About me
About Me (...aka "Thanks Mum! You're still the best!")
My love for computers started when I was 6 years old and my mother (bless her) bought me an Atari 800 XL. While other kids were playing with action figures, I was typing LOAD "" and waiting 15 minutes for a game to load from cassette tape. Character building, they called it.
The Early Years (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Command Line)
1987 - The Atari Era
That Atari 800 XL wasn't just a computer; it was a lesson in patience. Loading games from cassette taught me about error handling (before I knew what that was), and BASIC programming taught me that GOTO statements were both powerful and dangerous. I spent hours typing in programs from magazines, only to realize I'd missed a semicolon on line 340.
1990s - The PC Revolution
Upgraded to a 286 with a whopping 1MB of RAM. Discovered that C:\> was not, in fact, a smiley face. Learned Pascal, C, and that segmentation faults were just the computer's way of keeping you humble. Built my first website in 1996 - it had a tiled background, blinking text, and a visitor counter. I was very proud.
The Professional Journey (Or: How I Learned to Love the Cloud)
2000s - The Enterprise Years
University of Liverpool taught me Computer Science, but the real world taught me that users will always find creative ways to break your code. Started with VB6 (yes, really), moved to .NET when it was still called .NET Framework, and discovered that "it works on my machine" was not an acceptable deployment strategy.
2010s - The Cloud Migration
Watched as "someone else's computer" became "the cloud" and suddenly everyone wanted to be there. Led the charge moving enterprise applications to Azure, learning that lift-and-shift is neither lifting nor shifting - it's more like disassemble-pray-and-reassemble.
Built a global SaaS platform at Petrofac that served 2000+ users across multiple continents. Learned that "global" means dealing with time zones, and time zones are the real Y2K problem that never went away.
2020s - The AI Revolution (Or: Teaching Computers to Be Smart So We Don't Have To Be)
After successfully navigating the cloud, I've now jumped into the AI deep end. As CTO at Mode3 Cloud, I'm building platforms that use LLMs, RAG architectures, and vector databases - basically teaching computers to understand context better than some humans I've worked with.
Current tech stack includes:
AI/ML: LangChain, RAG, Vector DBs (making AI actually useful, not just cool)
Cloud: Still Azure (we've been through too much together to break up now)
Languages: Python (for AI), C# (for nostalgia), TypeScript (because JavaScript needed types), Go (because sometimes you need speed)
Containers: Kubernetes - because if you're going to have problems, why not have them at scale?
The Plot Twist
Started as a kid who just wanted to play games, ended up as a CTO building AI platforms. Currently managing teams, architecting systems that handle thousands of requests per second, and still occasionally debugging why a print statement isn't working (it's always a typo).
Today
These days, you'll find me:
Building AI platforms that actually work in production
Writing technical blogs (with fewer animated GIFs than my 1996 website)
Creating online courses (I’ve about 10 new courses at 90% that I need to polish and push on Udemy!)
Mentoring engineers (passing on the trauma... I mean, knowledge)
Still explaining to my mother what I do ("I work with computers, Mum")
The Future
Still learning, still building, still fascinated by technology. Currently exploring the intersection of AI and practical business applications - because while chatbots are cool, chatbots that actually solve problems are cooler.
And yes, I still have that Atari 800 XL. It still works. Some things are just built to last.
Want to connect? Find me on LinkedIn. I promise I won't send you BASIC programs to type in.