Some info about me

Welcome to my space on the web! I made this site as a central place with various links and information for my various hobbies, sports and interests and for anyone who knows me to find out what I have been doing since I left school.

I chose my name as the domain as it was still available and as there are only 2 of us in the UK registered on friends reunited, I though i should get the name before the other one thinks about it.

You can get in touch via email at, .

<Shameless Plug> If you ever need a website designed, built and hosted or a multimedia project built, please visit my companies site at http://www.apexweb.co.uk/ </Shameless Plug>

Name: Brian Dorey

Age: almost 40!

Location: Swanage, Dorset on the south coast of the UK, see http://www.virtualswanage.co.uk/ for more and find apexweb to find out what I do

Hobbies: Mountainbiking, Archery, Target Shooting,  photography, watching films, sat tv(not Sky), building websites and modding game consoles.

Work

Here's a quick rundown of work so far in life!

Fixing White Goods

Left school at 14ish, and started part time fixing white goods until 16.

Somerfield/Gateway

Started a summer job at the local supermarket, and spent all summer cleaning up the butchery department and dealing with customers. Made redundant after the summer and was asked to come back a week later after another member of the butchery left. Spent the next year learning how to cut up dead things and after 18 months was promoted to butchery manager and was the youngest butchery manager in the entire company! After 7 years and a change of management in the shop, I decided it was time to do something new so I quit at Christmas.

Driving around the South

After spending 2 weeks looking for a new job, I met a local business owner who offered me a job delivering bottled water coolers and water across the south of England. I spent the next 18 months driving a range of vans from 3.5 ton to 7.5 ton lorries and then driving home after in a Mini. The company was brought out and the new owners moved the companies base out of the area..

Meat, Fruit & Veg

The next 18 months was spent at the Wareham branch of Somerfield, first in the butchery department and then the remaining time on the fresh produce department (fruit & veg). I left Wareham Somerfield after my hours were cut to a level which made it not worthwhile continuing to commute to work.

Computers, Computers and more Computers

Late in 1998, after leaving Somerfield at Wareham, I decided it was time to try something completely new and as I had always enjoyed playing with and building computers, I felt it would be a good move to try to make it a paying career. The first year was very difficult and I used up all my savings to pay the bills!
Once other local businesses stated to know what I could do, more work started to come in, both fixing computers and building website's until in 2003, I decided to stop fixing PC's and concentrate on the website design and development side of the business.
I was joined in 2002 by my brother, Andrew (http://www.addimage.net/) who had just completed a college degree in IT and we have both been working together on many different projects since that date.
To date, we have built website's and multimedia projects for companies as diverse as multinational corporations, the NHS in the UK and many small businesses including B&B's, garages, shops and everything in between.

In 2007 we setup a new online shop to try to sell our photographs of our local area on our Virtual Swanage website

Video Work

In summer 2008 I had the chance to try some HD video recording kit and green screen for a web project and that got me hooked with video editing and production. After buying a Canon HD camcorder and a new Apple Mac Pro tower with a copy of Final Cut Pro, I have started to produce some short videos for website projects and am now using video clips combined with 3d graphics for new projects.

AB Electronics UK

In September 2012 following a huge response to one of my Raspberry Pi blog posts we started AB Electronics UK to sell our own range of Raspberry Pi expansion boards.

Mobile Development

I have played with developing apps for PDA's and different mobile platforms for many years but with the release of the iPhone/iOS platform and Android smartphones myself and my brother have started to build more apps for the newer and much more powerful range of smartphones on the market.

One of our published apps is for our Virtual Swanage tourism website virtual-swanage.co.uk/mobile/ and we have also developed utility apps and also other commercial apps when sub-contracting for other local developers.

Electronics Development

The release of the Arduino systems and more recently the new Linux based Raspberry Pi platforms have give me a lot more options to expand into the hardware and software market with the many add-on boards for these systems.