Me#
Initially from Brisbane, Australia I was fortunate enough to immigrate to the UK in 2019 to work at a London FinTech. Most of my career prior to this was primarily on-premises style System Administration work where I had to rack and cable actual physical server and storage hardware, if you can believe it.
I really enjoy working at a cloud-first organisation and I’ve been fortunate with opportunities to apply myself to a wide range of problems. I’ve run vendor selections and project implementations, designed and implemented cloud architectures, written and deployed infrastructure code & CI/CD pipelines, created bespoke tooling, and last but not least met some really great people along the way.
Earlier life#
I’ve always been a curious cat and I spent my youth poking around my dad’s garage (he was a telecommunications installer) which had all manner of tools, motors, wires, gadgets etc and it wasn’t long until that curiosity compelled me to start disassembling (and occasionally re-assembling) toys and other junk in the vicinity.
Time passed and we gained our first computer (a 386 with 4MB of RAM and a ~200MB hard-drive!) which didn’t escape my meddling; I learned so much with this first system, and over time became proficient with building/maintaining general PC systems.
My first technology role was at a small games company where I was initially the general maintenance/handy-person for anything even remotely adjacent to IT such as assembling furniture, putting up whiteboards, running network cabling, crawling around in rooves and all that fun stuff. Over time the let me loose on enterprise server hardware and software and my journey to the dark side (becoming a sys admin) was complete.
Other interests#
Games#
I really enjoy playing PC (mostly) and console (occasionally) games. Some of my favourites have been:
- Destiny 2
- Factorio & Satisfactory
- Helldivers 2, Arc Raiders
- Hades
- Frostpunk
- Subnautica
- XCOM 2, Phoenix Point
Books#
The family book stash had some classics such as Dune and Lord of the Rings - reading these at an early age laid the foundation for my love of science fiction & fantasy. Some of my all time favourites are:
- Hyperion Cantos (Dan Simmons)
- Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
- The Broken Earth (N.K. Jemisin)
- The Vagrant Trilogy (Peter Newman)
- The Kingkiller Chronicle (Patrick Rothfuss)
- Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher)
- The Locked Tomb (Tamsyn Muir)
- The Expanse (James S. A. Corey)
- The Iron Druid Chronicles (Kevin Hearne)
- Peter F Hamilton in general
I was ~26 when I read the first Stormlight Archive book (The Way of Kings) by Brandon Sanderson and I promised myself I wouldn’t read any more until the whole series was published; I made this mistake with Wheel of Time and kept falling out of sync with the characters after long periods between releases. I thought it would make a great 40th birthday present but we’re only up to book 5/10 so it seems I was a bit optimistic; perhaps an early retirement present instead.
Food#
My diet is a bit of a double-whammy, plant-based and gluten-free, but I very much enjoy making and eating food. The eating part was revealed to me whilst on holidays in my mid-thirties as I was literally running to a cafe I’d found which had an 11 o’clock cut-off for ordering pancakes. Unfortunately I arrived too late to order pancakes, but just on time to gain valuable insight into one of my core motivators.
Creating a blog will be a good excuse to write down some of my favourite plant-based recipes, restaurants, and grocery items.
Does plant-based mean vegan?#
I don’t think so, the vegan definition includes some non-diet related lifestyle choices. Although I’m pretty close to it, I don’t consider existing as a human vegan so feel comfortable sticking with the plant-based tag.
Does Standard Issue Engineer mean anything in particular?#
It does! It’s a little extension of Standard Issue Cat (SIC). If you’ve not heard the term Standard Issue Cat before, do yourself a favour and check out this great guide on Reddit. Although arguably not as fancy as some models, SICs (as is common with mongrel breeds) are robust and excellent specimens, not to be disregarded. In this fast paced world full of pressures and labels maybe it’s ok to just be a Standard Issue Engineer that does their best.
AI policy#
In this day and age starting a blog feels pretty silly. I started doing it because I enjoy the process of stepping through a subject, validating or renewing my understanding of how things fit together, and attempting to convey my ‘world model’ about how this thing works to someone else. Whether or not it’s any good who knows, but each post has brought updated insights which I really enjoy; and it’s something I can work through at my own pace.
All of this is a roundabout way to say I don’t use AI to write my posts - there would be no struggle, no delving, no simmering or musing, no spark when a little discovery extends my web of understanding - how boring!
That said, as much as I enjoy the process despite only speaking/writing english I seem to be terrible at it so I do run a prompt over the post at the end which is doing a spelling/grammar sweep - it seems I consistently misunderstand when to use its vs it’s so that keeps me pretty humble.
Anyway, good luck to you traveller - I hope something on my blog was interesting to you.