About
In progress
Me at the University of Sunderland graduation ceremony.
Education
I graduated from the University of Sunderland in 2012 earning a 2:1 B.Sc. (Hons) Network Systems degree, where I learnt about: Network Management, Telecommunications, Project Management, and Ethical Hacking. I also had to write some research papers and develop a network system to pass.
Before earning my Bachelor of Science Honours degree, I attended Gateshead College where I gained a Foundation degree in ICT Support, for the two years I spent there, I learned about: Advanced Operating Systems and Hardware, Web Development, LAN Switching & Wireless, Project Management, Systems Development, Systems Fundamentals, Leadership of Change, and Service Provision. My two years there also involved creating two projects for two clients. (Including the MagicPage CMS I developed which is now used to power my OP-EZY website.)
I left Ponteland Community High School with 2 A Levels, 2 AS Levels, and 9 GCSE A-C grades (Including: English, Maths, and Science), as well as completing the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) exams in my spare time.
Spare Time
In my spare time I like to work on my computer systems, which, over the years, I have gained a vast amount of knowledge including: Legacy systems (Early PC operating systems), web hosting, Linux, OS X, and iOS to name a few.
Archiving an LP in high definition to preserve the original.
Another one of my interests is audio and video editing. Restoring old music from vinyl and cassettes is one of these.
The image you see is my set up for audio restoration from vinyl. I transfer the music from an Audio Technica AT-PL120 equipped with a Denon DL-160 Moving Coil High Output cartridge. The audio is then captured in an uncompressed WAV file at a high definition 96kHz sample rate with a 32-bit float bit depth. For the less technically minded, this is a very high resolution, roughly 8 times better than a conventional CD.
The album I am ripping in this picture is a US copy of Lindisfarne’s début album: Nicely Out of Tune, which contains some alternate mixes to the UK pressing which haven’t all been re-released on CD, here is a short, compressed, sample:
My Linux system built entirely from source code
I recently built a working Linux system from scratch. This was done by downloading the source code for each component of the system and compiling it.
I’ll spare the details, but I followed Version 7.2 of the Linux From Scratch e-book.
By following this book, I was able to see exactly how a Linux based operating system is built, which components go where, and should there be a problem with the system, and installing vast amounts of software from source. Overall, I gained a greater understanding on the system that powers the majority of corporate servers.