Who Am I

Website last updated: March 2026

I am a web developer called Neil Ludlow from Sheffield, UK, and nlud.uk has now become a personal website that discusses me and what I do. For more about working with me, philosophy and the services I offer take a look at Shortdark Software Development.

Most of my time away from the keyboard is spent on a fairly varied mix of things.

I like fixing things around the house, tinkering with small DIY projects, and generally working out how things fit together. A few years ago I even got into making lamps for a while. I like recycling unusual bottles into what is almost a piece of furniture, and they're fairly unique.

Walking is probably my main way of switching off most days. Sometimes that means wandering around the city with an audiobook in my ears, other times it’s getting out into the Peak District for a long walk. Either way it’s a good excuse to think, observe things, and occasionally come up with new ideas.

The audiobooks I listen to while walking are either educational or for relaxation. I've listened to a lot of biographies, various non-fiction and courses. More recently, I've started listening to some radio plays and fiction.

My taste in music is fairly broad. Hip-hop, indie, drum and bass, and 60s/70s music are probably the main genres I like. On top of that, my favourite classical piece of music/opera is Verdi’s Requiem, and my wife and I listen to BBC Radio 1 in the car most mornings.

I'm quite an analytical person by nature. If I think something might be interesting or useful to track, I usually end up building a way to track it including my health stats and electricity usage. That tendency is partly how some of my small software projects started, including the two apps I built to track vehicle fuel efficiency (MPG).

Outside of work I try to keep up with technology, environmental topics, and current affairs out of curiosity. I find myself drawn to understanding how things fit together, whether that's an energy grid, the ecosystem, the human metabolism, or a piece of software.

Experiments

I am often working on little tests or experiments, either to learn a new language or framework, or to try something I haven't done before, or both.

These days, the experiments may be to collect data from an API to possibly use in the future elsewhere. I've done this for a few different types of data from financial data (currency fluctuations, stock prices), and weather data (temperature, wind and rain conditions, precipitation amount and flood levels).

Sometimes, the test is created, in the same way that one might create an MVP to see if the idea is as good in reality as the idea had seemed.

These experiments may or may not ever appear on the Personal Projects page. An experiment can be a success even if it is never acted upon, a small number of hours can save weeks worth of wasted work. Knowledge about different aspects of software development can only be a good thing.