Boring history bit

Well, I was born in Portsmouth UK on the 4th of June 1978, my parents moved to Gloucester about a 16 months later, a few weeks later my sister Laura was born. I went to Longlevens Infants School, then Longlevens Junior School.

We moved again in March 1988 a few miles to Hucclecote in Gloucester so that my sister and I could get into the local Secondary School, until then I was at Dinglewell Junior School. I then attended Chosen Hill Secondary School for 7 years meeting a whole bunch of crazy people, and that was just the teachers :), eventually I did Maths, Physics and Computer Studies A-Levels.
Then it was off to Cardiff University for 3 years of staying up late and getting up late and occasionally going to some lectures. Most of my late nights were spent in the computer labs either playing MUDs, spodding, coding, or doing a combination of those. It was here that I met a good friend Kevin Glass, who I have since done a number of coding projects with.

When I finished uni I went to work for Lucent Technologies in Malmesbury near Swindon in the UK for 2 years. Having been made redundant, I went and worked for EdgeIPK in Cheltenham. I was then made redundant again and worked for Hewitt Cyborg in Orpington. I'm currently working for a Serco in Stockton-on-Tees working on JEE applications.

I currently live in Toft Hill with my cat Eve and lots of technology.

MUDs and talkers

During my time at university I could often be found playing a MUD (telnet based role playing game) called The Forests Edge, this has since shut, but the memories and exam failures live on, some information can be found here, and then there is the Hall Of Horrors, a few pictures of those who played.

When not there I could often be found on a number of talkers (telnet chat programs) including Caves, The Pub and sometimes Enterprise.

Computers

Since I can remember computers have been a part of my life, from my Dads BBC B+, to my current tech full house. I've played all sorts of games, but my favourites are Quake 2, Doom , the Elite series, a number of racing games and Microsoft Flight Simulator. My house is littered with computers, working or not, and plenty of spare parts, although none for the bits that break. I could go on for days about the network setup at home, but those that know me have already been told, and those that don't know me probably wouldn't care :). I used to have my own beowulf cluster, but thats gone these days :(.

My main hobby at the moment is coding, currently I am playing with jMonkeyengine and Project Darkstar on a project called Darkvoid, the idea for this game was formed whilst I was at university (approx 1998) and has gone through many incarnations, from the original telnet MUD style idea, to OpenGL then Java 3D, lwjgl and now jMonkeyEngine. Kevin Glass was involved in a number of the early incarnations of this. We currently have a joint page for our projects and resources called New Dawn Software

Other bits

I played the violin from the age of 4 until I was about 16 when I stopped because classical pieces were driving me mad. In May 2002 I started playing again, avoiding the classical pieces I mainly play folk, badly. I frequently play along to Fairport Convention and the likes at home.
I have been riding motorcycles since I was legally allowed to and currently ride a BMW R80RT (when it's running).
I have been know in the past to fly from Gloucestershire Airport although this was before going to university and since then finances have prevented me from following this dream.
I'm also into DIY gas turbines, I started building one, but when I moved I had no space for it. I plan to start up again some time.

Well, I guess that's about it for now