Everyone has moments in their lives that determine the path they will take. They set the tone and shape the person that you become. One of my earliest and certainly most vivid memories is of something that happened in Kindergarten.

We had been asked to colour in a figure that was the shape of a person made of basic shapes: squares, triangles and circles. Apparently to assist in this, on the back of our book there was the same picture already coloured in. I coloured the blocks in mine differently than the colours in the picture, because I liked it better.

Everything I coloured was within the lines and done very well for a five year-old, but when the teacher saw that I had chosen my own colours, she scolded me for that – I thought quite roughly – for not matching the sample and put a great big red X across the whole page, because it was wrong. I was shattered.

Reflecting on it now, that episode has probably had more to do with who I have become as an adult than any other single event in my life. And I can only hope the education system has since changed for the better.

I like science, always have. Real science. Physics, chemistry and so on. The idea that there is no limit to what you can learn in this life excites me. I enjoy talking to anyone about anything that I don’t know that much about – as long as it isn’t astrology – and I’ve had some really good conversations with people much more qualified than I.

My profession is computers. I can code well in at least six languages and I’m always learning more. My specialty right now is Adobe Enterprise Products, and that’s a lot, but I do my best to keep up with what’s going on elsewhere.

I’m married, and my beautiful wife Lynne and I have two small children.

In what little free time I have, I do stuff like this, build scale models (planes, mostly), mess with electronics, tinker with my own computers and fix other people’s computers.

I’ll have a go at anything, and the bigger the problem the more I like it.