BOFFIN:
Boffin is a British word meaning nerd, geek or other awkward technical type. If you cast your memories back to old British WWII movies, you’ll see every time they talk about technical people, they’re “boffins”.
The nickname was given to me by my engineering metalwork teacher back in secondary school, who was really the first person to encourage me with “being a boffin is good”. These days it’s stuck in my life, up to and including my license plates.
I started off being a teenage electronics boffin; waiting eagerly for the latest ETI, or yearly Maplin catalogue. When I moved from England back to Canada; I discovered that hobby electronics was not nearly as developed, and I switched to CompSci; while keeping a little bit of electronics on the side.
I suffer from too many things to say, and nowhere to say it, so I decided I should blog. Along with that I’m sure this will help my written word, which was never a strong point; so this will be the repository of any interesting things I may say or do.
In my last job, I was lucky enough to meet another boffin, who we shall refer to as “Cranky”.
CRANKY:
I’m a cranky old nerd. There, I’m willing to admit it. As I’ve grown up and worked around all kinds of new and wonderful technologies over the past few decades, I find myself saying out loud more and more “back in my day” when it comes to devices that are supposed to make our lives easier… Don’t get me wrong – I love technology and am impressed with new things that I read about every day – however, it seems to me that as technology becomes more accessible, more pervasive and more convenient in our lives, we tend to forget the “how” things work and tend to take the underpinnings of our world for granted.
I’ve always had a passion for knowledge – how things work, what makes things tick, how to make things better… many of the posts you’ll find here deal with current random projects (both software and hardware), various bits of nostalgia, and possibly some lunatic ramblings depending on your point of view…
In my personal life, I currently live in Vancouver, BC, Canada and finally am finding some time to explore many of the hobbies and various random things that I have been interested in.
Professionally, I’m a software architect, but have worn many hats all up and down the corporate ladder for over thirty years working in various technologies.