Contact details

You can contact me by email.

Less-than-vital statistics

I'm male (which you should probably have figured out if you saw the front page) and 24 years old at time of writing. I was born in July 1976, so if you want a current figure, you can do the maths.

I'm somewhere around 5'10" or 5'11" (~1.79 m) in height, and somewhere between 10 and 11 stone (~68 kg) in weight. I have greyish blue eyes, and untidy long brown hair, which is normally restricted into some kind of ponytail. I'm rather short-sighted in my right eye, so I wear glasses.

I never wear anything more stylish than jeans and a T-shirt. I prefer earth colours (green and brown, preferably kind of greyish). Insofar as I have any personal style, that is it. :)

Home

I live in Milton Keynes, in the UK. This is a city famous for its concrete cows and roundabouts (the road type, not the magic type).

I rent a one-bedroom studio flat which is not bad, but a bit grotty. It is about ten minutes' walk from work.

Work

I work at the Open University. (Disclaimer: I was not in any way involved with the 'design' of that home page.)

I do software and, to a lesser extent, Web development. My job title is Software Designer and I work in the Educational Software department.

As well as my day job, I sometimes teach an evening class in Web design, the full course notes for which are available online. I also sometimes teach Java to part-time students at De Montford University.

Occasionally I do small freelance Web development jobs for people. And finally, I'm not sure this counts as work, but I write shareware computer software for Windows, including the IRC client leafChat and the drum machine leafDrums.

Names: sam vs. quen

sam is the name I use among normal people. (The full name on my birth certificate is Samuel Marshall.) If you are referring to me by my first name only, I prefer it with lower case.

When not with normals I tend to go by 'quen'. I've had this name, or variants of it, for more than five years now; I don't consider it any less a 'real' name than 'sam'. It isn't just an Internet nickname, although I don't actually use it anywhere else at present.

If you think you are not normal and are offended that I use 'sam' around you, let me know and I might change. ;) Really, you have to be the right kind of not-normal though.

S'elf-identity

I identify as an elf. (Maybe.)

If you do not understand what that sentence means, it is probably for the best. ;)

I tend to put an apostrophe in the middle of certain related words, kind of to assert mys'elf. (See?) I am aware that this can become annoying. If you are one of those annoyed, please make sure you have some soothing music playing when you deal with me, and try to take life less seriously. :)