A Little Bit About Me My identity and such things

So who, I hear you ask, are you? Well, I'm me.. obviously.. but I suppose that doesn't answer a great deal of questions.. Well, this page used to be somewhat odd so I've chosen to make it a little more factual since I never actually intended it to be quite so obscure the first time around.

I was born on the 3rd of June, 1972, in Liverpool England, which I suppose would technically make me a scouser but I didn't grow up there exactly (since my parents moved across the Mersey to the Wirral Peninsula when I was rather young), and I also don't have the appropriate accent, so I'm not. I grew up fairly normally I think, I can't think of anything anecdotal to say about my childhood, except for possibly an incident in which my parents were called into my primary school (St. Andrews school in Bebington) because I didn't believe in God or creationism.

At age 11 I went on to attend Wirral Grammar School for Boys, which was a single-sex school, right next door to Wirral Grammar School for Girls (ha, bet you didn't guess THAT was coming did you). All that separated them was a couple of (locked, I think) doors, and a sort of sliding partition thing in the Sixth Form common room (the lock for which seemed to mysteriously break, frequently). Anyways, once again not a lot to say about WGS, at least not a lot that most people would be interested in.

One of the things I did do there was to gravitate to Lighting Designer for the Drama Society. There haven't been many more rewarding ways of spending my free time than that was, and it was a great way of releasing my artistic tensions, given that my schoolwork (at least those subjects which managed to keep my interest) was all technical. In my years in the drama society, they presented Cabaret, Macbeth, West Side Story, The Dutchess of Malfi, and Camelot.

And so, onto the university years, for a variety of reasons I decided to go to the University of Warwick. I greatly enjoyed my time there, even though it had its fair share of eventful moments. Initially I started there as a Mathematician, after most of a year of that I realized that I really should have been a Computer Scientist, a decision which they were happy to accommodate.

While at Warwick I developed a few skills (Such as my chicken impression (Buk buk bderrrk)), experimented with life as a hat-wearer (an interesting experience), and gained a couple of alternative identities (First Cheeseplant, which came about because it seemed like a good name at the time, and as which I ran an Internet talk program, Cheeseplant's House, from 1991 to 1992, which you can read about elsewhere on my page.). Later I also became known as Flickering, which happened to nicely describe my mood at the time, as well as being a fairly cool word too. I didn't necessarily intend to keep it but decided I rather liked the associated mental imagery, and so it's stuck.

I guess it's also worth mentioning that I got a Bachelor of Science Honors degree in Computer Science, since that was supposedly my reason for being there in the first place!

Well, it's now 2001, I recently turned 29, and have been living in the US for almost 8 years now. Having been back to the UK in december for Christmas I can say that I feel more out of place there than here now - not sure if that's a good or bad thing really!

Gurnee/Grayslake area) I moved out to the San Francisco bay area in October of 1998. I could never understand why people would move to this area, given the earthquakes and high cost of living, but now I'm here, I know exactly why it is, and can't see myself willingly departing anytime soon.

After working for the same company (essentially) after it changed names 3 1/2 times, I left shortly before its final incarnation (marchFIRST) declared bankrupcy and folded. So now I'm an independent consultant doing systems architecture, software development, etc..

In case you hadn't already been able to tell from the rest of this site, my main interests vary between computer stuff, photography, movies and music.

Oh, and for anyone who wants to know what it is I look like, here's a not even slightly recent picture of me! (August 29, 1998), and if you click here you'll see a much more recent picture (Late June, 2000).