About me... enough already!

Hi, I'm David Brookes from Holmfirth in West Yorkshire, England. I'm a software engineer with 26 years commercial experience, mainly in the public sector. A 'Red Badge' IT Service Management practitioner since 1994 I currently work in the application management sector but have previously supported service support and service delivery initiatives such as the IT Help Desk, Service Level Agreements (SLA's), Capacity Management and Charging for IT Services.

A qualified further education lecturer, I have experience of teaching software engineering at introductory level to mature students and through delivering workplace training. I'm an Open University postgraduate, having successfully completed my Computing for Commerce and Industry MSc. in 2005. My dissertation project investigated the software engineering factors associated with using mass market mobile phones for m-Government applications. An overview of the primary research can be found on the Mobile Government pages.

My interest in computing was awakened in 1979 by my brother, a radio-ham dabbling with an early microcomputer (pictured, a 1 MHz Intel 6502 processor based Ohio Scientific Superboard II with 4K RAM, expandable to 8K!!). After driving across town to steal time on his machine for a few months I was bitten by the programming bug and bought an identical machine. Microsoft Basic soon gave way to 6502 assembler before a career change in 1983 introduced me to the delights of COBOL. Having survived that I've now arrived at JAVA albeit with a good few diversions along the way (4GL, awk, Smalltalk, VB6, HTML et. al.). It would have been nice to have exceeded barely adequate in just one of them for goodness sake!

When not studying (OK, I'm self-delusional too) I might be found at my Yamaha keyboard, listening to music (from Queen to Keane and Petula to Melua), pottering about the garden, occasionally at the gym or engaged in some other rebel rousing activity. For example, I read the Guardian during the week and then switch to the Telegraph on Saturday... go on, try and typecast me now! Yes, yes, but something other than unbalanced would also be good. Then again I have started listening to Terry Wogan's breakfast show, so maybe that is quite appropriate after all!

According to my wife, the present Mrs Brookes as Terry would say, I am happily married with two twenty-something sons (so at least I have an excuse). My eldest 'TYG', a Huddersfield University BSc (Hons) graduate studied automotive design and is currently on a graduate training scheme with a leading multinational engine company. He's a keen mountain-biker. Meanwhile my youngest 'TYG' is at Huddersfield studying for a BEng in electronics with radio. He founded the Huddersfield Linux User Group but has since passed on the reins to free time to concentrate on his studies and other interests including amateur radio (www.aebrookes.co.uk). Another radio-ham... crikey, it must be in the genes!! In fact we all enjoy leisure cycling \ mountain biking... of varying difficulty!