I have been a Geek from a young age and I am proud of it. The first experience I had with computers was my Commodore C64 back in the early years of primary school, which later transformed into a gaming addiction which I still have not managed to shrug off to date.

The career path options I had chosen throughout school were mainly guided by the context of building and designing "things in the real world". My first aspirations geared towards the construction industry, to which I had been heavily exposed through my Father, who taught me the craft of tiling. So yes I am also a tiler with over ten years experience.

I had exposure to a multitude of Macs at my grammar school which cemented my passion for computing. However I still hadn't made the realisation that this was something I wanted to pursue as a career aka "building things in the virtual world". This realisation came around after my first year of A-levels, thus I ditched these to take up a HND in Computing, then a BSc in Computing Science.

During my Degree I was fortunate enough to get a placement with Intel where I gained my first real experience of web app development. Being exposed to the inners of the worlds biggest CPU makers definitely was an eye opener. It was nice to submit a few patent proposals as well.

As a graduate I started off working again within Enterprise where I sought to develop my craft of software engineering learning the disciplined principles of TTD, BDD, CI, Continuous Delivery, Penetration Testing and DevOPs. I have had exposure to every layer of n-tier applications, from the old school AS400s to cloud computing platforms.

Web Development and mobile was where I enjoyed being the most but unfortunately the opportunities that my career had presented thus far had not tickled my taste buds enough. After meeting the guys from Rumble at Belfast Ruby, I decided this was somewhere that could quench my thirst for the experience I had been chasing.

Having worked with some of the biggest brands in the world Intel, Liberty Mutual and Visa I now wanted more creative freedom, which could only be facilitated by a smaller development lab.

So here I am, blogging to you from within the walls of the laboratory :-)