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A Short Autobiography
I was born in All Saints hospital, Chatham, in November 1976 - which at the time of writing (December 2002) makes me 26. My family come from the South East of England, the Medway Towns in Kent to be exact. As a child I lived in Hempstead and went to Hempstead infant school, then we moved to Gillingham where I attended Forge Lane infants and Hillyfields junior schools. We subsequently moved house again to Rainham where I went to St. Margarets juniors and RMGS. After attending the University of Salford I got a job with NXT in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. I lived in Huntingdon for two and a half years, moving to Sawtry at the beginning of 2002. I met my girlfriend Sarah in 2003, and she moved from Lancaster to Sawtry later that year.

I spent most of my time when I was young building things out of lego. To preserve my sanity and ensure I did at least some work, I sold it all before the end of my A-Levels, but I took photos of many things I built over the years. As I grew older I moved into Radio-Controlled cars and then planes; I still have a few cars that work, and along with three workmates have built a robot called Tornado for Robot Wars...

I was a member of the YOC (Young Ornothologists Club) since 1985, and was a leader with the Medway group until I moved to Huntingdon. I'm now an RSPB member. Since the age of 8 I was a member of the 1st Gillingham Company of the Boy's Brigade. I stayed on until I was 18, having got the Queen's badge. I've been into sound and electronics for a long time now, building various circuits and several sets of speakers in my spare time.

After doing my A-Levels I decided to go to the University of Salford to study Electroacoustics. I found it challenging, some bits boring, but most of it interesting and fairly relevant. I made many friends, and still keep in touch with my coursemates. As part of the course, I completed a year in industry - with Philips at Eindhoven in the Netherlands. My final year project was a 'Vinyl Simulator' - no, not something kinky but a little electronic box that attempted to make remastered CD's sound like their original vinyl releases. It worked, in a "sort of" way...

Salford (and Manchester) was a reasonable place to live, I'm afraid I cannot say great as it is a shame the local people were not more receptive to students. As is typical for any inner city area, there was crime; I had my bike stolen halfway through the first year. Still, it's not all doom and gloom, you just had to be sensible when and where you went, and most crime tended to be against property rather than person. There was always plenty to do, I've heard quoted the figure of 160 clubs in Manchester! I'm not too sure how accurate that is, I certainly can't say I went to even a tenth of that number. There were all the shops you could ever want, especially music shops (where it seems I spent most of my money!). That includes the best music shop on the planet - the Vinyl Exchange.

I was glad to leave Salford, but I miss being a student - it's dawning on me as to how much spare time I had then (and don't have now)! I returned to Salford for a while, to take part in Motor Club events. My car (a sound so far Fiat Uno) hasn't let me down yet... I'm also a bit of a Land Rover fan, indeed this website started as a Land Rover site, and grew from there. I intend to buy myself an old (and therefore rusty) Land Rover when I can, probably a Range Rover.

As well as building the robot, I spend my spare time maintaining various websites, including Andrew's Exciting Website (online since April 1997), The Honeysuckle Weeks Fansite (running since October 1999), and the Tornado website (for the robot - moved from Geocities in April/May 2001).

Finally, as a bit of fun, can you work out my favourite colour?

Updated 23/01/04

Friends Homepages
Four Eyes' World - The homepage of my bespectacled friend Neil Hamill, whom I have know since I was at RMGS. Neil is a graphically talented Civil Engineer, and you can see examples of his work on his site.
The Mad Chasers Homepage - the mad chaser in question is my work colleague and Robot Wars teammate Dave Gamble, who spends his holidays driving round America in a van looking for Tornadoes. Dave is an electronics engineer - he designed and built all the electronic parts for the robot.
Dave's Home Page is a site written by my friend Dave Lewis when he was at college. It's dedicated to the game he was writing at the time, and Bob Holness... He's long since given up on the site, but it's a hilarious look at what the web was like a few years back...
The NUMC website (Northern Universities Motor Club) is run by Adrian Abbott from Salford University Motor Club, where I am still an active member.
Timo Esser's Home Page - Timo was one of my coursemates at university.
Tom's Homepage - Tom from Switzerland was another of my coursemates at Salford.