About Ray

I started playing with technology at about 12 years old, dismantling many machines to see how they worked,
I was not popular for dismantling the Sony Betamax Video recorder and failing to get it working again!

By 13 I was building simple electronic circuits, then I discovered computers and microprocessors, which I kept TOP SECRET as I didn't want to be known as a geek or nerd at school.

I remember spending 6 days entering machine code into a Z80 eprom programmer to get a space invaders game working on the ZX81 - many hours of fun, so worth every minute !

At 15 I wrote a program to play Blackjack with real looking cards and table with 3D effects for the ZX Spectrum. I was now totally bitten by the computer bug, and would dream of owning a BBC-B computer one day, or maybe even an Apple 2.

After leaving school, I went into building site work and plastering and travelled around a bit, until 26 when I got bored of building work and did a degree with the Open University, that I funded myself over six years, a very busy time, I passed with a BSc. (Hons) and can highly recommend the O.U. as an outstanding institution of learning for all ages and abilities.

In 1994 I decided to see how computer technology had moved on from the days of the 8080 and Z80 microprocessors that I had known and loved about 10 years earlier. I was amazed at the progress, 80486 CPU's now ran Windows 3.1, an astonishing rate of progress. I saved £1200 to buy an Escom 486 with a mindboggling 500 Mb hard disk !
I would invite friends around to show off this incredible PC, with an early web browser called Mosaic, and Visual Basic 3.0

I got on well with the programming courses I did in C / C++, Java, Visual Basic and Web Design in 1998, so well in fact that I became a tutor, teaching the courses I had done, during this time I was incredibly fortunate to meet Patrick and David, two of the nicest people I have ever met, who were the tutors teaching me, and who recommended that I work as a tutor for their company.

After finishing my degree, I worked for a web design company for about 2 years, using all of the latest web technologies and database designs, which gave me the grounding to start looking for my own contracts and in 2004 I started a small business doing I.T. support, website design and computer repairs, mainly with the knowledge I gained from fixing various friends machines countless times. This proved very successful, and within a few years, I had many hundreds of happy customers. In my spare time I like fitness training, weight training, off road mountain biking and badminton.