I made terrible games in GameMaker including one called Exploding Pacman, which was like Pacman, except if Pacman hit a wall, it exploded (sadly lost to the mists of time). I installed Ubuntu on my desktop PC and accidentally wiped the hard drive and couldn't play Morrowind any more. I love the versatility of TypeScript, the simplicity of Go, and the way that PHP books make great doorstops.
Before I started coding professionally, I wrote a PhD dissertation at Birkbeck, University of London on anti-capitalist imaginings in contemporary utopian literature - on communal utopias of sharing and care sprouting from the cracks of a disintegrating capitalist system. You can find the full text of my PhD, and a link to my book, on the academia page.
Before my PhD ruined my ability to read for pleasure (a skill I am once again learning to cultivate), I was a slam poet, plying my trade behind Canberra and London's microphones. I helped run two poetry nights (Slamboree in Canberra and Open Arms Poetry Party in London), competed in the Australian National Slam Poetry Championships, and met all my dearest friends. You can find out more about all that on the poetry page. I still write poetry, but mostly only for the page and only for myself.
Find out what I've been up to lately on my now page.