I have two real passions in life presently. The first is Stoke City Football Club (hence the website colour) whom I have supported since around 1970. I cant remember exactly when I went to my first match, but I do remember my father taking me to The Victoria Ground occasionally and well before they won the League Cup in 1972. It is  the longest single and lasting part of my life in every way and at the time of writing I am a season ticket holder for “The Boothen End” completing a two hundred mile round trip for each home game.

Posts about Stoke City will mostly be me venting my frustrations at their inconsistent form and the ridiculous expectations of some of the current support, especially as seen on social media so they may not mean much to anyone else but feel free to read them if you wish.

The second passion is Cyber Security and Ethical Hacking. I have come to this very late in my professional career despite having worked in and taught IT for more than thirty years starting with PC-DOS and MSDOS, windows 3.1 and 3.11 for workgroups and onwards to today. The posts I put on here will be replicas of material from other people that I have adapted for my own learning, mostly so that I can go back to them and refer to them myself. I will reference the blogs, videos and websites that have helped me all as a reminder and a collection in one place for my benefit but in a public forum that allows you, the reader, to benefit also.

I have worked in this industry for a long time and was blissfully ignorant of what was possible, sparked by listening to a presentation given by one James Lyne, I was shocked, surprised and fascinated by what could be achieved relatively simply. I was fortunate to achieve some certification in this field and it worries me that there are people out there that don’t have a clue or believe they are safe. I am not likely to be replacing my current career with one in penetration testing, so I hope to to merge my  teaching skills with my commercial knowledge and new found interest in this field to try and educate as many as I can and hopefully drive change.

It is a bizarre combination and I don’t know if it will work or not, nor do i know if I will have any time to do a reasonable job but lets give it a go.