About me
Hi, my name's John. I'm a male man from England. By day I'm a
mild-mannered web developer, by night I'm a video game addict and
all-round nerd. Online I go by the moniker
1980's
I've always been into computers and gaming. Some of my earliest memories as a child are sitting in front of an Acorn Electron and BBC Micro with my dad. Spending quiet hours programming games out of a magazine or book, or being deafened by the screech of a cassette loader. I think I could read BASIC before I could read English! I was lucky enough to have parents who could afford to be generous, a small fortune was spent on He-Man and Transformers toys for me, which I definitely attribute to fueling my nerdy disposition.
1990's
We moved around a lot when I was growing up, but eventually settled in a place called Morecambe. It's a seaside town in the northwest of England and during my formative teenage years I definitely appreciated living in a place with a theme park and what felt like countless arcades to spend my time in. When I wasn't shovelling my pocket money into The Punisher I was at home playing Super Nintendo or Mega Drive with my little brother.
2000's
When I was 18, I went to university in Stoke-on-Trent to get a degree that ended up not being so useful for me in the end. To be fair though, I probably did spend too much time playing PlayStation and Pokémon or messing around on the internet instead of studying and revising.
After uni I found myself in Norwich, a fine city (especially for Alan Partridge fans). This move worked out for well for me because that's where I met my wife, who is just as much an avid gamer as me. I have fond memories of us bonding over Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire, Lost Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors 3. When we moved into our first bungalow together, we got a broadband connection and hooked up two Xbox consoles in the living room so we could play Halo 2 online against each other and with our friends.
2010's
I bounced around various jobs until I landed on the path of web developer. It wasn't something I'd intended to do, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense when I consider I spent most of my time in the late nineties/early noughties chatting for hours on Yahoo Chat and MSN Messenger, posting on bulletin boards and forums, building web pages on GeoCities and making silly little Macromedia Flash games in my spare time for fun.
Eventually I got homesick for Morecambe and convinced my wife to move up north. Sadly, it's a shadow of it's former self, and the weather is sometimes a bit grim, but the cost of living difference to the south was certainly worth it. We bought a nice little semi-detached house with plenty of space to amass huge collections of games, films and assorted nerdy collectibles. Oh, and there's plenty of room to swing a cat or two... or six.
2020's
Yes, we have six cats! Starbuck, Ripley, Newt, Booboo, Cookie and Meryl (all girls). Two are rescue cats of no specific breed, three of them are British Shorthair and one is an Exotic Shorthair. If you follow me on any of my social links you'll get to see them a lot, I also have a Redbubble shop where I occasionally upload images of them, so far they've appeared on stickers, t-shirts and cushion covers!
I'm still just as much an avid gamer as I've ever been, and have taken up a fun hobby of live-streaming my gaming on Twitch. I might even be live right now as you're reading this...
Please wrap it up
So that's probably a good enough place to conclude this brief summation of who I am thus far. I'll leave you to go and enjoy the rest of this website, which is mainly just blog posts about the nerdy stuff I'm into and my various gaming achievements. Feel free to reach out if you have any feedback or questions, but otherwise, have a blessed day 🙏.
