Born and raised on the Isle of Man. I enjoy computing, a fast Audi and I am fascinated by internet technologies. I also like music, especially dance and house genres. I was a teenager in the 90’s so enjoyed the brit-pop era as well.
I got my first introduction to computing by my grandfather gave me his ZX81 computer which at the age of 4 began basic programming. A couple of years later my mum’s brother gifted me his spectrum+ which was in our family up until 1991. Christmas 1991 I got an Amiga 500+. (I used to spend my pocket money on CU Amiga and Amiga Format magazines.) Playing games and dabbling in music with the Octamed suite. I also saved up and purchased a dot matrix printer from Tandy. I used the Amiga for coursework during the build-up to my GCSEs.
In October 1995 I was given a work experience placement at a company called Xenon Computer Systems. They had the government hardware contract at the time and used to supply new PCs as well as networks to the various departments. I started in the workshop learning how to solder and repair monitors and printers. I really enjoyed the work and spent a lot of time at Xenon. I was given a part-time job in the summer of 1996 to be a storeman, where it was my duty to check the deliveries against the orders and mark the items as received in the stock system. After passing my driving test I was also able to deliver equipment to customer sites and collect faulty equipment for repair. I worked part-time for Xenon during my A-levels and when I graduated I went full-time. My first assignment was a placement in a financial institution where I undertook general support and sysops for an IBM AS400.
In March 1999 I was promoted to the Government Technical Team. Y2K was fast approaching and the Novell Netware estate needed upgrading. Over 46 weekends we replaced all the NetWare 3.x servers with NetWare 4.x and deployed the NDS (Novell Directory Services) tree.
Later on, I went to 3Com in Hemel Hempstead to learn how to route IPv4 so I could help support the WAN which was powered by their Netbuilder and Corebuilder router series. I also attended the checkpoint firewall-1 course. I really enjoyed these courses and they fitted in nicely with my interest in the internet which up until now I had only really been a regular email and web user on dial-up.
This all co-inside nicely with a project my colleague and friend Nick Garfield was undertaking, which was to build an ISP. I assisted in my spare time, learning about DNS/SMTP/Web servers. Built initially on Windows it was replaced by FreeBSD in 2000. As Y2K was over I was transferred into the ISP full-time and was left in charge as ISP manager. I also used to provide Apple Mac OS support and I am an Apple-certified associate.
These days I work in Ballasalla on the (today) sunny island. I work for Domicilium which started out in 1991 as a software and networking consultancy. Soon they became an ISP and provided connectivity solutions to many of the island businesses as well as dial-up to home users. Fast forward to 2022 and we provide high-speed low latency connectivity and data centre hosting on the island in dedicated facilities. Additionally in London, Manchester, New York and Taiwan.
In my spare time, I tinker with old apple macs and Amigas. More on that is here.
