I live in Hampshire, England.
I studied Physics at University College Cardiff, now Cardiff University and graduated in 1984. Whilst studying Physics, I became interested in Computing and decided to make a career in IT.
Having left University, I spent two years working for a Community Programme run by Cynon Valley Borough Council (which became part of Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council on 1 April 1996). Initially I worked with an Apple 3 computer then Apple Mac Plus systems.
Later I worked for the Health Service at Coldeast Hospital in Portsmouth and South East Hampshire Health Authority (which was dissolved). Here I introduced Apricot PCs (running DOS ) in to three area offices.
I worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) from 1989 to 1998. While at RAL I was based in the Atlas Centre. At RAL I worked extensively with Novell NetWare systems and then more generally in networking and GNU/Linux systems. The Linux distribution I worked with was Slackware.
In 1998, I joined Hytec Information Systems Ltd. which became Hytec Information Security Limited, where I worked as a Technical Consultant until January 2003. While at Hytec I worked for a variety of public sector and commercial customers. The work involved the design, project management, installation and maintenance of small to large scale systems. The technologies at the time were Linux, Sun systems running Solaris 2.6, 7 & 8 and Windows NT 4.0 and a range of networking systems.
In April 2008 OLM Group Limited secured a controlling stake in Hytec.
I left Hytec to join Oxford University Press to work as a systems administrator until 2007, working on HP-UX, Linux and Solaris systems.
In December 2007 I joined NATS, the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services. At NATS I worked as a systems administrator with Unix, Windows and network systems. I left NATS in September 2003.