---
title: who
desc: A short biography, verging on becoming self-referential, of the hoopy frood known as omz13. There be Gen X and BOFH tendencies. Contains layered epistemic structure. This is the authorial intent and personality. A situationist is not an artist, but a revolutionary who uses art as a weapon. This author is a situationist, and this website is the proof.
---
# who?

I am known online by the handle omz13[^omz13], more by accident than design[^squatting].

Journey := { discovery -> survival -> mastery }

<!--
```
digraph G {
    rankdir=LR;
    node [fontname="monospace", shape=box, style=rounded];
    edge [fontname="monospace", fontsize=10];

    // States
    S1 [label="DISCOVERY\n(Idealism)", color=gray];
    S2 [label="SURVIVAL\n(Adaptation)"];
    S3 [label="MASTERY\n(Pragmatism)", style="rounded,bold"];

    // Transitions
    S1 -> S2 [label="initial_collision"];
    S2 -> S3 [label="hardening_epoch"];

    // Journey (The Narrative Arc)
    label = "Journey := {Discovery -> Mastery}";
    // How (Vocation)
    // label = "Mode := [Turner -> Joubert]"; // ref: "3 Days of the Condor"
    labelloc = "b";
}
```
-->

I mangle words[^words], wrangle bits[^bits], and know where my towel is[^h2g2]. I can wax poetic about the intersectionality of utility and futility:

```
I encounter systems
  bloated
  ceremonial
  dubiously useful

I build tools as dérives
  mostly for myself
  sometimes for others
  YMMV

My tools drift
  across systems, networks, protocols, and people
  Observing flow
  Mapping friction
  Finding gaps

Collaboration is optional
Clarity is not

Computer languages should be strongly typed

RTFM
```
I cut my teeth, like everybody else in the early 1980s, programming in BASIC and 6502 assembler[^atom] while listening to _The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ and staying up the late into the night to listen on (the radio) to LBC's _Nightline_. I've been online since the days of V.24 modems and X.25 networks. I did cut-and-paste when that meant using a 10A scapel and 3M Spray Mount. Today my network packets arrive through an optical cable with staggering speed (FTTH FTW).

I am a typical Gen X dude who is busy getting on with my own thing and don't feel the need to humblebrag to the whole world about my accomplishments. I don't care about followers or acquiring kudos or the need for validation or whatever. I expect things to be resilient, have rigor, and provide utility.

I was educated in London (UK) at Emanuel School[^alumni]. I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Design and Innovation from The Open University (they let anybody in). I went to UAL Camberwell College of Arts (who are apparently quite good[^ranking], selective, and mad enough to let me in) and completed the MA Fine Art Digital[^mava] under Jonathan Kearney[^kearney].

Most of my career is spent in greenfield projects, to do the thinking and hand-on heavy lifting. When I do brownfield it is because something has gone terribly wrong and somebody needs it fixed yesterday. I've seen (and made) enough mistakes to know where the bodies are buried; and if I don't know, I'm pretty good at sniffing them out.

<!--
I’ve spent time in the trenches of messaging middleware at Braid (UK), was at Digital (NL) during the early foray into object-oriented, collaborative "frameworks" and documented ObjectWorks, the OO language at the heart of LinkWorks when most people hadn't heard of OO. At IBM (NL) I was where SNA clashed with TCP/IP in their Multiprotocol Router Network and nobody knew what a 'ping' was.

I moved through the engine rooms of Dutch banking: at ABN Amro, documenting risk management systems, and at Rabobank, working on trading systems

I spent time at MasterCard Europe (BE), wrangling the business process documentation for CHIP/EMV. At Midas-Kapiti (LU), I worked on HNWI systems, reverse engineering an acquired product to extract a functional specification from the chaos.
-->

After my mid-life detour to art school to get an MA (not as easy as you'd think), an unexpected NMI to raise humans[^twins], survive COVID, and other timeline events, I’ve returned to my roots: programming and building systems build for an audience of "one" in the internet[^one-platform]. As any veteran knows: a system for "one" is easily adapted to be a multi-tenant multi-protocol thing with utility and panache. No more clues.

I live in the EU.

If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend that you read:
- Julian May's _Saga of Pliocene Exile_ ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_Pliocene_Exile))
- William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer))
- Robert A. Heinlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land))
- Douglas Coupland's _Microserfs_ ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs))
- Robert M. Pirsig's _Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance_ ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance))
- Albert-László Barabási's _Linked_ ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked:_The_New_Science_of_Networks))

<!-- Attitude := Coffee + Tangerine Dream + Dada + punk -->

Attitude := {coffee} ∪ {Tangerine Dream, Yello, Can} ∪ dada ∪ punk

<!-- And blogging. If you believe something passionately, you should blog that. When you passionately explore something, you gain a deep understanding of it,
and then pushes the limits of that knowledge and builds upon it. Scientists and engineers do it. It is at the essence of advancing humanity. -->

[^alumni]: When I was there, the most famous contemporary alumni was Michael Aspel, a lightweight TV presenter. A few years later, most famous contemporary alumni was passed to this dude called TimBL, who was a few years ahead of me, so we never met in the quad. A friend of mine claims that she introduced him to his wife when he was loitering around Geneva coming up with this world wide web thing, which some people say was a good idea, while others say it has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Things really have an interconnectedness factor that is hard to ignore.

[^atom]: My first microcomputer was an Acorn Atom.

[^bits]: I have written code and built products. The most surprising thing about technology is just how much involves moving bits and bytes from point A to point B. Occasionally, you move things from point A to point B via point C where some of the bits get twiddled, much to the consternation of point B who, when they receive them, panic for no good reason, or just ignore them because they were expecting 7-bit odd-parity ASCII data because unicode had not been invented yet. The world is also small and inter-connected: when I started programming, I wrote some code that was published by the BBC on their Telesoftware service; then I worked on teletext receivers at General Information Systems[^gis] (UK); and then brought in by George Berry at Softel (UK) to build the first version of PC Swift[^pc-swift], their subtitling workstation, which was a pivotal shift away from proprietary and expensive hardware to COTS-based hardware. <!-- there was never much money on the table for salaries, but somehow enough to acquire Aston. -->

[^gis]: A poor choice of name for a company because everybody associates GIS with Geographic Information Systems instead of General Information Systems Ltd. But, it was formed by Chris Curry after he left Acorn, so it did have some pedigree. I was involved just after the mains-borne devices (the "red boxes" that were the 80s version of a smart home) and before they got into smart cards: I spent my time in broadcast data receivers (for BBC Micro and PCs). Other people worked on the smart shopping terminals that tried to do natural language input and web shopping in the 80s, something that was so ambitious and also too far ahead of its time to work within the available technology.

[^h2g2]: If you do not get the "know where your towel is", you need to dig into [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy). Despite what other people think, the definitive, if perhaps wildly inaccurate version, is the original BBC radio version.

[^kearney]: He still likes to blend paint and glue. Good for him.

[^mava]: Master of Arts in Visual Arts: Fine Art Digital. Yes, that is the official title. Quite a mouthful. Somebody got paid per word for that title. Although its a MA, its actually a MFA in disguise, for reasons long lost in academic play.

[^music]: My musical taste is pretty eclectic, but was initially influenced by Tangerine Dream, which lead me to Yello, Can, Agitation Free, etc. I also like Jazz. And Opera.

[^omz13]: If you recognize the name "outer module Z-13" you must be one of the 10s of people who watched the 1987 BBC TV Series _Star Cops_. It is a shame, because it was an exceptionally good series, has stood the test of time remarkably well, but is hardly known by anybody because it was only broadcast once on BBC2's terrestrial network before eventually having a very limited VHS and DVD release in the UK.

[^pc-swift]: It was developed in Microsoft C and MASM, using Multi-Edit as an IDE, running on DOS, with a Matrox MCA framegrabber, an in-house ISA VITC/LTC decoder, custom Cherry keyboard, serial output to control a playback device, and another serial out to the infamous subtitle injector or an Aston.

[^ranking]: Ranking is the usual slight-of-hand based on how you slice-and-dice the data, and when you work primarily with something that is subjective, not quantitative, it is always a bit suspect and just a bit too easy to manipulate.

[^squatting]: I wanted an eponymous domain name, but some asshat was name-squatting it. After much searching for an available name, "omz13" came out top. Yes, its a bit weird, and hard to spell, but it has been my online identity for decades now.

[^twins]: Because mother nature is fickle, and it was a "fork(2)".

[^one-platform]: There is a path, as Douglas Adams wrote, of survival, enquiry, and retribution. I remember the internet. The web is detour. Perhaps it’s time to make the web, and indeed the internet, more human. Back to the original path.

[^words]: I started writing as a freelance journalist; I detoured into technical writing (for privately held micro corporations to behemoth F500 corporations); and then found myself in business analyst and process management roles where, ironically, I was doing even more writing than before.

$LastModified:$