About Me

Hi. My name is Peter Ryland, also known as Pete, pdr, or sometimes, Widget.

I was born on 12 July 1977 in Launceston, a town in the north of Tasmania, Australia. I have also lived in Armidale in the New England area of New South Wales, in Brisbane, Queensland, in Sydney, New South Wales, and spent time in Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Johannesburg, South Africa and Waukegan, Illinois, USA. I currently live in London, United Kingdom.

After finishing high school in Brisbane, I ventured to Sydney to attend the University of New South Wales where I was offered to participate in the Co-Operative Education Scholarship Scheme in Electrical Engineering. I majored in Computing and Networking and for my thesis I wrote a Java Decompiler. At 16, I was one of the youngest matriculates and I graduated from UNSW in 1998.

As part of the Co-op Program, I worked for Alcatel Australia during the course of my degree and was subsequently offered full-time work with them upon graduation. I have also worked for @www (the "Dubz") and a London finance company called Reech Capital, Lloyds TSB and Tideway (now BMC) as well as some contracting work for various parties. I am now working for Goldman Sachs, a New York-based investment bank.

I am into music. I really enjoy playing guitar and writing songs.

I am also into sport. I play touch rugby, rollerhockey and volleyball whenever I have the chance, and I've been known to play almost everything else, from basketball, to (association) football, to cricket.

Most of all, I code. This is my biggest pasttime. I love it so much I have focussed my career on it. I have released the source code to my more recent projects copyrighted with GNU licenses so please feel free to download them, use them, or look at how I have written them. Being someone who loves taking things apart, I think that this is how all things should work.

Please feel free to contact me.