After six years I've finally got around to saying hello.
I'm a retired asm and C programmer. My name is Cecil Ward and I live in Skye, a huge Island off the West Coast of Scotland. I've been here since 1998, before that I lived and worked in London for sixteen years. Before that I was at University in York and before that I lived on my Mum and Dad's beautiful farm in Staffordshire, not far from the edge of the Peak District, can see Alton Towers several miles away with binoculars in fact. Why did I write that backwards, who knows?
I did Theoretical Physics, got a very bad degree as I never ever did any work and never went to any lectures much. I was playing games all the time and fiddling about with early microprocessors and software. I got a job as a games programmer writing Z80 code for Games that were sold for Sinclair Spectrum machines. I then worked a little bit on the world's first (crap) handheld, afaik, the Psion Organiser I. I worked on a couple of other new machines in r+d.
In the 1990s, I got badly bitten by the foreign language learning bug. Worked as internationalisation guy for a year or so, which I loved. Lost that job, hated London anyway.
So I left and went to study Scottish Gaelic language at smo.uhi.ac.uk, full time, immersion, no English speaking allowed. Ulp. Absolutely hated parts of ithe shambolic course, but was hooked.
Then went to work for myself as a consultant, didn't earn much money. Illness forced me to retire around 2011 and I've been semi bed-bound ever since (CFS/ME same thing, and chronic pain plus loads of strong drugs). My brain is v fuzzy so allowances pls. So that was me at fast forward speed. And typing is shocking.