Last updates : 27 July, 2009 21:35:15

My name is Ian born in 1964 in Amersham, spent the first few years of my life living in Chalfont St Peter then moved to Hayes Middlesex in West London.

Primary School was Grange Park School and then Townfield Secondary School in Central Avenue Hayes

Left school in 1980 and worked for Henley's in Hayes End, by the Carpenters Arms. I was a warehouse person working in the stores picking orders for all our customers.

Left Henley's and went and worked in a butchers as a van drivers mate for about a year, Delivering to hotels, cafes and restaurants in London including the Hard Rock Cafe at Hyde Park Corner.

Moved on to CB Radio Magazine, based in Beaconsfield Road, Hayes. Job description was Gopher, but I also used to help out in the paste up room preparing the pages of the magazine to be put on film ready for making the printing plates. I also used to work on the Graphic Arts Camera producing the Film of the Mag's pages, and producing half tones for inclusion in the magazine. It was a great job but occasionally it could be long hours especially near going to press where we could work 36, 48 or even 72 hours on the go getting ready for the printers.

Working on the CB Radio Magazine was an spin-off of a hobby where all the family were in to CB Radio, back in the days when it was still illegal. My handle was Road Runner, my brother David was Rubber Duck, Dad John was Big Daddy and Mum Sylvia was Tit Mouse. We spent several years using the CB's and were all members of the WLBC (West London Breakers Club) where we would meet at various locations usually around Chiswick and chat about rally's, fox hunts (using the CB Radio to track someone travelling to an unknown destination) and other events going on.

Since then I have worked in a Call Centre for Appliance Care booking service calls for domestic appliances. I also spent about 3 years working as a contractor for the Met Police, working for the furnishing department, fixing office furniture and doing their office moves.

More recently I have been a Video Wall technician working for Video Power Ltd. supplying Video walls and equipment for conferences, exhibitions and TV show. Also programming the systems to meet the clients requirements, below is a list of some of the jobs I worked on...

This was a great job but very unsocial as I would be working long hours and spending lots of time away from home, especially when working on exhibitions like the motor show where we could be on site for three weeks. This is where I got my first breaks working with PC's, back when the best you could get was a 386 with a few kb of memory and 10 Mb hard drives. Prior to this I had only ever used home computers like the Sinclair ZX81, Spectrum and QL but the best one was the Commodore Amiga, which I used to sell a system called Lime Lite which was a point of sale graphics presentation system. it was selling this system that introduced me to Video Power, where I started working as a rigger on a temporary basis finally becoming their full time senior technician/programmer.

When I left Video Power full time I contracted for them for a while but then went onto a course to learn about the office applications on the PC. This lead on to becoming the IT Training co-ordinator at Hillingdon Hospital. Here I was developing and delivering all the in house training for 500+ staff at the hospital, this led on to becoming the lead support for the IT team, running the IT help desk and visiting all the staff fixing their IT problems.

During this period I met my partner Frances, and three or so years later during May of 1999 our son Nathan was born.

From the Hospital I went to Skills Training UK Ltd on the Uxbridge Road in Hayes. Here I was an IT training assistant delivering NVQ, Clait and ECDL qualifications to unemployed people from the local area referred to us through our Job Centre Plus Contract.

Then I went to London United driving Buses for about a year, this was because I wanted a job you could leave behind you at the end of the day, not taking work home (bit difficult when your a bus driver). Left the busses because I couldn't stand the shifts any more and also the grief you got from passengers.

Then it was back to Skills Training UK Ltd, where I eventually worked up to the IT Team Leader with 4 IT Trainers working under me.

Since leaving Skills Training I have been my son's main carer looking after him during school holidays etc, so now I get time to play around with things like my web sites. I have taught myself ASP and developed a couple of sites that I now run, www.mygazette.co.uk & www.ian-c.co.uk/rstpost as well as this site and www.ic-computers.org.uk. I Play around with Digital Video as you will see in the Video Vault and galleries on this site, also DVD Authoring, well I have got to have somewhere to keep all the video.

Now I am looking to get some work developing websites and put my new ASP skills to work, so if you are looking for a web site (on the cheap), if you have a site you want updating or you know some one who is looking, get in contact ian@ian-c.co.uk and we can discus your needs.