About Me

Read more about the man behind the Sector 8 website. Find out more about me, what I do and what I like.

Design and music… my two main passions. When I was as school I was always heavily into art, design and music, always hoping one of these three would be the path my life would follow. Now, after more than 35 years on this planet, it turns out that design provided me with a most enjoyable career and music became passion and hobby, I now make my own music in my spare time.

I started to get into underground music at school listening to hip-hop and electro; breakdancing to records like "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force and "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Music transformed with time and my love for hip-hop grew to encompass tunes from artists such as Public Enemy, Gang Starr, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul… I could keep going on as the list is endless. The hip-hop scene helped me to break through into subculture and I became very interested in graffiti and other general elements of style.

As I grew older became intrigued by the sounds of acid music when it hit Britain but by the time this new musical genre had evolved into rave I was totally swept away in the scene! Once I heard tracks like "5,6,7,8" by Shut Up & Dance, "The Exorcist" by The Scientist, "We Are i.E." by Reel 2 Reel and "Mr. Kirk's Nightmare" by 4 Hero I was hooked! Through priate radio stations like Pulse FM and Fantasy FM and record labels such as Moving Shadow, Suburban Base and Reinforced Records my love for the music grew and I attended my first rave in 1991.

Well things never stand still and since 1991 rave morphed into jungle and then mutated again into drum & bass. I have been into the 'underground' music scene for way too many years now and have spent a lot of time (and money) buying music, stepping on dancefloors, collecting magazines, hording flyers and keeping hold of other memorabilia over that period of time.

Hand in hand with my musical tastes my career has also developed to absorb the progressions in technology. When I finished college I began working in print, designing page layouts for magazines and catalogues and now I work in the multi-media sector creating web sites. I feel lucky to have had the chance to have worked in different sectors of the business as I feel this has helped to evolve my creative ability. As much as a computer has now become the tool of my trade I still enjoy the opportunity to get involved in work that brings me back to the basics. It's nice to get involved in a project that needs the 'hands on' approach and turn my skills to some model making, packaging or graphic art. Every now and then nothing beats being creative with paper pencils, spray cans, ink and making a mess… even if it's just a personal project or me letting off some creative steam at home!

I am currently employed as a frontend developer at IPC Media where I work mainly with HTML, CSS and Javascript but I often become involved in the design process too.

In my spare time (alongside making my own music) I have been known to produce websites! Sector 8 is personal project which I use to teach myself new skills outside of the work environment.

This site is built using Codeigniter and I make use of HTML5 and YUI3. While developing this site I have learnt how to interact with the following API's: