About jah:

My name is John and I live in the gorgeous Cornish countryside in southwest UK. Cornwall's a great place to live because there's lots of lovely places to walk my Springer Spaniel and enjoy the scenery. I like greenery and there's lots of it round these parts.

I love music, pretty much all music, especially if it has thumping beats and lots of bottom. My favourite is Hip Hop from the golden era (which for me was '88 to '98).
When I get a chance, I also like to make squelchy, bleepy noises and when I can afford it, I intend buying lots of shiny hardware and setting-up a proper music production studio with proper soundproofing and quality monitors where I can blast myself into nirvana.

I like to learn new things and firmly believe that every day's a school day. I read a lot: some books (fiction mostly); lots of computing-related blogs (too many actually) and I particularly like to read technical research papers and reference material for various aspects of computing - especially if they're succinct and well-written (which many are not).
I keep up-to-date with the worlds of network, application and information security - the internet is not a safe place for the storage and transmission of information (information wants to be free, after all) and keeping abreast of emerging threats, risk mitigation strategies and secure development is a worthwhile investment of my time given the extent to which I use the internet.
I also like watching documentaries on the TV: History, Natural History and Natural, Social and Behavioural Sciences all fascinate me and I only wish I could absorb and retain such information as well as The Fifth Element.
I also love watching British WWII films and anything to do with espionage (and even Bond Films too).

I like to take things apart and put them together again and most of the time I manage to do this without losing or breaking critical components or ending-up with left-over bits. My family often cite, with relish, the first occasion of note when this wasn't so: I took apart a brand-new wristwatch, gifted to me by my parents, and lost a very small coil spring which sat, compressed, behind the rear cover of the watch (ready to make its escape to freedom as soon as the cover was removed). It turned-out that the spring was vital to the proper working of the watch and a proper working watch is what it ceased to be.

Most of all, I like programming.
My first experience with a personal computer was at Junior School when some really old guy brought in his Sinclair ZX Spectrum to teach us about computers and had us designing little characters in 8x8 grids and pushing them around the screen.
In 1984 my parents bought my sister and I an Acorn Electron. Aside from playing Arcadians, Jet Set Willy (we must perform a quirkafleeg) and Chuckie Egg, I spent endless hours writing little programs in BBC BASIC to do all sorts of amazing things: I wrote an elaborate hoax (OK, maybe not so elaborate) to make it look like I was able to break into NASA's network and mess with their satellites; I wrote a routine that drew pretty fractals on the screen, some of which would take days to complete on the little 8-bit processor and I remember the immense satisfaction I got when I wrote a simple program to print the contents of the Acorn's 64KB ROM to the screen and found the hidden Credits message (which I'll post here sometime as there doesn't seem to be a copy on the web).
For about ten years, I hardly touched a computer and it wasn't until I bought a new PC in 2002 that my love for programming resurfaced and it has been steadily gaining momentum ever since. Very few days go by when it isn't possible to hear the sounds of a keyboard rattling away and little whoops of satisfaction or exclamations of frustration. Sometimes I even dream solutions to tricky problems which, whilst it's probably a tad unhealthy (or just plain sad), is bloody useful!
I code in lots of different languages and one day I might settle in to writing in just a few of the really good ones. Until then, I intend learning as many as possible and honing my skills in those that are really useful.
Most of the code I've written is either for personal use or for an employer (which is why you won't find any in these pages - for the moment) although I have written/co-written/expanded some NSE scripts and submitted a few bug fixes for the excellent, open source Nmap.

Aside from all the techie stuff, there are still some things I'd like to do before I die (which still gives me plenty of time):

• Live in the Swiss Alps and learn to ski.
• Learn to scuba dive and dive some of the many wrecks off the Cornish coast.
• Become fluent in German and learn French, Spanish and Japanese too.
• Learn to sail, buy a boat and sail to interesting places.
• Own a house overlooking the Sea.

If you would like to know any more, or avail yourself of my services, please feel free to contact me.