About Ian Davis
I'm looking for work! Do you want me to work for you? Email me for a copy of my cv.
No? Ok, so here's your first warning - this page is packed with information
about Ian Davis, a relatively minor player in the grand scheme of things.
Why don't you find someone with an interesting home page? Try BigFoot
or Populus.
Still here? Have you read the health warning at the foot of the page?
Perhaps you've stumbled on this page by mistake - damn those pesky search engines! Why not try a different one like All The Web.
Well since you're still here then I can only assume that you've seen the picture and decided either...
- this guy looks interesting, how can I meet him?
- this guy's a dork, I bet he reads SF.
Read on for the answers, but don't say I didn't try to warn you...
Who am I?
What kind of a question is that? Ask me an easier one.
Where did I come from?
I was born in Brentwood in Essex, England. It's very beautiful this time of year, the trees turn this amazing crimson-brown-ochre almost purple hue. Sorry, that was a big lie. Brentwood is a nasty, smelly town to the East of London.
Where am I now?
I now live in Rothwell in Northamptonshire which we like to think of as the heart of England, mostly because geographically Northamptonshire straddles Britain's centre of gravity. This affects the local housing policy which dictates that every new house built on the East side of town has to be balanced by one on the West side for fear that Britian's delicate equilibrium be disturbed.
Rothwell, or Rowell as it is affectionately called, is in the North-East of the County and is mildly famous for its shoe industry. The weather is distinctly colder than in Northampton itself, this being due to the proximity to the Arctic Circle. I live in an old victorian house which we bought with the intention of spending our weekends painting and decorating. Our previous house was a small cottage in West Byfleet to the West of London beside the Basingstoke Canal which was the home of some fascinating wildlife. So far the extent of the wildlife seen in Rowell has been the local swarm of crows and jackdaws, a plague of frogs in the garden, a mouse in our bedroom and a domestic rat roaming free, feasting from the bird table.
Who do I live with?
I live with my wife Stephanie who begged me to marry her a couple of years ago after reading a leaflet from the tax office about the Married Persons Allowance. I also live with Kier, our son who was born in Feb, 1997 after a long drawn out labour. (I'm fully recovered now, thank you, but at the time I wasn't sure that I'd make it all the way through). Our latest arrival is Freya, who was born on 6th Augst 2002. As you can see from this picture she has inherited the legendary Davis hair.
Why's it spelt Kier and not Keir like normal people spell it?
Errm...well...it's I before E except after C
Who do I look like?
Well, once upon a time I used to look like Nigel Lawson but he shrank...
What do I sound like?
Like water running over gravel. Like a song thrush at dawn. Like hell - I might just upload a sample of my voice just so you'll recognise it when I'm famous and on one of those guess-the-mystery-celebrity TV shows.
What do I do?
Until recently I was the CTO of Calaba, a company I founded in 2000 with James Carlyle. We recently sold the company and I'm now looking around for the next opportunity. If you're interested in hiring me, let me know.
Why do I do it?
For love of course.
So, if you do Internet stuff where are all the graphics?
Well, I don't actually believe that every page needs lots of graphics to look good. For a lot of sites, getting the content across is actually more important. If you don't think that's important then visit anybrowser.org and read some of the material there.
You might like to see how this page appears to someone using a character based terminal with a web browser such as Lynx. You might like to know that this whole site displays great on my PalmPilot and I guess it looks ok on WebTV too. You might also like to try increasing your font size, like many sight-impaired people do, you could also try one of the text to speech browsers on this page. The point is there are more different web browsers and different sorts of people out there than ever before. Do you really want to exclude them from your site?
What am I working on at the moment?
Now I've left Calaba, I'm spending a lot of my time looking for a job. I've also recently developed a new type of news aggregator at myrss.com and I'm currently developing something that I call a desktop wiki. What little is left is spent talking to my wife and son. Together we have perfected an ultra-efficient version of English consisting of verb-noun pairs fired off in a continuous stream. It's a very effective way of conversing with spouses and I'm planning to write a book (in the same style, of course) to teach others the technique. Occassionally I get to add some stuff to my weblog Internet Alchemy.
What are my other interests?
I like reading Science Fiction - there I've said it now so everyone knows I am a dork after all! Damn it, I was hoping that no one would notice. I also read fantasy, horror, some crime, dull text books, cereal packets and till receipts. I listen to music. I pretend to do programming at home but end up playing games like Dungeon Keeper, Age of Empires or Starcraft more often than not. I don't watch much TV. Of course since Kier was born I've done all these things a lot less than I used to.
Who's my favourite SF author?
Hmmm. Nasty. It has to be between Greg Egan and Iain M. Banks. I like any hard SF with a decent, logical background - early Clarke, Stephen Baxter, Julian May, Greg Bear, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson. Kim Stanley Robinson was almost up there but he lost it a bit with the last of the Mars books. The recent Stephen Donaldson epic was breathtaking. I also like the early stuff - Asimov, Del Rey, Aldiss, Vance. It's all sounding a bit nerd-like - sorry.
What about fantasy and horror then?
Tad Williams is doing well, being high on my list. Stephen Donaldson, of course. I made it through the first six Robert Jordan books but wound up full half way through the seventh. burp. Like most I was introduced to fantasy through that master tale spinner J.R.R. Tolkien. However, I refuse now to read another word of his after being put off by the succession of books published after his death. What a fool he was to have kept all his old rubbish instead of throwing it away like any normal author. Only by reading his discards do we find out how Strider, the exiled King and lynchpin of the entire Lord of the Rings epic, was originally concieved to be a hobbit named Trotter - so called because of the clogs he wore. [sounds of hand slapping forehead]. Anyway, now that's off my chest onto horror authors. James Herbert and Stephen King obviously rule the roost but both have lost something in the last few years - their imaginations probably. Koontz and Layman are good for non taxing reads.
What music do I like?
Dark stuff - it counteracts the frivolous side of my nature. The Nefilim and Fields of the Nephilim have no equals, particularly now FOTN are reforming. My Bloody Valentine (R.I.P), Siouxsie, Cure, Sisters, Ride (also R.I.P.)
I've just recently started to enjoy Hecate Enthroned which is not an easy task. And yes, the lyrics are included with the CD.
What about friends?
Oh...I'm far too busy to have friends. If I had friend when would I find the time to count all those matchsticks I used to build that full-scale model of an IBM PS/2 Model 50?
As an alternative why not visit Mark's site, don't get confused and visit here though. You could also try Spike's site,
Where's your PGP key?
You can find it here
.id.
