My main hobby and interest is undoubtedly anything computer related. I have always enjoyed assembling, configuring, installing and tinkering with both software and hardware. Recently I have been weaning myself off Spotify, by building a NAS with openmediavault and using JellyFin instead to server all my music. Obviously because of my age I already have a reasonable physical media collection of both CDs and records, but for the price of a Spotify subscription, I can usually afford a new CD a month or a few second hand CDs and there mine for evermore!

I own an extensive collection of past and present software and hardware, dating back to the 70's. Unfortunately, I had to half my collection when I moved house. So I lost many treasures such as a Mac Classic, Coleco Vision, Amstrad PCW, Dragon 32, arcade boards and many many more. To ease some of the pain I built my self an arcade style joystick with an emulator inside, although this does help it is no substitution and so visits to Arcade Club are occasionally necessary. I am currently in the process of adding controller ports to it, so I can use the original joysticks and pads with it.

When I am not tinkering, playing computer games or using retro machines, I enjoy working on personal programming projects. Over the years, I have built many programs and tools including MP3 players, screen savers, games, android apps, web crawlers and (one of my favourites) data analysis tools. I am always interested in new programming languages and quite often try building things to explore them. When I was younger and the internet was less accessible I used to do the same with collage courses, which is how I learned some of the languages like C++, Visual Basic, Pascal (Although the Visual Basic was actually a mistake, as I turned up at the wrong class and just went with it).

I have an ongoing interest in films and CGI and have helped to produce and edit two short films; one of which was purely a special FX film with a friends to expand our skills in blending real footage with 3D renders.

I am a keen juggler and have attended juggling conventions and local juggling club. As part of a small team I have completed juggling workshops for community ventures including work for Pendle Council. My very first website was built with Windows Notepad, PaintShop Pro and 3ds Max (courtesy of collage) for the purpose of teaching people how to juggle. I recently found this in a backup while looking for something else. So if you wish to travel back to the simpler times of 90's internet you can view this masterpiece of bad colour choices and questionable instructions How to juggle 90s website. (I did have to make one change to it, as apparently "bgsound" is deprecated, which give you an insight into its quality)

I particularly love reading/watching/listening to anything Science Fiction. If this is you too? Then I need to take this opportunity to say you must read or listen to this book... "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Some of my other favourite books are...

• "Neuromancer" by William Gibson
• "The Peripheral" by William Gibson
• "Dogs of War" by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" by Douglas Adams (The radio play versions)
• "All Systems Red" by Martha Wells
• "His Dark Materials Trilogy" by Philip Pullman
• "Mogworld" by Yahtzee Croshaw
• "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke
• "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson
• "Feersum Endjinn" by Iain M. Banks

Although I would strongly suggest with all these books you go into them blind and don't read the full wikipedia pages. I would also not recommend any of the movie or television versions (so far! I do have high hopes for Neuromancer and Murder bot), bar maybe the BBC production of "His Dark Materials Trilogy" (after reading the books).

As you can see from my main hobbies above I am not the sportiest of people, but one hobby I really enjoy is cycling and have been for cycling holidays around the UK and the Basque country. Although I don't do it as much as I would like, since my bike got stolen and I have not replaced it yet. The other main sporting activity I enjoy is ice skating or inline skating, although I am no professional and feel I am a bit tall to be graceful.