Jamie Balfour_{A bit about me}

This page is all about me, including my favourite things as well as my background. If you are genuinely interested in this stuff, please feel free to read on. If you are interested in me professionally, take a look at Jambour Digital.

Short bio

My full name is Jamie Stark-Bonnar Boris Binary Balfour (the italic text is stuff I added in after I was born). I am also known by my high school nickname Binary Balfour (binary because of my love for computers).

I am a Scottish computer scientist who loves all technology with a particular love for software programming, web design and web development as well as writing about technology. I took a major interest in computers when I turned 7 years of age and I was mainly interested in the way that computers worked and connected to each other through networks and ports until I turned 14 and became interested in actually writing programs myself. I also share my love with education and really love teaching people the stuff I know.

I currently hold a Bachelor of Science (BSc) with a First Class Honours from Heriot-Watt University and a Professional Graduate Diploma of Education (PGDE) from the University of Strathclyde. I'm now also doing a Master's Degree (MSc) in Computer Science at the University of York.

My main hobbies include reading and writing about technology and electronics, and computer science (hardware, computer programming, computer language design and translation, user experience and web design/development particularly), [all of which also happens to be my job], going out with my friends, playing video games, video editing and exploring the country (I particularly love rivers and mountains of Scotland and the places surrounding them). I also cycle and I love to do archery in my spare time (you don't want to come across me with a bow and arrow!).

As a teacher I aim to make education more interactive and digital and I am inspiring other teachers to use new technologies all the time.

Me as a child

My history

You can view a timeline of my life by clicking on the button below:

Inspirational people

This is a list of people who have inspired me or I just find inspiring.

I also always say that several of my primary and high school teachers as well as several (most) of my university lecturers were inspirational people in my life.

Charles Kennedy, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Robert Downey Jr., Lisa Su and Elon Musk are perhaps the most inspirational people in my life, and you can find out why these people are here.

Favourites

Music

I love rock music but I also love a bit of dance music.

My favourite bands (top 5) are Oasis, Kasabian, Muse, Travis and Pendulum. Another band I love is unlike the other bands and that's Girls Aloud who were the first band I ever put on to my MP3 player back in the day.

I also love music from several other artists and bands including Robbie Williams, Take That, Keane, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and much more.

My favourite songs of all time (sorted by the number of listens they have had over the since 2009) are Hey Now! (Oasis), Driftwood (Travis), Be Here Now (Oasis), Rock 'N' Roll Star (Oasis), Why Does It Always Rain On Me? (Travis), Fire (Kasabian), Uprising (Muse), Walking in the Sun (Travis), Re-Offender (Travis), Stuntman (Kasabian), Hysteria (Muse), Morning Glory (Oasis), LSF (Kasabian), Stockholm Syndrome (Muse), Side (Travis).

Gaming

I like to remember that the first game I ever played was an MS-DOS game called Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, which has now evolved into Starcraft II and World Of Warcraft. Since first playing Warcraft, Blizzard has always made my favourite games - Warcraft of some kind has always been there.

My favourite game genre is strategy. The list of favourite games can be found in my articles, but here are the top 10.

The list is generated from the number of hours I estimate I have played of the game mixed with what I think should go where.

1. Warcraft III (and The Frozen Throne)
2. Age of Empires II (and the Definitive Edition)
3. Command and Conquer 95 (and DTA)
4. Diablo II
5. The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
6. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
7. Pokémon Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire (remakes of my favourite Pokémon games)
8. Metroid Prime
9. Super Smash Bros Ultimate & Super Smash Bros Brawl
10. Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2

These games are only in alphabetical order (sorted using my list sorter from my old website).

Films and TV

Everyone knows that I am a James Bond series fan. I love them from start to finish, Sean Connery to Daniel Craig. I am also a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Other films I like include:

My favourite actor, who appears in at least four of the films I love, is Christopher Lee (The Man With The Golden Gun, The Hobbit, Star Wars, Sleepy Hollow). My second favourite actor of all time is the amazing Robert Downey Jr. I don't need to even eloborate on this. I also love Christopher Waltz (Django Unchained, Spectre to name a few). My other favourite actors are the amazing Helena Bonham Carter (Harry Potter and Alice In Wonderland) as well as the amazing Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice in Wonderland). A list of my favourite actors and actresses can be found here on IMDB.

In terms of TV shows/series, Spooks is number one. It is followed very closely by Jed Mercurio's Line of Duty and Bodyguard and then by The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Hustle as being my favourites.

Places

I am a huge fan of Perthshire - Scotland's Heartland. I love the mountains ranging from Schiehallion to Ben Lawers and the Glenshee mountain range, as well as the hundreds of lochs in Perthshire ranging from the first loch I ever stayed on; Loch Earn to Loch Tay to Loch Rannoch and Loch Tummel and the rivers such as the Tay, Tummel, Garry, Isla, Earn and more, all of which make Perthshire the perfect place to be.

One of my favourite things about the world is rivers, I am quite interested in the confluences of rivers (point where two or more rivers become one), as I find these to be the most attractive parts of the countryside in the UK.

My favourite places in the UK:

Projects I have developed

Over the years I have created many tools, developed many pieces of software and reinvented others. The following is a list of some of my projects:

• A web browser - Cobweb Internet Browser (no longer maintained)
• A graphics program - Painter Pro (no longer maintained, built-in to ZPE/YASS)
• A word processor - Wonderword (no longer maintained)
• My website and DragonScript IV - jamiebalfour.scot
• A gallery system - BalfGallery
• A flexible website menu bar - BalfBar
• An easy to customise slideshow system for websites - BalfSlider
• A functional website commenting system - BalfComment
• A lightweight keybinding system for the web - BalfKeyBind
• A flexible dropdown tool for the web - BalfPick
• A Microsoft Office style ribbon for the web - BalfRibbon
• A content management system with support for plugins - DASH
• A fully fledged programming language - YASS
• A language parser - the Zenith Parsing Engine
• A compiler, interpreter and runtime - ZPE Programming Environment
• A front-end framework for building responsive websites quickly - Girder
• A tracking and monitoring website for teachers
• An online drag and drop HTML editor - ClickIt
• An SQA Reference Language parser for ZPE - my SQA Reference Language runtime
• A web portal and request management system - the Jambour Portal
• An analytics engine for the web - BalfAnalytics/Jambour Analytics Engine
• An event management application - EventPanel Pro
• A webserver - Velocity Web Server
• A teaching-inspired slideshow engine - BalfPlayer
• A JavaScript syntax highlighter - reHighlight
• An online polling system, including a website - BalfVote
• A fast HTML to AST parser and compiler package - LightningJS
• A course plan creator for teachers
• A digital and printable teacher planner

Technologies I know

I am currently skilled with the following technologies:

In total, I know 8 programming languages (plus markup and declarative languages HTML, CSS and SQL) really well currently.

Interesting projects

The following are a few of the projects that interest me:

• Command and Conquer 95 in HTML5 and JavaScript
  Not only is this one of favourite games of all time, but as a web developer this really is something amazing!
• Renegade X
  Another a Command and Conquer game, this time a community based game created as a spur from Command and Conquer Renegade. It's quite amazing.
• Hubble Heritage Project
  One of my favourite sites for photos of space. These photos are taken by the Hubble telescope and placed on the internet so we can see them! It really is quite amazing!
• Dawn of the Tiberium Age (DTA)
  One of my favourite and oldest games remade with tons of new features that make it even more incredible! Best of all, it's free!