My Life Story (so far)

Ok, you asked for it. You now get to read my life story. For those of you that stay awake through all of it, congratulations.

I left school at the age of 16, moving straight into a four year apprenticeship in Electronic Engineering. During those four years I attended day release, gaining BTEC ONC and HNC in Electronic Engineering. After completing the apprenticeship, I worked for a year in the Research and Development department of IMI Pactrol Ltd (the same place as I had spent the final two years of my apprenticeship if truth be known!), living the mindless tedium that was employment at said company.

On 20th July 1990, the day before my 21st birthday, Pactrol gave me the best possible present they could have - a golden handshake and a rather large redundancy payment.

I bummed around (sorry, actively sought employment) for a few months before finally deciding to leave the real world <g> and go to Lancashire Poly to study for my degree. My only mistake was in choosing Electronic Engineering over my true interest, computing.

During my degree, my computing interest was further fuelled by (limited) access to the wonders of the Information Superhighway (hawk spit). This led to my involvement with the University of Central Lancashire (as Lancs Poly became known) Computing Society.

From this, with the vision of three fellow students (Ian Beckwith, Steve Kaye and Chris Voce) was Nexusborn. This was possibly the single most productive thing I was involved in during my four years as a student.

After completing my degree (gaining a 2:1), I again bummed around for 3 months, before joining an MSc course (PC Interfacing and Software Applications), again at the University of Central Lancs. This enabled me to continue my involvement in Nexus and finally gain a computing related qualification.

Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end, and I was forced back out into the real world. In November 1994 I joined Brill Engineering Ltd, a company specialising in writing bespoke software for industrial / engineering applications. This work was quite enjoyable, as I got to play with things like aircraft engine monitoring systems and steel rolling mills.

After a couple of years there, I moved over to AudioSoft, their sister company. After a while as a developer on their AudioPC product, I eventually became the product manager. However, the enjoyment factor began to disappear what with one thing and another, and in July 2000 I decided it was time to move on.

I've now moved to Cabletime, a developer of TV distribution and Video Conferencing systems. Primarily I have been working on their latest product, deliver IP TV to the desktop. The work is still very interesting, and it's nice to now be being paid what I think I deserve, even though I'm back to being a 'lowly' software engineer.