learning to learn...

I was at TCD, reading Mathematics from 1991 to 1995. While I was there, the Maths department was technically very advanced with regards to computing facilities, offering internet access and unix cluster accounts to all students.

I ended up learning how to work on, and administer Unix here, as well as Perl, C, C++, ... In the Summer of '93, I was playing around with Gopher, when Jusin Mason (Perl hacker, MOO Master, general all round *nix god and author of SpamAssasin pointed me at the web. I ended up setting up the first web site for the maths department in July 2003. This was one of the first 100 web sites in the world, and celebrated it's 10th anniversary in July 2003. Since the maths department is secretly run by a group of pack rats, I was able, 11 years later, to find this snippet of log still on our web server. (If anyone wants 11 years of web logs for some Web Archaeology, we've got them :) ).

While there, I also spent a lot of time in Players Theatre, learning to be a lighting designer. In fact, it gave me the skills to work as a professional lighting designer later on. Also, through the Climbing Club, I discovered my love of the mountains which I continue to this day, living in the shadow of the Alps.

Also, I spent three months at CERN as a summer student, working in the group containing the original inventors of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau.