I was born in Symington, Lanarkshire in Scotland where I lived until I left in 1981 when I left to take up a computer course at the Scottish College of Textiles in Galashiels. It was the Sinclair ZX80 that started my interest in computing and after moving to the ZX81 and helping develop a program to help my dad run his Post Office I realised that computing was a real passion. 

After 2 years studying Computer Data Processing learning mainframe languages such as COBOL I left to take up my first programming role with Texas Instruments in Bedford, England. During this time I bought my first major desktop computer which was an Amstrad 8120. This brought me in to contact with languages such as Clipper and DBase and then on to FoxPro.

I have continued with SQL Server throughout the subsequent versions of the product whilst also progressing to .NET with C#. I also develop using Sybase and Java so have a large eclectic skillset mix. In my personal life as a family we have as pets 5 bearded dragons and a chameleon. We are very proud of our reptiles and we support Sams Species Reptile Sanctuary who do some brilliant work rescuing reptiles that have been dumped by their owner. Do visit her site and if you feel like you can, then she would be very grateful of any donations. She works tirelessly on a budget put together by taking out some of her reptiles to schools and from donations.