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In this  post one of our senior web developers, Matthew Pollard, explains his evolution of  being a geek... We at Strange salute geeks -  they help keep much of our modern world running smoothly; enabling us to function, shop, socialise, research, communicate, organise and share.

Note the last comment about computers running slow/not working - sound familiar anyone?

When I tell people what I do they tend think I am a geek. I can carry a conversation about Star Trek or Star Wars. I like to tinker with computers and have built one or two in my time. I can set up a wireless network and I run a network server at home. I have read the Foundation Series of books by Isaac Asimov and pretty much all the books by William Gibson . I have an android phone that I have rooted and setup to use Cyanogenmod instead of its stock ROM. But the main reason people think I am geek is because I build websites for living.

I don’t think geeks are what they used to be. When I was younger I was more of a ‘traditional’ geek. I remember coming home after watching Star Wars for the first time at the cinema and thinking that life would be perfect if only I could visit Tatooine or have a robot friend called R2D2. I remember seeing my first Apple computer at a friend’s house and thinking that’s a proper computer – his Dad was using it to do the accounts for his business and the screen had glowing green text. I remember watching the first space shuttle launch on TV after school – it was coolest thing ever at the time as I wasn’t born in time for the first men on the moon. I longed for a computer – but made do with hanging out at friends houses spending hours watching a screen trying to keep any movements down to a minimum as the tape player tried loading a game for the umpteenth time. When we did eventually get a computer – I was slightly let down by the fact that the games I had spent hours typing in from the latest computer magazine didn’t work and I didn’t understand enough to fix them. But then Elite came along and everything was ok!

Strangely for someone who was quite geeky and liked computers I ended up doing an Arts degree. I still managed to read my quota of sci-fi books and keep up to date with Star Trek and all its spinoffs despite spending most of my time making stuff out of mud or sand and occasionally mixing the two together. I did actually spend my post college years making stuff out of sand. But it was almost inevitable that I ended up doing something with computers.

These days I am married and have two kids. We have an allotment where I spend too little time at the moment but love to dig and grow stuff and marvel at my wife’s onions. I love going to the beach and building sandcastles for the kids. I still love to read sci-fi and watch Spielberg movies. But still when I tell people what I do for the first time I can see their face drop slightly and then ask me if I know any reasons why their computer might be running a bit slow.