Previously an architectural CAD technician and a GIS applications developer, in 2003 I moved to Spain with my family and have been freelancing as a web developer. I use PHP, MySQL & CakePHP as well as the other usual suspects. The life we live here is semi-off grid on a smallholding of hazels and olives with no water, dodgy electricity, radio telephone and 3G internet.
After being subjected, over the last twenty-odd years, to all versions of MSDOS and Windows, and most flavours of UNIX and Linux, I now use an ageing Mac G4 and OS X.
I read a lot. Books and magazines. Currently, I'm working my way through the complete works of John Le Carre.
BA (Hons) Industrial Design
Smallworld World Class Partner
As a kid I built a Science of Cambridge Mk 14 (Google it!). With this computer and its calculator display, I failed to learn assembler. At School I used a teleprinter terminal (connecting to the university mainframe) and a Commodore Pet to play games like wumpus.
At college I got to cut my teeth on a punchcard Harris Mainframe and an Apple IIe. My real start in computing, though, was in the early(ish) days of architectural Autocad. After a couple of years I moved into geographical information systems (GIS). As a GIS consultant I worked in several European utilities companies over a period of about ten years, gaining experience of various systems, platforms and programming languages.
I have been taking things apart all of my life. I'm one of those rare people that can put them back together again, only occasionally streamlining the original design by eliminating extraneous parts ;)