Hi, my name is Ray Mathers and I live in Birmingham UK. I work for a leading manufacture of weighing equipment as a Senior Project engineer specialising in providing professional software solutions to the Retail industry.
My slogan "Powering forward" was inspired by two things: On a professional note my work ethic including skills, new technologies, abilities, knowledge and attitude and on a personal note my passion for cycling, especially hills, In both cases I push myself to new achievements and goals.
In software I'm keen to learn new technologies and the latest design techniques. After many years of software development, I've move to Object Orientated Programming (OOP) a few years ago. The change from Procedural to Object Orientated development does take significant time and effort but the benefits are huge. This is exciting as it has provided me with a whole new way of thinking and software development.
Having developed small web applications in the past, from scratch, I’m moving to using more modern frameworks such as WordPress and Javascript frameworks such as jQuery, CanvasJs and potentially AngularJS.
This website was developed several years ago and contains some GPS tracks using Google Maps with interactive elevation profiles. It has been re-written in 2015 using PHP5 and object classes, Google V3 Maps API , jQuery and jQuery UI, along with a MySql database. There are other Mapping APis available now such as LeafletJS and OSM, these may be considered. I've also added some interesting algorithms for GPS elevation smoothing.
Feel free to contact me at: info@raymathers.com
Another serious hill climbing route around the Peak District, it was not called the "Wiggle Peak District Punisher" for nothing !. About 7000ft total ascent. My new Carbon road bike made a huge difference. I've been riding it all summer.
One of the hardest mountain bike challenges I've done, 47 miles, nearly 6800ft of ascent on dirt track and grass, constantly up and down hills. The serious participants had bikes worth thousands of pounds. I did not even have suspension, yet my Carrera Hybrid completed it without any problems.
Just completed the 100 mile Birmingham Bikeathon in aid of Blood Cancer research. Six hours 30 minutes.It was a cold start but a nice sunny day. Lots of credit to the organisers as the route was very good, mostly back roads. There were 3 refreshment stops with food and water so there was no problems with replenishment.
Enjoyed long weekend with John and Alan in Borrowdale, Lake District , climbing, hiking, scrambling and biking. On Saturday we climbed the Via Ferrata at the Honnister Slate mine. It was good fun. Then we hiked around Green Gable and Great Gable. On Sunday we scrambled up Halls Fell and Sharpe Edge ridges. On Monday I did a 33 mile cycle route including Honister and Whinlatter pass, cycling up a 25% hill (1:4 in old money!).
Just spent a brilliant weekend hiking and biking in Snowdonia. There was lots of snow, about 15- 30 cm in most places above 600 meters. We almost cycled to the top of Snowdonia but the bad weather forced us back. Even managed to use spikes which made a huge difference to walking. It was a good adventure. On Saturday we attempted Crib Goch then Snowdonia. On Sunday we attempted to cycle/push our bikes up the Llanberis Path following the train track. On Monday we hiked up to Y Garn using micro-spikes attached to our boots.
I've just complete a one week treking adventure in Morocco, We climbed several major mountain passes with the final ascent up Mount Toubkal at 4167m/13672 ft. It was tough with 4:00am wake up and hiking starting in darkness most mornings.
We treked through original Berber villages and spectacular mountain scenery.
We had mules, muleteers and a cook who all set up the camps and cooked fantastic energy building meals. A night we were all so exhausted we were in our tents and asleep by 9:00pm.
It was an unique experience that I will never forget.
My Garmin GPS is about 8 years old, click on the thumbnail, you can see is fairly battered, It is held together with Duct tape at the top and band-aids for the back!!
It has fallen down a few mountain sides and come off my bike several times. In August 2011 it came off the bike again and went hurtling down the road, luckily missed being run over by cars. This time the front screen cracked, the LCD leaked and some of the display has disappeared, but to my surprise it kept working.
It is a good testament to Garmin that they have a device that can withstand this type of treatment over the years, and keep working.