About Me

Last update: 25 October 2006

Answers to some personal questions about me and my webpages, for anyone who happens to be interested.

What's your full name?

Geoff Allan Eddy. Actually, my first name has a longer version, but I really don't like it.

When and where were you born?

Six days before Neil Armstrong's "giant step for mankind", in Kitwe, Zambia. Don't ask why I was born there; it's a long story, which begins with one Francis Eddy (my father's father's father) catching a ship in Plymouth which was bound for Australia and getting off at Cape Town, South Africa. Apparently he liked it so much he decided to stay.

Famous people with the same birthday as me include Woody Guthrie, Emmeline Pankhurst, James Whistler, Ingmar Bergman, Gerald Ford, and no less than two newsreaders - Sue Lawley and Julia Somerville. Among the slightly less famous people are Lord Rees-Mogg, Kristy Wright who played Chloe on Home and Away, Cathy from Bellefire (don't ask), and Chris Cross, the bass player in Ultravox - which is weird because Ultravox were the first band I got into, and my first musical instrument was the bass.

Where do you live now?

When this page was first created, I lived in Stockbridge, a nice part of Edinburgh, in Scotland. I've since moved to somehwere on the boundaries of Comiston, another nice part of Edinburgh, and Morningside. [That's Scotland, not England; there are no Edinburghs in England.]

What nationality are you?

Mostly Scottish, and proud of it. I have some English and French ancestry, about which I am vaguely aware but not terribly concerned.

Which religions do you follow?

None. In my time I've been a half-hearted follower of both Christianity and Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, but am now too skeptical to be anything other than a sworn atheist.

What is your political allegiance?

It depends where you are. In American terms, apparently I'm a "left-liberal"; in British terms, roughly akin to the long-defunct Social Democrats. The political compass gives me about -6 on both scores: similar to Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone!

What do you look like?

I'm in one of these photos somewhere, but I'm not saying where. Dark hair, green-grey eyes. My height is, boringly, the average for an adult male: 5'8", or 173 cm; I don't know how much I weigh, but it's close to being too little for my height.

So that's not you in the photos at the top of your homepage, then?

No; I don't look anything like that. Or at least, I hope not; I was on the other side of the camera when the photos were taken.

In case you're curious, the photo of the seagull was taken by my father on the Isle of May in August 1995; the other photo is of a friendly Victoria Crowned Pigeon which we met in the zoo in Mexico City on 21 September 2006.

Are you married?

No, but I live with my girlfriend Roslyn. Sorry, ladies!

Where were you eddycated, and to what level?

I got a BEng from Edinburgh University in 1991, and followed that with an MEng from Napier University in 1993. That's the Napier who invented logarithms, btw; the house where he used to live is now part of the University.

How do you earn a living?

Throughout my working life, I've always been a software engineer. I've worked for several software companies in Edinburgh; for what it's worth, the complete list is:

Pilgrim Systems plc. I wrote part of the Advocate program you'll see mentioned on their website; however, that was in 1994, and I doubt that any of what I wrote was ever actually used.
Marketing Sense. I was solely responsible for UKonCD, which (not counting the discounts) is probably a record for the smallest volume of sales of any commercial software product.
McQueen. This was software localisation, rather than software engineering. If you've ever used the PC versions of Adobe PageMaker 6.5.1 for Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Norwegian, Italian, Danish or Finnish, or the Mac versions of the same for Norwegian or Spanish, my fingerprints are in there somewhere.
Radius Retail Limited. I'd rather forget all about this one. Since I stopped working for them, they changed their name to "Transatlantic Software Corporation" and subsequently disappeared from the Web, which should make forgetting easier.
Sykes. The same company as McQueen, but during and after a takeover. Same sort of work, this time on the Norwegian and Dutch versions of Adobe Illustrator 7.0 for the Mac, and the Spanish version of Adobe PhotoDeluxe 3 for the PC.
Data Discoveries. I'm still here!

What things do you find interesting?

As you can see from my webpages, a list would include languages, amateur astronomy, programming and world-building; to this list you can also add dilettante bird-watching and music. I spent many years trying to start a career as a songwriter and professional musician (I play guitar, electric bass and mandolin) before reality set in. Some of my many compositions will be made available on my website at an undefined date in the not-too-distant future.

Languages, eh? Which ones can you speak?

English, obviously. I spent five years of my teenage life in Belgium, where I learned French, German and Dutch. I can barely hold a few lines of conversation in Spanish.

Why don't you make your webpages look a little more exciting?

I'd rather have a page with 50K worth of interesting reading and no pictures than 50K of pictures and no interesting reading.

What's your favourite colour?

Dunno. Probably blue.

What's your favourite TV show?

While I proably watch too much TV, I don't really follow that many "shows". If pushed, I'd have to admit to a soft spot for Buffy the Vampire Slayer; my reactions to it are laid out here.

Have you heard of the Geek Code?

Oh yes. For those of you who care about such things, my Geek Code is:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS d- s:- a C+ UL P++ L++ E W++ N+ o? K- w--- O? M- V- PS+ PE-
Y+ PGP- t- 5 X R tv+ b++ DI+ D+ G e+++ h--- r++ y?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------