About Me

My passion for technology started in early childhood, when I bought a 2nd hand Sinclair ZX Spectrum+. Inbetween playing games I learned some basics of programming through the Sinclair BASIC language, mainly comprising very simple text adventures and copying out by hand some of the programs provided in Spectrum magazines of the time. Fast forward ~20 years and I was building my own gaming computers, which was my primary passion in life.

Eventually I began experimenting with servers and developed an interest in Linux, starting as so many people did with Ubuntu. I ran a dual home lab where Oracle VM Virtualbox was my local development environment, breaking & building, breaking some more then rebuilding, until settling on a solution that I then implemented on small footprint physical rack servers because metal was as much my life at that point as the software.

In October 2008 I got my first big break in tech: I landed the position of Technical Support Engineer at BioMed Central, a groundbreaking STEM publisher and major player in the Open Access publishing movement. Over the years I developed my skills and career, moving into increasingly technical engineering positions until I landed where I am today, Platform Engineer at Springer Nature.

I'm a voracious learner, having earned numerous IT certifications and have sat & completed more than 50 online courses. In addition to numerous ongoing personal projects I'm currently working towards a Master's Degree in Computer Science at the highly prestigious Keele University.