About Me

While I work for different clients and employers, at different times, this blog, its content and opinions, are my own.

I’ve been involved with computers so long it’s become a way of life. Starting with the ZX81 with 16KB RAM expansion (that finally blew-up) in 1984 I worked my way up to a Commodore 16, through to a Commodore 64 where I still have fond memories of Spy vs. Spy (multiplayer games were rare back then!) and then through to an Atari ST before moving to my first ‘286 PC complete with Turbo Button, MS-Dos 4, a 40MB hard drive, VGA monitor and 5.25" floppy drives.

As you can imagine I moved my way of life into a way of work in 1991, back in the days when Windows was nothing more than some graphical shell that arrived on 3.5" floppy disks. I remember a GUI called GEM, knew the real meaning of WIMP, welcomed DR DOS and fell in love with OS/2. I used to run a Fidonet node called The Dark Hours, brought democracy to the massive Buy echomail group and maintained a Netmail hub. And for the geeks among you I own one of the first flight simulators released for the PC on 5.25" floppies, along with copies of OS/2, DR DOS and MS-DOS.

Nostalgia.

I specialise in the Microsoft world but I love the simplicity and power of Linux and over the years I’ve worked with CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu and even dabbled in Gentoo’s compile from scratch method of getting things running. I built a managed IT services business with clients from all corners of Scotland. The cost and time savings from implementing the Nagios monitoring solutions were so great that I built a business around installing, configuring and supporting it for other IT consultancies around the UK.

These days I provide consultancy, engineering and automation skills for Windows and Linux systems, manage projects, lead technical teams and teach on Microsoft technology.

As somebody kindly put it, I’ve been about.

I blog about my technology passions including privacy and security, internet neutrality, open source and how technology can be used to enhance our lives. With my lengthy involvement inside the industry I like to talk about my vision of managed services and the teams of engineers who back it. I also love to script in PowerShell and automate everything.

You can find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Github and Sessionize.