My name is Matthew, I grew up in Te Awamutu, New Zealand where I lived until I was 19.

In 1999, when we moved to nearby Pirongia (literally, we picked up the whole house and shifted it), I got sick of the town very fast and finally moved out of home to Frankton, Hamilton.  In 2001 I moved to various places in Hamilton East where I attended The University of Waikato and studied Software Engineering and Maths (yup, that makes me a geek alright).  I graduated in 2004 and moved to Auckland where I worked for CJN Technologies.

In 2006, my friend Ian consistently pestered me into moving to London with him, which I eventually did.  It was only supposed to be six months but 3 and a bit years almost 6 years later and I’m still here, cos I love it.  I worked for UBS Investment Bank as a Software Developer for the first four years that I was here and now I work for my own company called g2 Technology Limited.

I currently live in London E1 – The Swine Flu capital of Britain, more formally known as The London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

I’m a mama’s boy so I dearly miss my family back in New Zealand… and all my friends as well.  It’s a lot harder to make friends in London… partly because it’s big and partly because people tend to stay in London for 5 or 6 months and then leave.  And partly because I’m far from “normal”:  I have Asperger’s, which you can read about here.  Also… I’m gay, but I’m very politically conservative… not a good combination!

In addition to Software Development, I also do web design in my spare time.  I also like to write games – I have a website darnkitty.com where I post my Flash and Java games online.  People log their high-scores and compete against one another – the site is guaranteed to keep you busy for at least 5 minutes!

I like computer games – like the old games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy (both of which I have re-written for my website and you can play there).  I loved the Sega Megadrive and the Sonic The Hedgehog series of games, but as soon as games started going 3D I no longer understood them!

I had a Commodore Vic-20 and later a Commodore 64 from the age of 5 that I used to tinker with.  I loved the games Blagger, Jet Set Willy II, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Ancipital, Cauldron II, Pac Runner, Crossroads II, Dino Eggs, and Ultimate Wizard, just to name a few off the top of my head.

When I was a student and actually had free time during the week I used to go snowboarding three or four times a month at Turoa.  Not much time for that now, nor is there enough snow in London.

Thanks for reading!