About me!

Hi! I'm Neil Massey, a computer programmer who's a little over 31 years old [as of October 2004]. I have been working within the computer industry for the past 10 years, previously having worked in engineering and prior to that, being at school and endulging in much learning [while co-writing a fanzine which had a circulation of about 6, and went for about 8 issues. It was called "CHIP"... were you one of our readers?].

I first "got into" computers back in the early 1980's. There will, at some point, be a section on this website that will detail "my past in computers" but, basically, as of my 11th birthday, I owned a Sinclair Spectrum 48K and my life was forever changed. For the first year I mostly played games on it, the second was spent writing my own games [and playing games still]. Mostly poor adventures wrote in BASIC, with simple graphics and animations. It was all inspired by the original Spectrum Manual and the book "60 games for the Sinclair Spectrum" [bought by me in an effort to stop spending so much money on games - £2.50 was a lot of money in those days!(A lot of my early games were from FIREBIRD (BT) and cost £2.50 - that's almost 3 weeks pocket money!)]

I later graduated to z80 Machine code, and had a lot of fun getting no-where fast [although I did end up writing code to display "teletext"-like pages]. I bought a Sam Coupe in 1993 [although I seem to have lost the power supply in one of my house moves :-( - anyone know where I can get one?] and went to University to learn to program "properly"...

3 years later I had a HND in computer Studies. I tried to find a job. 1995, for some reason, was a bad year for finding jobs in the Midlands I found, so I went back to University and did my BSc in Computer Science - 4 years later I left with a 2.2 with honours and a job actually working for the University. I am still there now.

I went from programmer to help-desk/support to software installations to analyst/programmer [internet]. Currently I work on web development and I'm in the final year of my MSc in E-Commerce.

I have the following skills : Java, Perl, SQL, C/C++, Php, Asp, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Video streaming [using Microsoft's streaming server], Macromedia Flash / Actionscript and many others.

I am currently working in : Java - creating web applications for the University linking our internal database to a web front end [I'm part of a team working on the project, not the sole person responsbile for it]. Also I am working with Php/MySQL creating various applications as part of my MSc course, and Sinclair BASIC... recreating some of my youthful pursuits and trying to re-make some of those classic, dire games I originally created / started and never finished.

I was married, but we now live apart. I have 2 wonderful children who I love very much and see regularly. I have a cat and two Gineau pigs, and I enjoy reading [ regularly read National Geographic magazine, last books I read/are reading are : The Dark Tower series (just starting the "Wolves" one) by Stephen King, "Where did it all go right" by (I've forgotten his firstname) Collins - about growing up in the 70's, and "Stupid white men" by Micheal Moore; who I last heard was a fugitive for inciting people to vote in the upcoming American elections] I enjoy listening to music - people I like; David Devant and his Spirit wife [ one of the best groups in the world. Go buy their records!] R.E.M., Sheryl Crow, David Bowie, Leann Rimes, Vanessa Mae, Peter Gabriel, they might be giants, the Pet shop Boys, Tori Amos and Bjork... to name just a few [I have quite a range of people I like - personally I blame the parents (my mom used to listen to Talking heads, Wet Wet Wet, Barry Manillow and Cliff Richard. My dad used to listen to Queen, the Who and Genesis / Phil Colins )]

Like most people today, I watch TV. Although I am currently refusing to get digital Television [I would get the freeview if it was in my area - I like BBC3/BBC4 ... but the rest... its all so samey] and with the exception of a couple of shows I regularly watch, I either while away the remaining hours watching DVDs of old shows, or playing playstation. Worryingly, the 2 most played games on my playstation at the moment are "Intellivision Lives!" and "Activision Anthology" - 2 games collecting together the games of the early consoles of the late 70's, early 80's.