Hello, I was born during the early 60’s in Malta. I came to England when I was a few months old so I have no memories of Malta. Back in England the family home was on the Isle of Sheppey. I spent much of my childhood years digging holes in dad’s garden and climbing apple trees. At school I studied a mixture of totally pointless subjects but through the support of several teachers a keen interest in computing and computer programming grew. Although the school didn’t have its own computer we used an acoustic coupler to connect our teleprinter to a timeshare system or to the local college offering BASIC.
I left school and worked for Marconi Elliott Automation as a Trainee Computer Programmer at their research and development base in Chatham, Kent. This was really fun and I had the opportunity to work with some very clever people. I made many new friends and developed a passion for ringing church bells, hiking and rock climbing. Through bell ringing I met my wife, Donna, and we were married a year later at Tunstall in Kent. We are still happily married and have two children: Richard and Robert. In 1984 I moved jobs and went to work for GEC Software in Covent Garden in London. With GEC Software I worked on the development of a range of configuration management, project management software and networking tools.
In the late 80’s GEC Software merged with GEC Marconi Software Systems and we took the opportunity to move to Newcastle-upon-Tyne where I established a software development group. We lived in Ouston, near Chester-le-Street, until the late 90’s when I changed jobs again and moved to Leyland, Lancashire. I now work for a large IT outsourcing company.
Although I am now in a management role I still have a very strong interest in the nuts and bolts of computing and when bell ringing and geocaching permit I still like to spend time learning new languages and playing on my home PCs.
I bought my first Mac, a 20 inch iMac, in 2006 and have bough three more since then: a 12” inch powerbook G4, a 15 inch 2008 MacBookPro and a 2011 27 inch iMac i7. I still use Windows at work but have pretty much switched to OS X and Macs for personal use.
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