Here is a random list of bits and bobs of information about me, with some keywords emboldened to guide the eye:

• I'm fairly clever -- I did well at school, and got high results (five "A"s at A-level: Double Maths / Physics / Chemistry / General Studies; I was one of the top few people in the country that year for A-level Maths). I went on to Oxford University to read Physics (Merton College, 1989), where I burned myself out doing very well in the first year, struggled on through the second year, and eventually dropped out before the third year. After a few months of paid work, I headed off to Mexico to rethink my life.
• I have a strong interest in personal healing and spiritual development in all its many forms. I am a Reiki and Seichim Master, I use Taoist techniques regularly (Mantak Chia / Barefoot Doctor), I have strong connections with the Toltec tradition (Carlos Castaneda / Taisha Abelar / Florinda Donner / Victor Sanchez / Ken Eagle-Feather / Merilyn Tunneshende), and I have attended a number of courses on both Toltec and more general shamanic stuff, including a period of intense work in Peru with Ayahuasca and other traditional Peruvian plant medicines.
• I enjoy dance and movement. I've been dancing Latin styles in my own crazy way for many many years now (Salsa / Merengue / Samba-Reggae). I've seen the Birmingham scene grow from one club night a fortnight to events every night of the week. Regarding martial arts: I trained in Sul Ki Do when I was at Oxford (a mixture of hard and soft Korean styles); I did Tai Chi later on, eventually learning a very nice short Shaolin form from a Chinese friend; I studied Castaneda's Tensegrity as soon as it came out, which I find very powerful; and I have also done some training in Capoeira. I have also enjoyed Shamanic Trance Dance and experimented with Five Rhythm Dancing.
• I seem to have an interest in brain-waves. A long time back I wrote my SBaGen tool to experiment with binaural beat entrainment, and more recently I have got involved in the OpenEEG project. Probably this will all lead on to something interesting in the future.
• I've been coding computer software since I got my first ZX81 as a child. I well remember Z80, 6502 and 68000 machine language. I wrote a Forth compiler and run-time environment on the Spectrum as an early teen, although it was never released. With programming languages I prefer to stay 'close to the metal', and I dislike unnecessary typing and layers of fluff. I like C and Perl, and for some aspects, Java; however, I really don't get on at all well with C++ (we've had fights!). Other interesting languages I've looked into have taught me things, but left me returning once again to old favourites. LISP seems completely incompatible with my brain, yet strangely PostScript is like an old friend. I use open-source software for very nearly everything, and I've been running Debian GNU/Linux since the first release.
• I feel strong connections with other parts of the world. Mexico and Latin America have obviously played very important parts in my life in several ways -- I had a Chilean girlfriend for three years in the distant past, and in 2006 I married a Peruvian girl with whom I'm now happily settled. I also feel a strong connection with Arab culture, particularly with Arab music. I took a solo trip to Morocco once, so I have some feeling for the people there too. It is amazing to be in a places in the world like these where human interaction is so rich and varied. Both of my grandfathers have been from families who have moved around the world from generation to generation (although both were initially UK-based), so travel is in my blood, I guess. I have a mixture of French, English, Welsh and Scottish blood, and I sometimes wonder if there is a Moorish connection in there somewhere as well -- somehow I would like there to be.
• I am a musician, brought up in a family of musicians. I learned piano, church organ and french horn as a child (to grades 8, 6 and 8), but now I only use my piano/keyboard skills. I've been messing around with writing music software for many years, although I don't have too much to show for it. I also did a course in Sound Engineering in 2001 (i.e. how to operate a music studio). This may all lead onto something interesting in the future -- we'll have to see.
• I speak Spanish reasonably fluently, French and German to get by.
• I am a motorcyclist, and I rode a cheap and low-tech MZ before I sold it in 2002. For some reason I do like the MZ style of "low-tech / does the job / no nonsense" engineering, because I also had a LOMO camara which is similar in feeling. There is a kind of aesthetic to solidly engineered low-tech items like this that I do quite like.

So, that's it. This is a rather random collection rather than any kind of an organized story, so there are great chunks of my life not represented here, but still it does give an overview of some of what I am about.

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