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Links to sub-pages:
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About me
I am retired from the computer industry, which I entered long enough ago to remember mercury delay lines. I have worked in Australia and New Zealand as well as the UK, and now live in north-west England. I started editing seriously in late 2007, mostly in a Wikisloth-like manner, doing New Page Patrol and all the other things that arise out of that. If I have a favourite activity it is doing the research work to demolish hoax articles, which I believe damage Wikipedia seriously; I have linked above a subpage listing over 150 hoax articles I have caused to be deleted, and 19 which I have rescued from CAT:HOAX and rehabilitated. I have now been an administrator for nearly five years and, while there is seldom a dull moment, I regret having little time left for front-line New Page Patrol.
Quote of the month
"...by far the most important event of this short session [of the Scottish Parliament in 1696] was the passing of the Act for the settling of Schools. By this memorable law it was, in the Scotch phrase, statuted and ordained that every parish in the realm should provide a commodious schoolhouse and should pay a moderate stipend to a schoolmaster. The effect could not be immediately felt. But before one generation had passed away, it began to be evident that the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence to the common people of any other country in Europe. To whatever land the Scotchman might wander, to whatever calling he might betake himself, in America or in India, in trade or in war, the advantage which he derived from his early training raised him above his competitors. If he was taken into a warehouse as a porter, he soon became foreman. If he enlisted in the army, he soon became a serjeant. Scotland, meanwhile, in spite of the barrenness of her soil and the severity of her climate, made such progress in agriculture, in manufactures, in commerce, in letters, in science, in all that constitutes civilisation, as the Old World had never seen equalled, and as even the New World has scarcely seen surpassed."
Macaulay, History of England, Ch. XXII