Who?

It’s pronounced Av-uh-ruh-GAR-doe.

No, not Avogadro. Not, not Spanish or Portuguese.

Where does the name come from?

Some time in the pink-and-grey disaster area of the 1980s my brother was bored and writing a pretty useless program on my ZX Spectrum. One of the pointless things it did was display “Avaragado’s number: 7” on the screen – he meant “Avogadro”, whose number is slightly larger.

I stole it when writing my own programs – I’d say “Copyright so-and-so Avaragado” or “Avaragado so-and-so”, where “so-and-so” was some famous name vaguely related to whatever program I was writing. A paint program would be by “Avaragado da Vinci”, for example.

When I went online it seemed the obvious choice. One (dis)advantage is that it’s easily googlable – they’re all me, almost certainly.

Non-fascinating but true facts

• My first published piece appeared in the September 1985 issue of Your Spectrum magazine. I was 16.
• I have pieces of myself in small pots. Some slivers of spine and a couple of angry-looking gallstones.
• I’ve met Marvel Comics demigod Stan Lee.
• While at college I just missed out on being a year early to win a half-blue in the hugely popular sport of Korfball.
• I made a fruit-based video for one of the world’s foremost raw food practitioners.
• I’m not actually a perfectionist. Not in everything. IT’S TRUE DAMMIT.
• I wrote and designed a book in a month for a freelance project. I’ve also edited and designed books written by others.
• I’ve worked on three web browsers, none of which you’ll have heard of.
• Snowblades rule. Proper grown-up skis are for people with backs that work.
• All the signs were there but it took me a while to decloset.

How about an actual biography and stuff?

I was born in 1969 and three months later propped up in front of the Apollo 11 landing, thereby cementing my lifetime space nerd credentials.

A friend introduced me to the sparkling world of computers in 1980. I wrote a massively unpublished text adventure game called The School in 1983-4, and helped out “tape backup” specialist Lerm Software in 1984-6 by writing tape-to-ZX-microdrive programs and instructions. I hacked and mapped ZX Spectrum games for fun and occasionally pocket money.

I studied at Downing College, Cambridge from 1988-91, leaving with a BA in Computer Science. My final-year project on Active Badges, in conjunction with the then-Olivetti Research Labs, showed real-time location information for badge-wearers across suitably wired-up parts of Cambridge.

In 1993 I joined software company IXI in Cambridge as a technical author. I stayed there for ten years, as it first joined with Leeds company Visionware and morphed into a division of SCO, before finally becoming Tarantella. At various times I was New Media and Documentation Manager, UI Architect and Product Manager, sometimes all simultaneously, while still writing words and occasionally code and with a bit of graphic design for good measure.

Since 2003 I’ve had freelance and full-time roles with ANT Software (as Creative Architect, writing demo software and evangelising while also writing documentation) and I spent nearly four years with Azuro (UK) Ltd creating and upgrading a dedicated suite of intranet tools and resources to improve the effectiveness of the engineering and QA teams, and occasionally ranting about processes.

Between 2011 and 2017 I divided my time between freelance software development, and writing and publishing my own novels (under the pen name Anthony Camber). Summary: gays and humour (the novels).

Software development pays significantly better, hence no novels since 2016. I have ideas, though, and I’m always noodling away at something and marvelling at the ability of some electrocuted sand to read my handwriting.

Since 2017 I’ve been working at software company Bango as Front-end Specialist and then UX Architect. As of the space year 2023 I’m still doing a little web development and some internal tech writing, and my main focus is on Project <mumble> that <mumbles> the <mumble mumble> to <mumble mumble>.

I am not an LLM and endeavour to remain so.

I love Gus.