I was born in 1950 in Chelsea, London, but grew up in New Zealand returning to England in 1966. I have worked in the computer industry since 1975 after a couple of years as a professional drummer.

My first experience was five years as a mainframe hardware engineer for Sperry Univac (now Unisys) followed by 14 years as an analyst programmer with British Telecom in London.

While engaged in a complex task of converting large quantities of geographical data (map coordinate references) I discovered the joys of C – its speed and efficiency. That was in 1985 and I have been a fan of C ever since.

Since 1994 I have been a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics at Kingston University, London. This is a mostly technical university that evolved from a former polytechnic college with a long tradition of aeronautical engineering.

I am engaged mainly in teaching many computer languages and internet systems design to a large and multicultural student body.

Most of my academic research and commercial consultancy has been involved with spatial systems design and the large data volumes and necessary processing efficiency concerns has led me to concentrate on C and C++. 

A keen Open Systems enthusiast, I have exclusively centered all my teaching on the Linux platform since 2002 and Kingston University is well advanced in delivering dual boot facilities for all its student labs.