About

About Me

I'm Dave and as you can guess by the name of my site, my surname is Letorey.

I'm passionate about a great many thing, see below.

I've lived in many parts of the country, UK, although I grew up in a North Lincolnshire town called Scunthorpe. Which in the early days of the web coined the phrase "The Scunthorpe Problem".

Since leaving Scunthorpe and School, I've had a number of Careers:

Mostly I'm a curious Dancer who likes solving problems.

Passions

The Web

I first went on the web back in 1994 and at first found it painful and expensive, dial up was a nightmare. Although this did not stop me.

Learning

In 2006 after quitting Teaching and a brief time as a Salesman (which I hated), I took a Web Design course. I hated this course, this was mostly to do with the teaching styles. After the first day, 8 hours, we'd learnt about the structure of HTML I then went home and started reading, by the time I went back the second week I'd learnt the whole course. At the end of the course I walked away with "Certified Internet Webmaster" certificate.

Since then I've never stopped learning, you can't afford to stand still in this industry.

Work

My first job in the Web Industry (September 2007), was working for Total Jobs, building HTML emails, yes I probably did spam you. I hated this job with a passion, my new found skills were being neglected for table based layouts, it's like I was working in the dark ages. Fortunately I was working for a job site and jobs came into my line of site constantly.

It wasn't long before I found a new Job at Squiz UK, as an implementer. Infact I've just celebrated my 11th anniversary, working for Squiz.

Squiz

When I started at Squiz, back in October 2007, it was a Content Management Company. Over the years we've diversified and are now a Digital Transformation company.

We now deal with much more that just Content Management, including (to name a few) Search, CRM , MA , Design, UX , AI , Analytics, etc.

The main product that I've dealt with over that time is Squiz Matrix, which this blog is built in and I shall blog about my learnings and experiences using it.

London Web Standards (@webstandards)

A great way of staying up to date in an ever changing industry is attending meetups. I had a number of friends and colleagues who used to go to LWS and in the early days it was really hard to get tickets. Small venue and high demand. After a while I was asked to help organise, this to me was a no-brainer as a) I'd always get a ticket and b) I'd get to know some pretty awesome people in our industry.

I've now been helping organise LWS for 9 years and still love doing so and learn something new every time.

Music

Music is everything to me, it's my excuse for working:

I work so I can afford Music, otherwise I'd just sit at home and play on playstation Me

This is generally what I say to people when I talk about music, it must be true as I haven't even turned on my playstation in months, in fact the last time I did was to watch something on Amazon Prime.

I love most kinds of music, except for what I call Twiddly Jazz, but mostly Live music.

Food & Drink

I love good food and have travelled long distances to try tasting menus, from top chefs.

I love cooking, I wish I had more time to do this.

I love beers, especially Belgium Sours and Craft Beers. You can find me on Untappd.

I love Gin and I'm a member of the Craft Gin Club, if you want a discount for joining up hit me up.

Books

I love reading and mostly read:

My favourite author is Douglas Adams, I so wish he hadn't died so young, to have read more of his work would have been incredible. I also love, and by love I mean will consume anything they do, Neil Gaiman, Jasper Fforde and Irvine Welsh.

Travel

I love going to new places and revisiting old places. As you'll see, hopefully through my blog, I usually tie travel in with Music & Food.

Lego

Lego is the greatest toy/game ever invented. I find building/playing Lego very relaxing and calming. I have a number of Lego sets, mostly Lego Star Wars.