About

Who is Ciaran McHale?

Work

Between September 1995 and September 2010, I worked for IONA Technologies and Progress Software, where I was a principal consultant. My job involved consultancy (for example, architectural design, programming, code reviews and mentoring), and also writing and delivering training courses. At present, I am working as an independent contractor, and I write open-source software in my spare time.

My primary talent is the ability to digest complex ideas and re-explain them in simpler ways. This talent shows itself in subjects that stir my passion, such as multi-threading, distributed middleware, code generation, configuration-file parsers, writing training courses, and developing ergonomic tools for writing books. Over time, I hope to add more and more content to this web site to demonstrate my contributions to simplicity in these areas.

You can find more details in my résumé.

Contact details

Email: ciaran_mchale@yahoo.co.uk
Mobile/cell phone: +44-(0)-7866-416-134
Home office: +44-(0)-118-327-9847

Pronunciation of my name

The name Ciaran is from the Gaelic (Irish) language, and it means “little dark one”. The name is pronounced “keer-ran”. The English spelling of the name is Kieran.

Ciaran/Kieran is a masculine name. The feminine version is spelt Ciara/Kiera. One famous person with this name is the actress Kiera Knightley.

A common name in India is Kiran or Kiron but, even though it is pronounced similarly to Ciaran, it has a different origin and meaning. It comes from Sanskrit, and means “ray of light”.

How this web site is built

All the pages on this web site are written using the LaTeX type-setting system. The Hevea tool is used to generate HTML pages from the LaTeX sources.