Hey! I'm Dan!
I have been coding professionally for over 10 years and have had an interest in cybersecurity for equally as long!
I love learning new stuff and helping others
Location
Brighton / London, UK
Education
Edinburgh Napier (Postgrad Cert Advanced Security & Digital Forensics)
On my 14th birthday, my great grandfather got shafted at a second hand store and got me an Amstrad PC1512 with an 8086 processor when 486s were the norm. The shop refused him a refund so we were stuck with it.
I soon learnt that nothing was really upgradeable. Some due to the age of the machine, others due to Amstrad design choices (power supply in the monitor etc).
I decided to try and write programs for it each week so I could say "look grandad this machine is really cool". I appreciated that he had spent a lot of money on it and I didn't want to come across as ungrateful.
I first learnt BASIC, then Turbo Pascal, then I even dabbled in Assembler.
I started writing simple games and utility programs. Then moved to writing my own word processor and more complex games. In the end I tried to overclock it by manually soldering direct to the motherboard.
This didn't work out and it set fire. And that was the end of that.
What I considered at the time to be the worst birthday present ever actually turned out to be the best and most useful one. If I got given a 486 that I could have just played Command and Conquer on, I doubt I would have gotten that deep into programming. And if I hadn't had done that, then there's no way I'd be doing what I do now! Thanks great grandad, you were an awesome role model.
Hey! I'm Dan!
I have been coding professionally for over 10 years and have had an interest in cybersecurity for equally as long!
I love learning new stuff and helping others
Location
Brighton / London, UK
Education
Edinburgh Napier (Postgrad Cert Advanced Security & Digital Forensics)
On my 14th birthday, my great grandfather got shafted at a second hand store and got me an Amstrad PC1512 with an 8086 processor when 486s were the norm. The shop refused him a refund so we were stuck with it.
I soon learnt that nothing was really upgradeable. Some due to the age of the machine, others due to Amstrad design choices (power supply in the monitor etc).
I decided to try and write programs for it each week so I could say "look grandad this machine is really cool". I appreciated that he had spent a lot of money on it and I didn't want to come across as ungrateful.
I first learnt BASIC, then Turbo Pascal, then I even dabbled in Assembler.
I started writing simple games and utility programs. Then moved to writing my own word processor and more complex games. In the end I tried to overclock it by manually soldering direct to the motherboard.
This didn't work out and it set fire. And that was the end of that.
What I considered at the time to be the worst birthday present ever actually turned out to be the best and most useful one. If I got given a 486 that I could have just played Command and Conquer on, I doubt I would have gotten that deep into programming. And if I hadn't had done that, then there's no way I'd be doing what I do now! Thanks great grandad, you were an awesome role model.
Awesome story dude!
Cheers dude!