I’d intended to do something special for my 100th post, but never got round to it. So, anyway. Here, one post late, are 50 things about me. It’s not very special, or even very interesting. But item number 51 should probably be “I’m a self-indulgent narcissist”, so here goes anyway:
1. I was born in Ipswich. Since then, I’ve lived in Nottinghamshire, Norfolk and Manchester, for roughly equal lengths of time.
2. I have had several nicknames in my life. Even from my teachers at school, who generally referred to me as Professor.
3. This may have had something to do with the fact that, as a child, I read maths textbooks for fun.
4. I still do.
5. I feel aggrieved that I don’t understand the proof to Fermat’s Last Theorem.
6. I have never been to a football match.
7. I have, however, been to several Rugby internationals.
8. When I lived in Norfolk, I lived on the same road as several of Johnny Wilkinson’s family. I never met him, though.
9. I wrote my first computer program on an Acorn electron in 1987, at the age of 8. It printed “Hello. I’m learning BASIC” on the screen.
10. Shortly after that, I decided I wanted to write computer games for a living. I never expected to actually be able to do it.
11. Unfortunately, several years after deciding that, I decided that actually I really wanted to be a rock star.
12. A direct product of this was my membership of a band that was variously called “Herbgarden”, “Overdose” and “Scott Taylor and his mates making a noise in the hall and I wish they’d just shut up.”
13. The biggest gig we ever played was our rhythm guitarist’s younger sister’s 6 birthday party. We played Nirvana and Status Quo covers for a bunch of primary school kids. Afterwards, we signed autographs.
14. It didn’t help me get girls, either. That might also have had something to do with this, though.
15. Oddly, I wasn’t single when that photo was taken. The girl in question is, however, married to someone else now.
16. My obsessive crush to actual relationships ratio reads like a comfortable cruising probability for the Starship Heart of Gold.
17. Douglas Adams, as far as I’m concerned, has a lot to answer for.
18. I first learnt to make a cup of coffee on a campsite in France.
19. It was at least another 8 or 9 years before I actually learnt to like coffee.
20. I owned several goldfish as a child. Most of them comitted suicide.
21. I have a psychological aversion to eggs.
22. This also used to apply to mushrooms, but I’m mostly over that now.
23. I probably suffer from a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, but have never been formally diagnosed.
24. Amongst all the many conditions my girlfriend projected onto me during her psychology degree, Asperger’s was not one of them.
25. I speak passable French, a bit of German, a few words of Japanese and I can order a beer in Spanish, Norweigan and Italian.
26. When I go to France, people there assume I’m French. Right up until the point when they speak to me.
27. I did not imagine that, as I watched Dr Who many years ago, I would one day be working with Sylvester McCoy’s son.
28. I have met the man who wrote “Do Wah Diddy”.
29. I passed Grade 7 (Associated Board) Piano just before coming to University. I keep promising myself that one day I will take Grade 8, but as I don’t actually have a piano, the chances of this actually happening are pretty slim.
30. I love rollercoasters, but waltzers make me feel horribly ill.
31. I did my work experience at high school with BT. I still have the log book I wrote that week somewhere, which contains complicated diagrams as to exactly what’s inside those green cabinets you see by the side of the road.
32. Yes, I’m a Christian.
33. According to the political compass, my political position is pretty much the same as Mahatma Ghandi’s.
34. I helped engineer an election victory for the Liberal Democrats in our Sixth Form Mock Election. I’m quite proud of that.
35. I used to attend lifesaving classes, and won several awards for throwing ropes around and picking bricks up off the bottom of swimming pools.
36. I have a degree in Computer Science from Manchester University.
37. I dropped out of the Master’s in Optical Computing I started after that degree when it came round to writing my thesis, and discovered that I’d actually done nothing of worth other than fix bugs in someone else’s program and drink tea round my to-be girlfriend’s house for a year.
38. I saw the inside of my own leg, right down to the bone, aged 8, after falling on some playground equipment at school and cutting it wide open. I had 8 stitches, and am now incurably squeamish as a result.
39. I find Casualty harder to watch than The Evil Dead or The Thing.
40. I can ski, but not snowboard.
41. I think the Laser dinghy is about as close to perfection as you can get in a sailing vessel. But these days you’re more likely to find me windsurfing than sailing.
42. I once had a Tamagotchi. It was allegedly a fish. I called it “Fish”. It died within a week. But at least it didn’t commit suicide.
43. I have no idea what the long-term story arcs of Buffy, the X-Files, Babylon 5, Stargate or Friends involve.
44. Sometimes, adverts make me cry. I have no idea why.
45. I was a member of the Scouting movement all the way up from Beavers through to Venture Scouts. Then, when it became apparent that all Venture Scouts involved was drinking beer and eating bacon sandwiches, I figured I didn’t need to go to a village hall somewhere to do it, and left.
46. “Dweeb The Alien” was a central character in many stories I wrote as a child.
47. About the only part of my appearance I am even slightly happy with is the colour of my eyes. They’re a deep, brilliant blue.
48. I am easily distra
49. I am, frankly, an enormous hypocrite.
50. I’m probably not as weird as I might like to believe.
