I was born in Feburary 1988 in Kent, England. Until I was 18, I lived in the town of Swanley, Kent. I have a younger brother who is a PCSO (Police Community Support Officer) and a half brother and sister. From 1992 to 1999, I studied at Birchwood primary school - a few yards from where I lived. It was here that I first found my love of computers, that and taking stuff to bits and generally annoying the teachers by asking questions like "Why is water wet?..." Apparantly 4 year olds aren't meant to ask such questions! Having finished there, I continued to return for several years afterwards, helping to perform low level maintenance on the IT they had.

From 1999 to 2006 I attended Wilmington Grammar School for Boys, where I like to think I made an impression. I almost never got to go there though, I missed out on one of the entrance exams by one point, but successfully managed to appeal. Once I got there though, I really made myself at home. I was fortunate to get to continue my work in computers, as well as finding that engineering could be fun. In my third year I took an early GCSE in Information Technology, and finished my fifth year with twelve-and-a-half GCSE's all from A*-C. This got me into the sixth-form where I took courses in Computing, Systems Control Technology, Maths and Chemistry. I left Wilmington in 2006 to start a course in Computer Science at Loughborough University.

While I was at Wilmington, I involved myself in a range of extra-curricular and activities supplimental to my subjects. Throughout my time at Wilmington, I was involved in the school council, culminating in my election as the Deputy Head Boy in 2005. For several years, I ran the school bank on behalf of HSBC and I supplimented my electronics GCSE by producing CAD/CAM produced sign plates for other students, for which I was allowed to charge. I played a role in helping Wilmington secure specialist status in Engineering, by producing several presentations for sponsors of the school. In my A-Level computing, I worked with Review Display Systems to produce a barcode controlled stock management system, which allowed me to conduct real world research and analysis. By the time I left Wilmington, I had 14 awards to my name, and had won the SIMS prize for IT in each of the seven years that I was a student there.

After leaving Wilmington, I was employed by the school, both as an Education Assistant, serving as co-leader of the enterprise project, which attempted to teach 12-13 year olds about enterprise through an IT project. I did this in the summer of 2006 and 2007. In 2006 I also worked as a CAD/CAM operator, moving production of signage for the school in-house, helping them make considerable savings over having the signs produced externally.

Around 2002 I become involved in the Dartford Youth Council, which was in its earliest stages of being. I was fortunate to become involved with two very talented people, Michael Horwood and Barry Bristow. Michael eventually become the permanent chair of the council, I was elected as both treasurer and website administrator, later ceding the role of Treasurer. Under Michaels leadership, the council twice won the try-angle award for our role within the community. I personallw was awarded volunteer of the year by the mayor of Dartford for my work on the council. Unfortunately, after we all left to go to university, the council was never the same. No members could accomplish was the three of us could, or maybe they didnt want to, as there seemed to be a strong opposition to elitism within the membership, something we maintained through the executive commitee, which consisted of the elected members. It was my first taste of how democracy really works, and one day I might go into the big politics game! God help us all.

In September 2006 I started an MComp with Honours and Dimploma in Professional Studies at Loughborough University. In the first two years I studied Javascript, PHP, Logic and Functional Programming, Computer Architectures, Mathematics for computer science, Object Orientated Programming and Algorithms, Object Orientated Requirements Analysis, e-Buisness, AI, 2D Graphics, Databases, Systems Design and HCI, Formal Specification, Operating Systems, Networks and the Internet, C, K and took part in a major team project working in both PHP and ASP.NET. I am currently predicted a 1st class degree with honours.

In addition to studying, I took a number of extra-curricular positions, including treasurer of Towers Hall, treasurer of Loughborough Students Union Computer Society (LSUCS), Part A student representative of the Staff-Student Committee for Computer Science, Part B student representative of the Staff-Student Committee for Computer Science and the student representative of the Computer Science Health and Safety committee.

For my third year of my degree, I am working on Industrial Placement, orginally with Lehman Brothers and now with Nomura International in the Windows Server Administration team. This involves the administration of several thousand windows servers, blades, VMWare instances and the Exchange organisation. I am also teaching myself Windows 2003 Active Directory while in this position.

Other jobs I have worked in include B&Q for two years, working as a checkout operator, showroom salesman and cash office operator where I would be handling up to a hundred thousand pounds in cash. I also worked as a pre-sessional social tutor for the English Language Study Unit at Loughbrough University. In that job I had to look after the new overseas students who had come for additional English lessons while they were not in class. This was a fun, if somewhat thankless job, when things went well, it was a really nice place to be, but when things went bad, we would be on the receiving end of a lot of complaints. This was more than made up for though when I would be sitting outside with my friends at two in the morning, smoking shisha and drinking tea, arabic style, which has to be one of my favorite ways to pass the time.

My first computer was a Dell 486 with 16MB of RAM and a whole 500MB of hard disk... Those were the days when you could back the entire computer up onto a single CDROM. That said, the first computer I ever used was an RM Nimbus with a 186 processor. Since then I have run a variety of hardware and currently run 3 PCs, a Sun workstation, a Single Board Computer, a Dell notebook and an Asus Eee PC. I started this website in summer 2007 and launched the first long term version (CMv4) in December 2007, with this one (CMv5) replacing it in January 2009.

Away from work and technology, I like to read, I would not recommend buying books for me though, a good novel will not last me more than a day, since I can happily read most books in around 6 hours. When the weather is nice I like to go out for a bike ride or take the car out for a spin. I enjoy working on cars and engineering in general. Practical chemistry is another thing I enjoy, there is nothing better than making thermite in your own back garden! I need to mention though that I had a chance to expand my chemistry set quite considerably, even getting the chance to add mercury to it. I am a good skier, and when not at university, I try to get a week per year. I also enjoy swimming and walking.

Finally I need to give a mention to my partner, Elsa. I met Elsa when I was working on the pre-sessional course in Summer 2007 and we have been happily together ever since! Elsa is a chemist, and whereas I can only make things explode, her knowledge of why far outstrips mine. In fact, I honestly wished I had chosen to do physics at A-Level now, I feel that I would have enjoyed it more and have got a better result.