When I was younger I loved maths and money. I once dreamed (yes really) of being an accountant, balancing books and hopefully making money of my own. I always thought this was what I would end up doing back when I was a nipper, however when it came to the crunch, to really dive head long into it, I thought maybe it wasn’t for me. Still not really knowing what was for me I decided to do a course in Computer Science and see what opportunities it provided.

I’ve got to be honest university was one of the best times of my life, and not for the course. I struggled through the course with a mixture of luck and when the occasion demanded it hard work. For a course which was very much programming based I came out with very little actual programming experience. It did however arm me with a solid understanding of concepts, that and my underlying ability to visualise complex things left me a little surprisingly adept at this programming lark. I applied for a few jobs at the tail end of the original dot com boom and started my career at a small (digital) agency in Southampton Lawton eMarketing. A few weeks in the real world and I’d found a vocation I could actual do, and in reality excel at. This agency eventually became Five by Five, and as it grew I grew with it, rising from Junior Developer to Technical Director, at one point even sitting on the board.

After working for 11 years at Five by Five in both a development and management role I now work as a freelance developer under the guise of AB Development. I now have over 13 years experience on the web in lots of different technologies including but not exclusive to PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript. I still enjoy problem solving, and being thrust into the deep end on a maintenance programmers nightmare, but I also like working on the small none taxing stuff as well.

I’m still a bit of a geek and an absolute sports fan with it, would spend all day watching cricket following the stats of the game if given the chance. Got married to my beautiful wife Abi in 2009 and have recently been blessed with a son named Adam who is a little belter.

Strangely I no longer dream of being an accountant but would much rather be a carpenter, but alas thats probably for another chapter in possibly another book.