Education

I opted for a rather alternative education path which often confuses many, so for that very purpose, here is my education path from school to now in all of its glory.

For my secondary education, I completed my GCSEs, and a GNVQ at Bedford High School and took interest in the subjects of electronics and information technology. It is here where I had the joys of learning how bad the early days of state I.C.T education truly were — Web design in Microsoft Publisher. Fortunately, however, I had a keen interest in the subject at this point in time and had already started to dabble in the dark arts of HTML.

After consultations with the school careers advisor I was recommended to visit the local college since she was not sure what a computer programmer was or how to become one. Thankfully, the local college, Wigan & Leigh College appeared knowledgable and enrolled me on a ND for I.T. Practitioners. My original plan was to follow a software development strand but unfortunately as I was the sole candidate for that course it was not feasible for the college to run it and I was forced to follow a general strand. With a modestly sized class I appeared to be quite popular as within the first week of the course and without really knowing anyone else's name I had been elected Student Representative, a post I held for four years — not that their was much competition. On completing this and still eager for more I followed the next logical step and enrolled upon and successfully completed a HND Computing (Software Development).

Realising I had completed two years of higher education, and still Had No Degree, I was pointed in the direction of Sunderland University which catered for HND students interested in obtaining a bachelor's degree. It is here where I completed a BSc (Hons) Computer Applications.

Still not ready to get a real job I looked to continue my studies, but try something a little different from the applied computing I had focused previously on by enrolling on the MSc Advanced Computer Science at Liverpool University. Admittedly I did find it quite tough due to my near non-existent theoretical background, however, through possibly divine intervention or a stroke of luck I managed to survive to the end of the course. The blood, sweat, and tears required from me thankfully was not without reward as not only did I complete the course but passed with distinction, and further I also managed to become the proud winner of the Deloitte Technology Prize for best student, in the module Safety and Dependability.

After the MSc, I discovered my hunger for knowledge had still not been satisfied, and that I had developed an unhealthy interest in algorithmics. This meant that I had one final challenge to myself left which I couldn't refuse after studying for so long. So for those reasons I have opted to challenge myself even further by starting a PhD in Computer Science. And hopefully when I finish the PhD, and graduate for the 4th time (HND, BSc, MSc, PhD), my hunger will be satified and I can finally acquire one of those real jobs the muggles tell me so much about.

To Be Continued...?

Employment

At the age of 17 I became a weekend warrior by joining the Territorial Army, or more specifically the Royal Artillery (Volunteers). I started my RA career as a L118 105mm Lightgun operator, responsible for manually loading the gun with 105mm HE, smoke, and other various shells. Early into my career I was invited to re-train as a signaller in the Fire Support Team.

At the later end of the first year of my PhD I was acccepted for an internship with Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA), which took place at Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI), Bordeaux, France. For the duration of my internship, I worked under Ralf Klasing.

Aside from this, I have also been hired for small projects or one off tasks by individuals, local businesses and oddly, even international businesses due to being the guy who knows about computers.

Side Interests

I have a huge interest in programming, both application and web development. For this very reason I have been involved in a number of volunteer projects over the past few years.

Having been an early adopter of the Internet, and also through having a fondness for computer games, my first projects were inevitably gaming team websites. However, after joining a team known as The Pyromaniacs my talents were put to better use, as unsatisfied with current competitive gaming leagues available to us, we decided to found the Pyromaniacs Team Fortress Classic League, a league for teams which played Team Fortress Classic. Unfortunately as the game lost popularity, so did the league.

Still having an interest in gaming, but preferring to make use of my technical talents where needed, I joined United Admins Ltd. initially as a developer of HLstats, but before long I became Project Co-ordinator and responsible (along with my team) for several version updates. Due to conflicts of interest on the future of HLstats, I left my position and handed it over to Tim Black_Majic McLennan.

I was not projectless for long though, as I was quickly acquired by the very talented HLSW team as the primary web developer. Since joining I have been responsible for the full redevelopment of the website (twice) and have also been involved in, or responsible for, most web development based projects such as PocketHLSW, phpHLSW, and Sentinel.

Finally, due to spending far too many years in IRC channels and through being an avid supporter of avoiding re-inventing the wheel, I have contributed to various software packages and libraries either by providing bug fixes, features or optimisations.