The Fifth Element

I never had an idea what I wanted to be when I was young, even going to Uni I wasn’t sure if I was choosing the right course.

Get stuck in and learn hard work when you’re young, don’t cruise by and be your own hardest critic.

I used to play a lot of video games when I was younger, and my Dad was always quite techie (everything from building PCs to building websites); it seemed a natural progression.

It’s strange to say - but I’d consider one of my friends from secondary school to be huge inspiration. He arrived in the country knowing just shy of no English, and within what felt like a matter of days (more likely weeks) he was semi-fluent and laughing along with the rest of us. It must have been an incredibly daunting experience, and one he handled with immense grace.

I don’t think I could pick just one year; I’d want to go forward 10, 20, 50, 100+ years into the future to see how everything changes and all the new things that are created.

Definitely either Google Glass or the Apple Watch; they’re both in the very early stages of what I think are going to become very exciting products. Imagine having real-time tracking of your health, fitness, and being alerted within moments of something being detected/diagnosed. We’re a long way off understanding the human body, and there’s no such thing as too much data!

I think it’s a tie between either learning Mandarin at University, or working on numerous projects for a good cause. Learning a language so completely different from anything else I’d known was a huge challenge, and to do well brought a great sense of accomplishment and pride.

Dive in and build something, it doesn’t even have to work great the first time. Get stuck in, release something and enjoy the thrill of your creation being out there for the world to see.

I think wearable technology/Internet of Things will have a big impact on our day to day activities, with the world becoming even more interconnected. Whether this is a good thing or not (e.g. potential privacy implications, nanny state etc) only time will tell.

Casino Royale (looking forward to Spectre!)

I’m not sure I had decided when I was very young. Perhaps a tennis player? My dad bought me a book on building websites when I was eleven and I had always been into computers so I knew I wanted to work with them from a fairly young age.

Summer, mainly because it has the best weather for Ultimate. Sunshine definitely improves my mood too.

Like most nerds, my first exposure to software was predominantly gaming. I love problem solving and installing mods and skins and things felt like a window into how the games were made. The methodical, logical nature of programming and scientific approach to designing interfaces within constraints satisfies my obsessive tendencies.

I don’t like straws. I can’t handle the sound people make with an almost empty milkshake.

Don’t be afraid to just dive in and try to hack something together from code snippets. It will probably be awful but if it works just about well enough to scratch an itch then you’ll get that feeling of accomplishment that keeps programmers hooked. You can always come back to the theory later and learn to approach things properly once you’ve caught the bug. Then you advance to the meta-level of satisfaction where you can be proud of how your code is structured as well as what it does.

I eat a lot of cereal at pretty much any time of the day. It’s my go-to dessert or snack. My favourite might have to be fudge though.

My dad is probably the person I aspire to be like most. There are famous people I admire, like Federer and Obama, but I can’t say I aspire to be like them as I don’t know them intimately as people. He might not be world class at tennis but Dad gets a lot of the important things right.

Ha, the only time I have ever been ‘mistaken’ for a celebrity was being called John Cena by kids in Zimbabwe. I’m sure they knew I wasn’t him though, I just wore a cap and most westerners are big compared to teenage lads out there. I’d love to see their reaction if they actually met a wrestler.

Coaching Ultimate is really rewarding. Seeing some of the Sheffield-based players improve over the years has been great. Volunteering in Zimbabwe is hard to beat though. Tinashe, one of the students I taught a little at Makomborero is now studying Computer Science at the Izmir Institute of Technology in Turkey!

Skateboarding.

It’s such a great sport for exercise as it’s fun and it’s something I can always improve at, for example learning a new trick is a great feeling of accomplishment.

Try not to hate Maths, you’re going to need it an awful lot later.

Full English Breakfast OR… A jacket potato (with a Full English Breakfast)

Blue mountains in Australia. It’s beautiful, the sounds, the birds, the life - you just don’t get that kind of experience in many places.

Making silly animated claymations.

Early morning, just before the world wakes up - that period of time where nothing’s going on, it’s just peaceful.

Captain Cook, just to know what it was like to explore an unknown world.

Trying to understand my Maths teacher at University.

Tom Hardy

Dogs, I think cats are really cool, but kind of scary at the same time.