As you probably gathered from my home page, I am a twenty-one year old computer programmer who lives in a small town called Spilsby.

My hobbies include working on free software projects such as MAME/X11, maintaining and administering my mass of servers running Linux which are hosted on my very own permanent Internet connection, researching and understanding the internals of specialist computer architectures, but more importantly, attempting to decipher the meaning of life in general.... nearly there I think :-)

Fact: I wasn't born mad; it just took years of practice!!!

Yep!

I am the resident Linux guru/BOFH at Centrinet, a sister company of Data Link Internet; I do lots of stuff here, such as look after all the boxes, maintain firewalls for people all over the world, provide lots of helpful(!) telephone support for users, and during all this, I demonstrate my mental capacity by being able to recite /etc/services purely from memory :-)

In my spare time, I develop a range of stuff, namely hi-quality sound reproduction routines, sound card drivers, web applications (not ASP!), and of course, lots of useless scripts that will never see any use outside of my own machines!

I know 90% more about computers than the average user is ever likely to need; and a good 50% more than those who claim to be 'experts'.. real techie stuff like non-maskable interrupts, RS232 pinouts and the x86 opcode list.

It doesn't really answer the question though, does it ?

Let's just say that I can spend a whole fortnight away from anything remotely computer-related, do my coursework with pen and paper, and not even consider checking my e-mail (unless I'm waiting for something really important) - so I *do* have other interests besides technical thingies and running bloody servers, mmmkay ?

In any case, automatic SMS to my cellular phone lets me know when particular people have e-mailed me ;-)

Unfortunately, yes, I had to suffer the humiliation of attending both primary and secondary school; amazingly enough, I was highly proficient in techie stuff, but most of the stuff they teach in schools nowadays comes straight out of some old text book which bears no relevance to the educational needs of today's students.

Not to say I'm not intelligent; I have nine GCSEs with fairly excellent grades to go with them - except that they don't make me anybody special, nearly anybody can get a GCSE; but not just anybody can reverse-engineer a piece of Z80 or 80x86 assembly code :-)

I love: Extremely large helpings of chocolate pudding, Father Ted, South Park, Linux, programming without a debugger (hmm!), broadband Internet access, reading classic fiction and sending e-mail to gorgeous members of the opposite sex :)

I hate: Listening to pompous and incompetent lecturers like Lionel Moore from North Lincolnshire College, writing Active Server Pages, using Windoze, having lamers call me with pathetic problems, British TV soap operas (as well as the Aussie ones!) and of course, Barney the Purple Dinosaur!

Although I am an extremely busy person, I welcome all correspondence regarding these pages and the various software projects I am involved in; please bear in mind that while I *do* read all my e-mail, I will only reply to those people who specifically ask for a reply... as I simply do not have the time to reply to every e-mail that drops in my huge and grotesque mailbox!

Finally, you may also want to visit my 'hobby' website; Linux Wizards, which will eventually hold the sum total of my Linux knowledge - essentially tips, workarounds, guides and better ways of doing things with what is surely one of the better operating systems on the planet!

Kudos to you, the reader, for absorbing all this inane drivel :-)