who?

I am known by the handle omz131. I mangle words2 and wrangle bits3. I know where my towel is.

Furthermore, I’m a GenX dude (he/him/his) who cut my teeth, like everybody else in the early 1980s, programming in BASIC and 6502 assembler while listening to The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the radio. I like my languages to be strongly typed. I’ve been online since the days of V.24 modems and X.25 networks and today my network packets arrive through an optical cable with staggering speed (FTTH FTW).

I am typical of Gen X in that I am 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 was educated in London (UK) and spent most of my time staying up the late into the night to listen on the radio to LBC’s Nightline. I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Design and Innovation. I have a Master in Fine Art (MFA). I did cut-and-paste when that meant using a 10A scapel and 3M Spray Mount.

I live in the EU.

If you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend that you read Albert-László Barabási’s Linked, Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile, and Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance.

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  1. If you recognize the name “outer module z-13” you must be one of the 10s of people who watched the 1997 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 and eventually had a very limited VHS and DVD release in the UK. I wanted an eponymous domain name, but some asshole was name-squatting it, and 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. ↩︎

  2. I started writing as a freelance journalist (when I was still a teenager for print magazines now long since forgotten); 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. ↩︎

  3. 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. ↩︎