100 Things About Me

  1. I’m male, 6′2" with short brown hair, green eyes & goatee.
  2. I was born in the year of the dragon. Now I collect dragons.
  3. I have two tattoos. One of which is a dragon on my leg.
  4. I have 2 piercings. They’re not visible.
  5. I usually shave my own head on a number 1 clip.
  6. I’ve been an avid video gamer all my life.
  7. I’m an excellent speller, but a poor writer.
  8. I went to University and left after a year to start my own business.
  9. I’ve smoked on and off since I was 16. I quit recently.
  10. I rarely drink alcohol, tea or coffee, which people find odd.
  11. I tend to play devil’s advocate & often support the underdog.
  12. I sit on the fence on many important political & social issues.
  13. I love cooking, but hate washing up.
  14. I miss MS-DOS. It’s limitations were also it’s strengths.
  15. I haven’t had a good nights sleep in 15 years.
  16. I got my first computer in 1983. I was 7. It was a ZX Spectrum.
  17. Autumn is my favourite season.
  18. I want to buy a canal boat one day.
  19. I’ll spank you at Quake 3. No messin’.
  20. I have a collection of nearly 400 dvd’s.
  21. I have a collection of nearly 30,000 mp3’s.
  22. I have wide ranging music tastes & I was a internet DJ for a while.
  23. I love Las Vegas. I wish I could go there every year.
  24. I married an older woman. We honeymooned in Vegas.
  25. I’ve always wanted to own a Lotus Elise.
  26. I hoard computer files. Netscape 1.0 anybody?
  27. I’m very picky, bordering on obsessive compulsive.
  28. I love the smell of Playdoh.
  29. I have a pen fetish. Don’t let me loose in Muji or Hobbycraft.
  30. I have a wonky smile that only appears in mirrors.
  31. I think Bill Hicks was a genius. I miss his insights.
  32. My approach to most forms of design is very minimalist.
  33. I once coaxed someone away from suicide.
  34. I used to be able to type at 70 words per minute.
  35. I think religion is evil and should be abolished.
  36. I’m getting very forgetful in my old age.
  37. "Cranium Oxide" is a song by Squarepusher. I adopted the name.
  38. When I was 15, I could pass for 18. Now I’m 30, I wish I was 21.
  39. Air conditioning is the best invention in the world.
  40. I’m not sure how I would cope without access to Adobe Photoshop.
  41. I’ve had a webpage, in one form or another, since 1994.
  42. I was once bitten by a tiger.
  43. I’m distantly related to Stan Laurel.
  44. Brown sauce beats ketchup, every time.
  45. Without a goatee, I look like an axe murderer.
  46. I once broke the school network by hacking root. Oops.
  47. I’m always burning my mouth on food.
  48. I’m a jack-of-all-trades, but specialist in few.
  49. I want to live in another country one day. Germany perhaps.
  50. I hate cauliflower, radishes, mushrooms, olives, celery & seafood.
  51. Marmite. You either love it or hate it. I love it.
  52. My first ever job was working on a dry ski slope.
  53. I’ve had ear, nose and throat problems for the last 8 years or so.
  54. Shower or bath? 99% of the time, shower.
  55. On weekdays I can never wake up. At weekends, I’m up at 6am.
  56. I read graphic novels about lesbian families while on the loo.
  57. I use a Mac at home & a PC at work.
  58. When brushing my teeth, I always use hot water.
  59. My ringtone? A standard mono "ring ring" on my Nokia 1100.
  60. I have an overdue library book from 1987.
  61. I have a seriously well stocked go-bag, all packed and ready.
  62. I have a cat called Pixel. She’s a cow.
  63. Pink is my 2nd favourite colour. Black is my 1st. Red is my 3rd.
  64. I wear size 12 shoes.
  65. I love to read. I wish had more time to do it.
  66. I have a dark side.
  67. I’m not an outdoor person.
  68. I find it difficult to let go of the past.
  69. I can program in Pascal.
  70. I am short sighted and wear glasses.
  71. I have a fascination with weapons, but I don’t own any.
  72. My favourite Subway is the Veggie Delite with Southwest sauce.
  73. I like big butts (and I cannot lie).
  74. I hate shaving. Particularly wet shaving. Ugh.
  75. I prefer Burger King to McDonalds, and Wendys to Burger King.
  76. Most software I use, I have bought legitimately.
  77. I toss and turn at night, but always sleep on my side.
  78. I had a website mentioned on MSNBC and in The Guardian.
  79. I feel guilty when I buy expensive things.
  80. I write stuff down obsessively in Moleskine notebooks.
  81. I have a level 63 Night Elf Rogue in World of Warcraft
  82. Mint has always made me sneeze. More recently, chocolate does too.
  83. I was a virgin until i was 18.
  84. My highest bowling score is 210.
  85. I hate music on the radio, but love talk shows & phone-ins.
  86. I’m competitive, but sometimes let others win on purpose.
  87. I worry too much, about really stupid things.
  88. I REALLY fucking hate wasps.
  89. I have owned over 30 domain names.
  90. I think that most technology user-interfaces are crap.
  91. I feel naked without my wedding ring and wristwatch.
  92. I love Countdown, but am usually better at the numbers game.
  93. Have I really been on the Internet for 13 years? Holy crap.
  94. I love showing people a better way of doing something.
  95. When I’m passionate about something, I can evangelise easily.
  96. I like reading emails, but hate writing them.
  97. I cannot ever, EVER, throw out any kind of electronic cable or adapter.
  98. I have a strange ability to remember number plates.
  99. There’s a lot of interesting things that didn’t make this list.
  100. I like making lists.

@0701230911

How I Got Into Computers

When I was around 7 years old, my dad brought home a ZX81 that he borrowed from someone at work. Made by Sinclair, the ZX81 was the first home computer available in the UK for less than £100. It had a whopping 1k of RAM with an 8k ROM containing the BASIC language, and there was no method of getting software into the machine without having to type long program listings in by hand on the awful membrane-style keyboard.

Needless to say, it held my attention for little more than afternoon.

A year later, for Christmas, I was given a ZX Spectrum 48k from my parents. The Spectrum, with it’s rubber keys, was a whole different ball game from the ZX81. It had a huge catalogue of colour games that were loaded using audio tapes and and a cassette recorder.

Thus began my love affair with the computer.

At age 11 I got my first PC. It was an Amstrad 1640 (640k ram, 20mb HD, CGA graphics (emulated EGA), 8086 processor, Gem Desktop). All my friends were getting Amiga’s and Atari’s, and I got this lunking great PC. However, it proved to be one of the best things that happened to me. Learning MS-DOS gave me a founding that would hold me in good stead years later (even to this day in fact). I used to play loads of Sierra & LucasArts adventure games on that machine, which is one of my fondest gaming memories.

A few years later, I finally got an Atari STE 520, later moving up to 1040 STE (my brother got the 520). To be honest, it was a games machine. I traded hundreds of copied games with my friends and loved every minute of it. It was less powerful than the Amiga 500, but it didn’t matter. We even linked the two machines via an RS-232 cable running through the wall so we could play multiplayer games against each other (my first introduction to networking).

When they finally got PC’s in our school, years later, me and a friend ruled the network. I’d just moved on up to a 386 PC that I built myself, and I knew the system inside out. After learning Borland Turbo Pascal in Computer Science lessons, we wrote a program that emulated the Novell login process. Just before logging you in though, it would write your password out to a text file. We installed it on a few machines in the computer room, and soon got the passwords of all our classmates, and more importantly the teacher.

The teacher had supervisor rights on the network, so we created another fake student user, gave them admin rights also, and used that account to run the network for about 3 months. We never did any harm, it was about learning the system and helping other people out from time to time. However, somehow I managed to delete the root of the server hard drive and got into a lot of trouble over it.

Next was a 486, then a Pentium Laptop, then a P2 Dual Processor, a PIII, and then a K6-AMD.

By this point, I was running my own web-design business. I’d done Uni for a year and realised it wasn’t for me, and was busy servicing local business with my newly found eye for design.

Whilst working on a contract for Serco Docklands Ltd (we did the website for Docklands Light Railway for about 4 years), we kept being supplied artwork on Mac CD’s. I made the decision to purchase an iMac DV. It proved to be another life-changing moment. I used OS8, OS9 and eventually OSX (grudgingly at first, mind you).

The Quicksilver G4 followed a couple of years later, and my love affair with Apple was cemented in place. Just after this, I closed up my web design company and began working for a large multinational telecoms & manufacturing company as a multimedia developer. 18 months later, for financial reasons, they decided to cull our whole department along with about 1500 other employees, and I was out of a job.

Having no degree, and no recent work to showcase, I found myself low on money and unable to find a decent job. I needed a new computer, and I wanted a powerful laptop, but I just couldn’t afford a Powerbook, so I opted for the next best thing, a Sony Vaio.

Apart from getting hot enough to cook bacon on, that machine was awesome (except for having to run XP). I had it for about a year before finally convincing wife that we really really needed a Mac again. 1 week later, we had juggled the finances, sold the Vaio and purchased an Apple iMac (Intel 2.0ghz Dual core).

It’s funny. As I look back, I wonder what my life would be like if I had been born 10 years earlier. Would computers have captured my imagination and attention in the same way at age 18 instead of 8? Or if I’d been born into today’s world with the Internet and high powered games consoles like the XBox. I feel thankful and priviliged to have been born in the right time and place to have experienced the growth of 2 distinct industries (computers and gaming) first hand.

@0701230910

Top 5 Albums

I like making lists. Particularly top-ten style lists. I like the challenge of trying to focus everything down. With that in mind, here’s the list of my top 5 albums of all time.

5. Metallica - The Black Album

Metallica at their peak (before they turned into assholes). This was the stage in their career when the passion shone through into their music. A great cross-section of powerful vocals and balls-out rocking. Every song on this album is a keeper.

4. Nirvana - Nevermind

Instantly transports me back to my younger days. Seattle grunge at it’s finest. Cobain’s anguish is clear in his voice which always sounds on the edge of collapsing, and Grohl is just a fucking machine on drums. Listen to ‘Territorial Pissings’ and tell me they didn’t rock out.

3. Smashing Pumpkins : Siamese Dreams

Again another band that I love. I love the mix of quiet accoustic sections, leading into heavier, grungier guitar sections, and then into flights of orchestra behind Billy Corgan’s distinctive vocal style.

2. Rage Against The Machine : Rage Against The Machine

The self-titled album that was the soundtrack to my teens. This album is angry, political and powerful. There’s a certain state of mind where nothing will else do. Best played at a very loud volume.

1. Nine Inch Nails : The Downward Spiral (Deluxe Edition)

Even before the remastered deluxe edition (in 5.1 surround), this was my favourite album of all time. I have pretty much everything NIN have ever released, but this album is the best they’ve ever released. NIN are almost a genre unto themselves, but their closest genre would be industrial/electronica.

Looking at my music collection spanning over 10000 songs and a wide variety of genres, it’s strange to see the my top 5 albums all coming from the same genre and a similar era. There are so many albums that almost made the cut, but the selection was based on a mix of how much enjoyment I got from that album and what percentage of the songs on the album album were worth listening to.

As a curious aside, I’ve listed below the ones that were shortlisted for the top 5.

The Also Rans

Red Hot Chili Peppers : Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Pantera : Vulgar Display of Power
Faith No More : Angel Dust
Leftfield : Rhythm and Stealth
Helicopter Girl : How To Steal The World
Orbital : The Middle Of Nowhere
Ministry : Psalm 69
Kid Koala : Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Daft Punk : Homework
Portishead : Dummy
Mandalay : Empathy
Evanescence : Fallen
Jamiroquai : Dynamite
Soundgarden : Superunknown
Squarepusher : Big Loada
Front Line Assembly : Millennium
Annihilator : Set The World On Fire

@0701230906