1.12     About me

NOTE: This is NOT the latest copy of this book; click here for the latest version.

I'm a full-time IT journalist working for Future Publishing in Bath, England - you might see my name in Internet Works, Linux Format, Mac Format, PC Answers, PC Plus, PC Format, or Windows XP Magazine. I'm very passionate about the Free Software movement, use Linux both at work and at home (if you must know, I prefer Vim to Emacs and C++ to C), and like to program in my spare time. I think Mono is cool.

That said, please let me make it quite clear: I'm not a programming expert - I don't even consider myself a good programmer. The code presented here might do nothing, do the opposite of what I say it does, or even crash your computer and/or others. Having said that, it's much easier to improve on something that's written already than to write something from scratch, so I'm rather hoping some kind souls out there will let me know of any errata so they can be fixed.

I own two young cats, am happily married, play the guitar and the piano when I get the chance, and like books by George R.R. Martin. At work I have an Athlon 64 3400+ that runs Mandrake, a 400MHz G4 that runs OS X, an 1.8GHz P4 that runs Debian, and an 800MHz Pentium 3 that runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. At home I have a dual-1GHz Pentium 3 that runs Debian and an 800Mhz Athlon that runs FreeBSD and Windows XP.

This site was made to the merry tunes of Nine-Inch Nails, Cypress Hill, the various Lord of the Rings soundtracks, OPM, and Dido. The really crazy chapters were written listening to Atari Teenage Riot, and I think it shows. Still, there's a huge bunch of CDs on my wish list - if you find one you think I should listen to while writing, please do send it over!

You're welcome to email me . I usually respond, but can't promise anything.