Background

Having cut my teeth back in the good old days of the RM-380Z, Commodore Pet, ZX81, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and the Commodore 64, I moved on first to a Coleco Adam (A strange machine running a derivative of Apple Basic on a Z-80 CPU), and then to writing some basic assembler for the 68K series of CPUs (well, actually, the 68008 CPU in the Sinclair QL, but the less said about that, the better !).

Back in the early 1980's, I remember my 'O'-level computer project was a Physics simulation; first I wrote it for the actual project on a ZX Spectrum, then re-wrote it afterwards for my Sinclair QL - why I did this, I don't know. Probably intellectual challenge or something. I also learned some bizarre semi-assembly language called CESIL, the programs for which, used to be sent off to be batch processed, and a week later you'd get your line printer output - if it worked.

I didn't get to use Apple Macs or IBM PCs until about 1986, but from then on, I was lost to the world. My experience of UNIX started a year later, and at that point my hair started to grow, and a beard started to form. These have now disappeared as I have been assimilated into the corporate world, but they may re-establish themselves at any time !

I still find it hard to fathom that although I was introduced to email in 1988, I was initially, not that bothered by it until about 1992-1993, back then, I just used to send occasional emails - mainly because the complexities of using JANET made it too time consuming when I had other interests to divert my attention. Back in the early days of the web (1993), I used to sit at my screen and marvel at the wonder that was Mosaic. Netscape was still to be unleashed on the world, and there I was writing simple text based web pages (No real change then, eh ?). Then, from out of nowhere, Netscape arrived and my life was changed.

Although I came to the internet party earlier, I came to the Linux party rather later. First using it commercially in 1996. I didn't start using Linux for personal use at home until 1998 - for the simple reasons that I just hadn't had time to devote to Linux, when I was busy trying to build a rocket capable of going into space, and having a couple of SUN Workstations at home meant I was already immersed in all things UNIX related anyway. I then decided that maybe it would be a good idea to actually put a Linux computer on the rocket - it makes development of flight software much faster, and offers an enormous amount of horsepower compared with microcontrollers. Thus my involvement in Linux started.

Platforms

The main platforms I can remember that I have experience of are....