Headshot of a 60+ year-old man wearing glasses and smiling, head slightly tilted to the right.Benjamin

IT Support & Sysadmin

Helping people use their computers, keeping computers working, and setting up whole networks and systems.

3 colourful iMacs sitting on a grey mottled carpet. Specifically: Graphite iMac 400 DV SE (1999); Tangerie iMac 333 (Rev. D, 1999); Indigo iMac 350 (2000).

Macs

So many Macs …since 1985. Laptops. Desktops. Servers. All the architectures: 68K, PowerPC, Intel, and now Apple Silicon. And both the OSes: Classic Mac OS through to macOS (was Mac OS X).

PCs

Windows PCs, the frequent bain of my life. But I kept them all working too.

PC laptop displaying a blue screen saying "Cleaning up 50% complete Don't turn off your computer". It's sitting on a desk in an office, reflections of the office lighting are prominent on its screen.
A man standing beside a museum case containing the first web server: Tim Berners-Lee's original NeXTcube

Servers

Web servers from scratch on Linux-based VPSes (LAMP). Updates for those servers. And security. Certificates. DNS. Domain names. Backups (on-site and off-site). Even mailservers (back in the day). The lot!

Networking

The wiring and the internet connections. The wifi. And the firewalls. Lots of crawling around under desks over the years.

A comms rack with a switch, and router, and a number of mainly yellow patch cables.