Hello, my name is Michael Horne. I am a web developer with over 20 years of experience developing websites and databases. This page will tell you a bit about me, my work, my hobbies and my family.
Contacting me
You can contact me or you can find me on Twitter or Mastodon where I ramble on about tech, mental health, theatre and politics.
Web Development work
In my spare time, as well as theatre, I maintain and develop websites for friends, family and some of their small businesses using the WordPress platform. I have recently begun offering this as a paid service, so contact me about this if you are interested in your own website.
In my day job, I currently develop with a mixture of coding languages and technologies including CFML (aka ColdFusion, but I actually use Lucee), HTML, jQuery, SQL and Bootstrap 4. You can read about my career over on LinkedIn.
I am currently the Director of Systems Development at The Case Centre which is an educational charity based at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, UK. We sell business/management case studies to business schools, mostly for their MBA programmes. We advocate The Case Method which is a way of teaching concepts and strategies in the field of business using case studies.
“I love my job and I love the people I work with. The job gives me the opportunity to develop new functionality around an extensive content library and I feel like I’m making a difference to the accumulation of knowledge and skills around the world. The Case Centre is a small company but my colleagues are big-of-heart and have a high level of skill and knowledge. I count myself very lucky!”
Family
I live in Potton, Bedfordshire with my wife, Tracey and two step-children. Life hasn’t always been easy, but we hold together in our faith*. Tracey’s other two children were sadly taken from us, along with their father David, in a road traffic accident in 2008. You can see a tribute video to them on YouTube.
* We are believers in Christ. However, I respect all faiths, and none. All that I ask is that you respect my right to believe in any God that I wish.
Helping out my sister
I am currently helping out my sister with her online presence for her parenting consultancy business, In Safe Hands. She offers a wide variety of services for parents, including in-person and online consultations as well as a recently-launched series of online Zoom sessions on a variety of topics.
Hobbies
Raspberry Pi
In 2012, I launched one of the first ever Raspberry Pi blogs, called Raspberry PiPod. It is still going, after all these years, but I’ve slowed down a bit in my posting – my constant battle to not burn out and over-stress myself! In 2020, I expanded it to include the BBC micro:bit, so there’s a mixture of content on there.
Theatre
I am also involved in amateur theatre, primarily with Sharnbrook Mill Theatre where I have performed in and directed plays and musicals. I am a keen theatre-goer and try to get to see how the professionals do it as often as possible!
I have previously attended the ROSS Summer School and have been a member of several different amdram societies including Little Hadham Pantomime Group (where it all began!), Bishop’s Stortford Musical Theatre Company, The Dunmow Players and others!