I'm 45 years old, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and currently a full-time free software developer. Here's my curriculum vitae.
Here's a picture of me from my wedding day in 2005 (photo thanks to Richard Kettlewell):
I'm often found with my nose in a book, frequently of the science fiction or fantasy kind.
I enjoy beer, especially real ale. Fortunately, there are plenty of good pubs in Cambridge, where I live, and my friends and I spend a not inconsiderable amount of our free time in them.
Once upon a time I was a musician: I play piano and cello, and sing. That's kind of on the back burner for now, but I do mean to pick it up again some day.
I'm a programmer, both professionally and as a hobby. Some of the stuff I've done is here. Currently I do most of my work in Python, C, or Unix shell script.
Along the lines of the above, I am - or try to be - a free software hacker and minor sysadmin.
I use and help develop Debian, maintaining, among other things, packages of the manual pager database man-db, the text formatting system groff, and the openssh secure shell implementation, and helping to administer the bug tracking system.
I have my own open source consulting business: Columbiform. Previously, I was an employee of Canonical; I spent ten years working on Ubuntu, on such things as the installer, CD image production, and release management, and then nine years working on Launchpad.
From time to time I even manage to have time for a life, but I'm afraid that wouldn't fit neatly onto a web page. Oh well. Some of it ends up in my journal. I have a separate technical journal too, and I'm @cjwatson@mastodon.ie.
Here are some photos I've taken.
The Blue Ribbon Campaign supports free speech on the Internet. Too many regulators don't seem to understand what they're dealing with. (See also software patents.)