I’m Roman Clarkson. I live in Rocheport, Missouri. I make violins and violas at Noble Strings, I publish the Rocheport Times, and I write music as Roman Noble.
By day I’m a Sr. Software Engineer at Ansira, working in enterprise .NET. On my own time I build websites and the software behind them.
Since August 2025 my work in both places has been agentic: I plan the work, run AI coding agents in parallel, and review and ship what they produce. I write the instructions and skills they work from, and I share some of them on the AI Bench page. I built the MCP servers that let Claude edit this site and run the Rocheport Times newsroom.
How it started
I was twelve when I started programming. That was 1984, on a TRS-80, a Timex Sinclair 1000 and a Commodore 64. A black-and-white TV was the monitor, and programs went on audio tape. I learned from coding magazines and bulletin boards.
I don’t live for coding. It’s what I do.
Where I’ve worked
I joined the Army in 1996. From 1996 to 2000 I was a legal specialist (71D1P) in the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, and I ended up as the computer support for the division’s JAG office too. I wrote its GOMOR submission and tracker databases and built its first website.
From 1999 I also built small-business sites as the owner of Latchon Multimedia in Fayetteville. That meant FrontPage, with tables holding the whole layout together.
From 2003 to 2006 I was a founding member of Intelligent Network Outfitters, an IT firm in St. Louis. I built its website three times as the tools changed. First hand-built tables, then Dreamweaver and ASP, then DotNetNuke.
From 2006 to 2010 I did .NET contract work in St. Louis.
I’ve been at Ansira, a marketing-technology company, since 2011. I’m the only developer and architect on an enterprise .NET platform: a MAUI app on Windows, Android and iOS, a web portal and API, SQL Server, and the services behind them.
What I’m building now
Bow & Bridge is a reference on American violin and bow makers built on scanning public domain books with a local OCR model and using custom rules and patters to find makers. I wrote a .NET prototype in December 2025. In 2026 I built it again on WordPress.
I started the Rocheport Times in October 2022. In 2026 I rebuilt it into a platform for small-town newspapers.
Away from the keyboard
Between 2017 and 2019 I read 17 sections of public-domain books for LibriVox.
In 2024 I paddled the MR340 solo. That’s 340 miles down the Missouri River, and I did it in just under 63 hours. In 2025 and 2026 I went back as a volunteer with Missouri River Relief.
Around town, I’ve been on Rocheport’s Parks and Recreation Board since 2024, and I served on Planning & Zoning and the Historic Preservation Commission from 2024 to 2026. I also helped the city get its .gov domain, rocheportmo.gov, set up. Back in St. Louis I was on the board of the Center for Spiritual Living from 2005 to 2010, four of those years as president.
Keeping up with me
I don’t do social media or LinkedIn. This site is it. Every Monday I write up the week’s work in the log. My older sites are still out there on archive.org if you want to go digging, and my first blog, from 2006 to 2009, is back up here.
Work history
- 1985–1988Weekend Shop Cleaner, Kevin Saul’s Phillips 66
- 1989Cassano’s
- 1990Jack’s Warehouse
- 1996–2000Legal Specialist (71D1P), US Army, 82d Airborne Division
- 1999–2000Consultant – Web Design and Site Development, Latchon Multimedia, Inc.
- 2000–2003Network Administrator & IT Consultant/APM, Ross & Baruzzini, Inc.
- 2003–2006Principal, Sr. IT Consultant/Business Analyst, Intelligent Network Outfitters, LLC
- 2006–2007Senior .Net Developer and .Net Architect, Stupp Bros Inc.
- 2007–2008Lead Project Software Architect, Corporate Express Promotional Marketing
- 2008–2010Lead Developer/Sr. Analyst, Maritz Inc.
- 2010Application Architect/Sr. Developer, BJC HealthCare
- 2011–presentSr. Software Engineer, Ansira
Contact
Write to me at info@rocheporttimes.com.