For some it comes in the form of something mechanical – a car or perhaps an aeroplane or a boat. For some it is a physical pursuit such as running, cycling or surfing. For others still, it is a consuming interest in vast collections of objects. Stamps, Star Trek memorabilia or teddy bears.

For me, it comes in the form of bits and bytes. (Hands up who can remember the once-popular magazine by that name.)

I remember Dad’s first computer arriving in the house before I was even out of primary school. I learnt along with him how to make it do what we wanted. Of course there were the purchased games we lusted after, but I also remember writing short programs to perform complex calculations easily or draw a circle on the screen using the primitive graphics.

My brother bought into the next generation of computers and my fascination went to a new level as colour and sound beyond simple beeps became new areas to explore. The next generation I bought for myself shortly after I started working. It was with this platform that my use of the Internet began – before the World Wide Web even existed.

I dived headlong into bulletin boards, email and newsgroups, learning from like-minded enthusiasts, and remember well the early WWW with its mostly static pages and frequently awful presentation.

Beyond that point it is a bit of a blur really. You will recall above the point at which I began working. That work invovled computers as well, and still does over twenty years later. Between work and hobby I have delved into many, many things on a number of computer platforms and more recently the hobby side has largely focussed on the Internet.

I look at my Internet profile today and see that I own 10 domains and run 8 websites (it’s not a one to one relationship) on various topics, including 2 web sites for other people. I have personal, commercial and specialist sites in my portfolio, including 4 blogs.

And tonight I had another one of those “idea” moments and have, in the course of a couple of hours, built yet another new site. It needs some more work before launch, but it shouldn’t be long. I hope that a lot of people will get something out of this latest venture.

I’ll let you know when it goes live. You never know, it may be of interest to you. If not, maybe my next idea will be. It’s just a matter of when…