Who I Am
I'm Robin Burchell (or w00t on various places on the internet). I'm an Australian turned Norwegian, living near Trondheim in the middle of Norway, where I've lived and worked since 2011 when my wife dragged me to be closer to her family.
I'm a self-employed consultant software expert, offering services through my own company, Crimson AS. I provide software engineering, performance analysis, optimization, and more, often focusing around Qt on embedded Linux, but I've also done plenty of other things.
If you'd like to contact me, the easiest way is through email: robin@viroteck.net, though there are some other ways to get hold of me too. I also have a linkedin profile.
What I DoCrimson AS(September 2011 - Present)Passionate software engineering consultant and open source hacker, specialising on Qt (embedded, mobile, and desktop), performance analysis and optimisation. For some of the projects I've been involved with, please see below. For other examples of my work, my Github might be a good place to look. | What I Know
I find it fun to try new things and experiment a lot, so there's a lot more in my head than on this list. There's also the occasional thing I may know about, but not want to admit. :-) |
Experience
remarkable
(May 2021 - Present)
Consultant software developer. Working on the graphical stack for the remarkable tablet, mobile, and desktop applications, as well as occasionally helping with issues with Qt or embedded Linux (Yocto).
bluectrl
(September 2015 - October 2021)
Consultant software architect. Worked on X-Connect, an automation system for maritime vessels.
Points of note:
- Prototyped and implemented an award-winning user-friendly UI under challenging time constraints.
- Lead the transition from Ubuntu to a customized embedded Linux (Yocto) distribution.
- Subsequently worked with managing the development of that Linux distribution.
- Occasional kernel-level debugging for display and network issues.
- Developed and maintained the tooling behind X-Connect's software updates.
- Developed and maintained tooling to configure Linux and other services based on project configuration.
- Worked with DDS to implement a distributed control and alarm system.
- Developed a system for screen capture and playback across a network.
- Helped to improve the scalability and performance of the system.
Bluescape
(September 2014 - August 2015)
Consultant software engineer. Worked on Bluescape, a system that allowed collaborating on content and ideas over the internet.
Points of note:
- Improved the build system to resolve several developer pain points.
- Worked on touch, input handling, and rendering problems.
- Worked on issues with embedding web and video content using Chromium.
- Generally improved the quality of the codebase over time.
Jolla
(July 2012 - August 2014)
Consultant software architect. Built Sailfish OS, a mobile operating system, from scratch over the course of a year, and shipped devices using it.
Points of note:
- Developed the initial prototype & architecture for the homescreen and several other applications on the device (such as Contacts, Calendar).
- Successfully lead the effort to transition away from Qt 4 (and X11) to Qt 5 and Wayland, including maturization of both.
- Improved system integration with systemd, through e.g. sending logging content to journald.
- Improved application performance, responsiveness, and startup time.
- Developed tooling to aid in system analysis to aid performance investigations and problem diagnosis.
- Regularly worked with the Qt Project to resolve issues we had, or send patches upstream.
Nokia
(March 2010 - June 2012)
Consultant software engineer. Built the Contacts application (and framework) for the Nokia N9, as well as various other smaller roles, such as contributing to Qt.
Omerta Game Ltd
(January 2006 - March 2010)
Lead developer role. Developed a large online MMORPG, focusing on Linux/PHP/MySQL skills.
Open source contributions
I've done a lot of different things over the years. Here's some of the more interesting stuff.
Independent contributor, Qt Project
(2010 - Present)
Qt is a development framework for creating software easily.
My interests in Qt are wide and esoteric, from QtCore (data containers, I/O, the 'meat' of everything) to QtNetwork (performance of sockets), QtGui (performance of rendering) and generally anything I feel like eyeing over on a day to day basis.
I gained an early interest in submitting patches to Qt when it launched an open repository, and was nominated as one of the first external (non-employed) contributors to the project to be given "Approver" status.
Later, I was nominated to be a maintainer of QtQuick, which I worked on actively for several years, as well as patching v4 (the QML JavaScript engine).
Starting around 2020, I haven't contributed as much, due to changes in both personal and work circumstances, but I still make occasional improvements.
Lead Developer, InspIRCd
(2003 - January 2010)
InspIRCd is an extensible, high performance (over 80,000 connections in a single threaded daemon), chat service, written in C++.
My involvement was with public relations management, coding, development, triaging bugs - whilst working with a team including many other developers and nontechnical people.
InspIRCd is the second most popular server software of its type in use today, deployed on hundreds of servers.
I left the project (in good hands) in 2010 in order to seek out new challenges.