I'm a husband, father, programmer and consultant. I like Objects. I prefer Extreme Programming and other Agile methods for process and Java or Ruby in terms of implementation. I organised a ruby conference. Homewise, my areas of expertise include Star Wars and Thomas the Tank Engine (thanks, Isaac).
I sell my development, consulting and training services through my company, Cardboard Software (resume available after that jump). I'm able to provide development, consulting or training in any of the stuff listed in the 'About me' section (even Thomas the Tank Engine).
For email, the username is always alancfrancis (note the middle initial). You can use gmail.com, cardboardsoftware.com and mac.com. You can't send email to alancfrancis.com. As far as IM is concerned, I use iChat and GoogleTalk. Use the relevant mac.com or gmail.com email address as the ID.
I have left a trail of dead blogs. My twitter is back up and there's a tumblelog, containing mostly links and short quotes. There are three marginally longer articles and am in process of organising a new blogging solution for these.
I can be found in a variety of other places round the web. I use del.icio.us to store bookmarks, GitHub to store code and last.fm to track music. Somehow, I appear to be quite authoritative and popular on Working with Rails and I have a few recommendations on LinkedIn, but only connect with people I've worked with directly.
I am an amateur photographer of decidely average abilities. I have a Flickr account on which I mostly post pictures of my children, Isaac and Hope. There will be some work-related, conference-type pics in there, since I don't maintain separate home/work Flickrs.