About

Page Title: About
Last Modified: 2026-07-01 06:57:54
Current Date: 2026-07-22 10:38:47 UTC

I was into science, astronomy, UFO's and Ghost stories etc during my childhood days along with football supporting Liverpool.
On the technology side of things there was not much about in them days apart from the Binatone Tennis game which I was not allowed to have 'because it destroys the TV screen'.

I injured myself by jumping off a football stadium roof in 1982 when I was 16. Since then I developed Chronic Pain in my spine and had major emergency surgery for Cauda Equina Syndrome in 2010 and have been on major pain medications (Morphine, Tramadol, Amitriptyline and Diazepam are my daily medications since then) so my mobility is not great at most times and I get a bit grumpy due to the constant pain.

Computing

In 1981 (44 Years ago) in my final years of school I was out shopping when my life changed from an analogue world to a digital world. I was seduced by a lovely ZX81 in the shop of WH Smiths during the school summer (August) holidays

Seeing the ZX81 sat there on the display cabinet got me excited. A device from the new digital world, a computer that could do things and I was hooked, so being 15 I had to use my money from the newspaper rounds jobs I did in the early mornings to purchase that ZX81 for £69.95. A few months later I upgraded the RAM with the 16K Ram Pack and of course suffered with the famous wobble.
I spent many nights now sitting at the ZX81 keyboard writing simple programs, programs from computer magazines and the odd game.

I upgraded to a ZX Spectrum during the school summer (August) holidays in 1982 (43 Years ago) again using money from my paper rounds to purchase one for £125.00. The ZX Spectrum was a much better computer with a Zilog Z80a 8bit processor running at 3.5MHz with 48KB of onboard RAM and colour graphics.
A year later I upgraded by buying the ZX Interface 1 and the ZX Microdrive. A couple of years later I got the Currah μSpeech speech synthesiser. (The last time I powered on my ZX Spectrum was in October 2020 and it was in fully working order).

Ten years later in 1992 I decided to jump onto the IBM Compatible bandwagon and I looked around I saw this little beauty, an Amstrad PPC-640D. The Amstrad PPC-640D was an Intel 8088 running at 4.77MHz with 640KB of onboard RAM, inbuilt Green Monochrome LCD, Twin Floppy Disc Drives and an inbuilt 2400 baud modem and joined Fidonet on the Highlander BBS in Gloucester

I still can remember sitting out in my garden in the sunshine on a hot July day in 1993 with the PPC-640D, my portable TV next to me watching the British Formula 1 Grand Prix along with plenty of ice cold Grolsch Pilsener's

After a short while I left the world of BBS's and got onto the Internet by joining Demon Internet as part of the founder £10/Month.

Since 2001 when ADSL got installed into my area I then had enough 'upload' bandwidth to start hosting my own web server.

I was very lucky starting a job working for UK Military contractors, this started back in August 1984 and after a while they brought in computers and installed a Novell Netware running on 10base2 (BNC), and I could then start to do stuff with computers at work and writing software. I moved around a bit between different competitors gaining my IT knowledge and experience and eventually ending up running the IT department at a large military contractor and doing programming, database work, TCP/IP networking and communications. I did this last job for 10 years but had to give up due to poor health with my spine in 2006.

I no longer work as I have decided to take early retirement at the age of 59 but I am still involved at home with IT constantly writing software, frp, php, python, and also messing about with Raspberry Pi SBC's, Raspberry Pi Pico's and Arduino's. I can truly say that I have sat in front of a keyboard virtually every day of my life since 1981 which is currently 16426 days since I sat in front of that lovely ZX81

My current home local network is running off multiple 2.5GbE switches with the router on a 2.5Gbe full fibre connection to the ISP, there are several wifi points around the property and also a MESH network. The servers are mostly running off multiple Raspberry PI's for their low power, whilst there are several desktop PC's and laptops etc.

With all these computers being on most of the day it's a good job we have a 6.7kWh solar panel array with 18kWh battery storage to help supplement our power needs.

I have a few other hobbies over the years other than computing which has been High Power Rocketry, Paranormal Research and also Astronomy (mainly astrophotography).

High Power Rocketry

From 2000 onwards till I had my spinal surgery in 2010 I was actively involved in rocketry. From launching tiny rocket models to a height of 50m all the way up to 4m long rockets going to an apogee of 2 miles, these housed flight computers etc. I gained my RSO certification and helped organise 2 rocketry clubs. I used black power (Estes) motors, Ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP) motors and finally Hybrid propulsion using Nitrous Oxide with various solid fuels (using plastic or Nylon). Over the years of doing this my spine was getting worse and then I needed emergency surgery in September 2010 and decided to give up the hobby.

Astronomy

It was after my surgery I decided to get a better telescope than the cheap old TASCO reflector I had for many many years. I found a bargain on eBay, a 10inch Dobsonian with a David Hines mirror and managed to get if for £180. I built a little observatory in the garden from an old shed and it was great. After a while I wanted to try Astrophotography and using a webcam on the Dobsonian was good fun to start with however it was not great for images. I then purchased an EQ6 mount, Sky-Watcher ED80, an astro modified Canon DSLR and a small HP laptop to run the mount,scope, focuser and camera. I soon found the observatory floor would move slightly when I was in there so images were not good sometimes. I then built a pier to the side of my house so I could at least get polar alignment as there was a big 25m high tree right behind me in the neighbours garden. The neighbours who's garden has the tree moved and an old couple moved in and they wanted to cut the tree down as during the day it shields the sun from their main garden. However the boundary line between us and them is also the conservation area boundary line, so they had to apply to the local council to cut it down All 20 local neighbours wrote to the council planners as ask them to pass the permission but the council said "No as it a asset to the local amenity" without even coming to look at it - what a load of crap. Within 100m of our there must be 90 other trees as we live right up to a large wooded and common land. So chopping 1 half dead 30m high tree to give surrounding neighbours daylight and myself polar alignment so I could continue my hobby is apparently an asset to the local community who despise and don't want the tree. So without being able to polar align easily 3 months later I was not really able to do astrophotography at all and the next best place where I could polar align was on the road outside the front of our house, so I decided to give it up.

But now with plate solving 'Smart Telescopes' like the Seestar and Dwarf coming onto the market I am having a small idea to start again

Paranormal

I have always been interested in the paranormal since childhood not knowing if it was real or not, but it was after the death of my father-in-law in 2013 that decided to do some investigation. What started this off, well the in-laws always said their house was haunted even though I never experienced any thing there for the previous 30 years of visiting though they claim they could also hear stuff happening most nights like hearing someone walk up the stairs and door handles moving.

Any way 2 weeks after father-in-law died in their bedroom in 2013, mother-in-law said see saw an apparition for the very first time, whilst she was getting into bed, she leaned over to pick a book up to read when a figure of a man in an old brown suit appeared at the foot of the bed, she was startled but as she started to look the figure slowly faded away. It was this incident that made me want to actually investigate the paranormal as mother-in-law is not one to lie.