As a kid, I would program my spectrum ZX80. Fun times. I'd while away the days and tinker away. The result was often a failure or something, in retrospect, rather pitifully. But it was fun. And I had time. Times change.

I'd go on to fail my A-levels (high-school) and end up at a last minute scramble to find university. Though, this this series of events, driven in all likelihood: laziness, I'd continue to be with my then-girlfriend, and would eventually marry her and bare children with my amazing partner.

I digress, as this is a tale of code and time.

At university I fluked my way through classes, and my ability to get through was entirely on the wings of my ability to solve relatively simple computing problems using code. Most of my peers were behind, so I did okay, given the amount of effort I actually spent.

Classes didn't really interest me, but hacking at code, and changing what the teachers had given me kept me busy outside of class (next to the student haze of drinking and clubbing).

In fact, the key turning point for me at university was when I changed a lecturers' mapping program written in Java, into a dancing stick character. I spent the whole of my easter holiday doing this, the whole time hacking Java into what I wanted it to do (and trying my best to avoid reading any documentation on the blasted language).

This would lead on to a summer job as a "paid" developer after my first year. Developing a kiosk interface with the newly released IE4 using new APIs introduced in the heady days of DHTML.

More significantly, this event would then unwittingly lead me into my first and only real job. My lecturer put me forward for an individual placement (that I'd so far failed to do anything about).

I'd spend the next 9.5 years, from 1999 to 2008 working for Gallio which launched the successful start DigitalLook (neither of which, I suspect my dear reader, you've heard of).

Drafts may be incomplete or entirely abandoned, so please forgive me. If you find an issue with a draft, or would like to see me write about something specifically, please try raising an issue.