Neil is a contractor, specialising in C++ programming on Unix and Linux. He has degrees in Computer science and Next Generation Computing. As of April 2002, Neil has, like many other British Contractors, been "resting" for longer than he would like to admit. He is, however, making positive use of his time and skills as an IT Volunteer with Victim Support and Leonard Cheshire.
Neil has worked on a wide range of systems from the control system for the British Gas national grid to video servers for the Home Choice video on demand service. He first programmed computers in 1980 with his school General Studies class, which was allowed access to a mainframe at The National Institute of Oceanography, programmed in Fortran on punch cards.
A computer science degree followed at Queen Mary College, London, then Neil worked for Logica for 3 years before taking an MSc in New Generation Computing at Exeter University.
The next 5 years saw Neil researching parallel simulation algorithms at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, initially on transputers and subsequently on SPARC based parallel systems. Since leaving RSRE, Neil has mostly worked freelance and has worked on financial data feeds, video servers and virus scanning proxies.
Neil first used Unix at college in 1982 and started working on Linux in 1996.