Personal stuff...

I was born and brought up near Southampton. Quite a lot of my youth was mis-spent playing guitar and consequently losing the top frequencies of my hearing. This was my first band, 'Blue Sun', playing in the Melody Maker Folk/Rock contest at Southampton University in 1977. Despite the onset of punk rock we were still in our 'folk roots' stage since the first places that would let us gig were folk clubs (being under 18 it was difficult to play in pubs at that time). That's me with the twelve string on the right.

In 1978 I went to Sussex University to study for a degree in Music, graduating in 1981. After graduating, I tried to make a living through the recession of the early 1980s by various bits of teaching, and also joined a band called The Resisters (using the unlikely alias 'Rikki Vienna') , which released a single on the local 'Solent Records' label in 1982 (Christine / Love Child). OK, so 'Love Child' was pretty bad, but at least it has a pretty neat clarinet solo, and I still think 'Christine' was good..


We went on to record some 48 track demos in a very nice studio somewhere in Surrey, but just as I thought it might start to get somewhere the band broke up at the end of 1983 after the drummer had an affair with the singer, who was rather unfortunately married to the manager. Somewhat disillusioned with groups, I carried on teaching and recording in local studios until 1986, when I decided I should get a proper job and went to the now defunct Garnett College in London to do a Certificate in Education and qualify to teach in further education colleges. Whilst there I began to work with computers, building on some experience I had with synthesiser programming, and did my first computer teaching at the London College of Printing, Westminster College and Southwark College. I also met the woman who would become my wife, so the whole experience was rather life changing. After qualifying in 1987 I became a lecturer at Richmond College (Twickenham) and also formed my last band, 'Goodbye Paradise'. In 1990 I became a senior lecturer at Southampton Institute. I 'retired' from music in 1991, when becoming a father rather changed my priorities. My last gig was at my first daughter's christening party, though I have occasionally dusted off the guitar for a few solo outings.

Somewhat frustrated creatively, I turned my attentions to writing poems over the next couple of years. These are a few examples:

In 1993 I published my first conference paper and started to write my first text book (on C++), published in 1994. The Java book followed in 1998. After completing my doctorate in early 1999 I left academia for a job in the 'real' world (i.e. the one where you get paid more and don't have to put with people moaning on about what long holidays you get), as a consultant and trainer with The Object People, an Ottawa based Company. As well as having the chance to do more consultancy work with projects outside the area of academic research, it also gave me the opportunity to travel much more. In April 2000 The Object People were acquired by BEA Systems of San Jose (Silicon Valley), California, and I became a 'principal technologist' for BEA's EMEA internal education office, mainly running and building internal training courses for BEA staff on WebLogic Server and related products. In December 2001 I moved to Valtech in London as a senior training consultant. In September 2003 I emigrated to New Zealand and now work as a senior lecturer in the Institute of Information and Mathematical Studies, Massey University, Auckland

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