About the Authors
My name is Richard Boakes, my wife is Emma; and this is where we write about things.
About Rich
I was born and raised in Swansea (predominantly in Killay, Dunvant, Langland and Mumbles). At 18 I moved to Plymouth and studied for a B.Sc. (Hons) in Computing & Informatics, graduating in 1995. After several years of commercial employment I returned to academia and undertook a research degree within the Distributed Systems Group at the University of Portsmouth, graduating in 2007 with a Ph.D.
I’ve worked for IBM and Netscape so I’ve been a part of Internet computing since it took off in the mid 1990’s. I’ve frequently worked as a technical lead on projects where the customer is an early adopter of the technology-du-jour; their need to be first to market with fledgling systems has meant balancing contracted and deliverable requirements with the needs of product engineers who are not just building for one customer, but building for many; consequently I understand a little of how the duck looks serene above the water but paddles like the clappers below. I’ve designed, developed, installed, configured, tested, launched and supported systems for many household name companies. During my time at Portsmouth (but not whilst focusing on the writeup!) I was a co-editor of the Grid Computing section of dsonline - an IEEE publication.
I was the first person ever to send email using a phone on the Orange network (because I installed (and helped write) the software). I have been in the same room as the busiest website in the world. I run both Windows and GNU/Linux machines. I believe open source software is a good thing, however, I harbour concerns about the economic implications. My main development languages have been (in chronological order): BBC BASIC, 6502 Assembler, AMPLE, ARM2 Assembler, Pascal, CoBOL, Modula-2, C, C++, Lisp, Strand, Smalltalk, Java and PHP. There are lots of other languages in there too, but these are the main ones.
In stark contrast to the geek/engineer stereotype I do not drink coffee, but I have been known to enjoy a mug of tea. If a pot of tea is available, then so much the better.
I like an occasional beer, if it can be more frequent than that, then so much the better.
I am a child of the 70’s and grew up through the 80’s, consequently Star Wars has infested my subconscious more than should have been allowed. Of the six movies, the original 1977 release of A New Hope is still my favourite. Other movies that are in my top 10 include, The Life of Brian, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, Dogma, and of course, Ferris Buellers Day off.
Aged 8, I steered a Boeing 737 which was laden with a full compliment of passengers.
Everyone should have an ambition that is almost impossible to fulfill, so mine is to fly in an Avro Lancaster and maybe to walk to the Geographic North Pole.
I can ski, but prefer to snowboard off the piste and in the trees, and I’ve got out of the top of a full size half-pipe; they are surprisingly high and steep.
I still own a surfboard.
If I had a top pocket, it would incorporate a red, green and blue pen.
I support Amnesty International because democracy and equal human rights are not yet enjoyed every human on the planet, and Greenpeace because those rights aren’t going to be worth much if we don’t have a planet to live on. I also sponsor a dog.
About Emma
Em will add some words when she gets time… I think she’s lovely.
About Us
In February 2005, we were married at Marwell Hall (the grounds of the hall are now a Zoological Park). Swing jazz played; nice.
Just for fun we’ve crowd surfed at Glastonbury, slept without a tent in the middle of the Australian desert, dived on the Great Barrier Reef, watched sunrise from the bottom of Death Valley, frightened an octopus in the Caribbean and accidentally got very close to a wild brown bear while walking through the national park in Sequoia, California.
We’ve been caught in a bushfire (it was rather smokey and warm); held a piece of the moon in our bare hands, and met one of the twelve men who’ve walked on it.
We’ve been inside Oskar Schinder’s factory, and visited Auschwitz I & II.
In 2004 we ran the London Marathon with Emma’s brother Steve. We raised £3000 for the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre.
