About Me

Mini Biography

Well, in a few words: I'm a geek in my mid 30s, originally from Cape Town, South Africa but now living in Surrey, England, married to Niki, with two beautiful children.

I work as an independent lead consultant and architect, focusing on the SAP NetWeaver platform. For the longer story, feel free to read my slightly longer biography (warning: unless you're me or related to me, it's probably incredibly boring). Although my first name is Michael-John (with a hyphen), everyone (except my mom!) calls me by my initials, MJ.

Geekdom

/geek/
   noun informal, chiefly N. Amer. 
   1 an unfashionable or socially inept person. 
   2 an obsessive enthusiast.

   DERIVATIVES geeky adjective.

   ORIGIN from the related English dialect word geck fool.

I'm not a big fan of labelling people or putting them in boxes, but sometimes it can help, as with me. I've always been a geek. I was the kid who liked taking things apart to find out how they worked, I've always found beauty in things like math and computer source code and appreciate things in their pure form. That said, I definitely think I identify with the second of the definitions above. Hey, I'm married with children - I can't be that socially inept!

Interests 'n Hobbies

I am a fairly typical geek - my favourite hobby is collecting old Unix workstations and making productive use of them, years after they've been abandoned by their previous owners. More on this under computers.

I also enjoy reading, primarily non-fiction. Interests include operating system design, system modelling and design and algorithms. Outside of computing, I also enjoy reading about linquistics, philosophy, 20th century history and current affairs.

Music 'n Movies

My musical tastes are pretty varied, and can't really be summarised too easily. I enjoy listening to most music except for that which can be broadly classified as pop. A few favourite artists include Led Zeppelin, Depeche Mode, Alice in Chains, Guns 'n Roses, Pink Floyd, Sepultura, Tool, Slayer, Lacuna Coil, Black Sabbath, Neil Young, The White Stripes, Jimi Hendrix, Jane's Addiction, Rage Against the Machine, The Smashing Pumpkins, Placebo and The Crystal Method.

A few of my favourite films are Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back.

Geek Code

All geeks need a code, and mine is below:
GCS d- s+:- a- C+++ UL++++ P+++ L+++ E--- W+++ N+ o-- K w-- O++ M- V- PS++ PE Y+ PGP++ t+ 5 X+ R- tv b+ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h++ r y**
I haven't updated it in some time, so I have a feeling it's rather out of date.

If you don't have a geek code, there are a number of generators available.

Open Source Software

I've been using and advocating open source software for over a decade and a half (in fact, longer than the term open source has been around). For the past few years I've been using Mac OS X as my desktop operating system of choice, but for server deployments I prefer NetBSD and Debian GNU/Linux. I spent a number of years contributing to the Debian project as a developer.