I'm a Geordie stranded in Bishop's Stortford, just north of London,
although currently in Oxford, a more comfortable distance from The Smoke.
My job title is the wonderfully ambiguous "Technical Consultant," which basically means that I do things to computers. My preferences are Unix-based systems which I'll quite happily program, manage and generally abuse. I'm fairly au fait with the various Internet protocols and services, and like to be involved with everything from the planning stage down to getting my hands dirty grubbing around under the floor looking for network cables and swearing loudly at routers. Sad though it may be, being involved with them professionally hasn't quite managed to totally kill off my interest in computing and consequently one of my main passtimes is tinkering with systems and operating systems.
My personal interest is mostly in the area of "big iron" systems such as VMS, TOPS, MVS, VM etc, the latter of which are now available to all and sundry thanks to the work of the guys on the Hercules project. Conversely, although I'm familiar with the Microsoft OS offerings, I remain deeply unimpressed both with their dubious technical merits and overall philosophy. Generally speaking, for my own work I used FreeBSD which does pretty much everything I expect from a UNIX system (increasingly the only way of getting any real work done) without some of the drawbacks of the much-hyped Linux, namely a better integrated complete system and none of the political baggage (GPL's a nice idea in theory but, like anything political in nature, it becomes very ugly when applied with too much zeal.)
The rest of my time is spent investigating new varieties of pizzas, curries, ales and listening to music. I also play bass very badly and do sketches slightly less badly. Whenever I'm feeling particularly inspired I may be found taking photos of anything that stays still long enough. I even wandered down to the meadow at about 4am one day to catch the sunrise, but don't expect to find me doing that sort of thing very often.