Welcome to my home page, a somewhat eclectic potpourri representing my varied interests. Ideally, I'd like to update the site once each week, so if there's anything you'd like to see, or sites you'd like me to link to, let me know, and I'll take it under advisement. Maybe.

"The Autonomic Pilot" was a recording studio that specialized in a very unusual medium in William Gibson's short story "The Winter Market", a part of his Burning Chrome collection. The term "cyberspace" was first used in the title story.

Why do I need a website?
Frankly, I don't think any individual needs a personal website. I suppose it could be viewed as a status symbol of sorts, and it does take a certain amount of chutzpah to assume that you are interesting enough that anyone would want to visit. The obvious reasons are:

• topics of special interest to like-minded acquaintances

• you're selling something (including ideas) that someone wants

• the polite courtesy of long-suffering family and friends

It could also be of some therapeutic value, providing the opportunity and forum to contemplate the profound or vexing questions that plague our lives. Maybe not for me though; the last time I tried to write down my thoughts and feelings about modern industrialized society, the result was a screed resembling the Unabomber Manifesto. It wasn't pretty.

I'll keep it light and simple, thank you.
Sorry, no labyrinthine or contentious discussions of politics or religion here. There is a Kafkaesque quality to the former that simply renders me incapable of comment, and as for the latter, I'll leave off with an anecdote. A friend of mine was leaving the supermarket when she overheard a young man summarizing The Passion of The Christ for his companion thusly:
"Jesus get some rass lick."

So, what's left?
My interests encompass many spheres, including art and literature, movies, music, architecture, technology, and computers (with an emphasis on Apple Macintosh). I'm particularly interested in how advances in science and technology impact on society, which explains my love for science fiction (or as I prefer to call it, speculative fiction), not the Star Wars-style space opera, but the thought-provoking oeuvres of such masters as Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson.