Category: Site Information

I am 485Ambiguous aka Jeremy Trask.

I am currently operating as a freelance engineer undertaking various web related and other projects that interest me – yes, I need to make a living but I also need to enjoy what I am doing.

My background is firmly in telecommunications although I started off as an apprentice engineer with EMI sometime in the past. Anyone reading this who knows what a “thick sandwich course” is will be able to guess the approximate decade – and by the way, it has nothing to do with food… Certainly my time in the workshop making toolboxes and screwdrivers and learning to solder has stood me in good stead when it comes to tinkering with my bicycles as much as when repairing blown iMac power supplies.

Much of my early existence after university was spent engaged in research for Thorn-EMI (as it became) including early work on remote utility meter reading (how can it be that after all these years this still is not widespread) and latterly mobile communications.

From there I moved into early GSM network development through companies such as GPT and BNR/Northern Telecom to finally settle with Hewlett Packard working on network monitoring equipment for telecoms operators encompassing SS7, Mobile and IP based technologies. Eventually Hewlett Packard hived off a proportion of it’s operation forming a new company called Agilent which over time dispensed with it’s facilities and expertise in my locale and presented me with the opportunity to try something new.

After dabbling with various aspects of website design and development I started using products from iThemes and over time started providing unofficial support for BackupBuddy on the community support forum as it was back then. After a while the good folks over there offered to pay me for my time and expertise and I now provide support and development services for BackupBuddy on a part-time basis.

So that’s the potted history.

Over that time I have amassed a certain level of knowledge, experience and expertise which, whilst some of it is by nature quite niche, also encompasses much that is “transportable” in the sense that it can be applied in a variety of situations. Through this site and other ventures which may get a mention from time to time I hope to do just that.

Oh, and if you are a Rolling Stones fan sorry that you probably didn’t find what you expected but just maybe you found what you did find fleetingly interesting.

This site will help you by providing you with information, hints, tips’n’tricks and other usefull stuff that (most probably) you will not find anywhere else or if you did it would have taken you a considerable time to find.

Yeh, but what can there be that’s new that I can’t already find out there I hear you ask – anyway that’s the first question I asked before embarking on this project. Well just ask yourself how many times you’ve been stuck on something, needed to know how to do something or how something worked and try as you might you just can’t seem to find what you need? Chances are if you are doing anything a little off the beaten track then it’s quite often.

From experience I know that many times I have been in this situation and have gone on to figure it out for myself but as I haven’t had an immediate outlet to capture the solution it stays in my head and goes no further. I’m sure this effect is replicated countless times around the globe every day so this is my little stake in the ground to tip the balance just ever so slightly.

Now of course what happens here is necessarily limited by time and effort so unfortunately not everyone is going to find the answer to their problem or the piece of information that they need but hopefully enough people will find enough answers and information to make it worthwhile. If nothing else, at least I’ll know where to look to fix that thing I fixed once, way back.

…then you might be wondering what to expect? Well that depends on how soon you are visiting here after the birth of this site. If you are reading this then you are pretty much in at the inception and like all good things it’s gonna take a little time to grow and mature. There will probably be a few shoots that will wither and die whilst there will be others that prosper and grow. In any case, it would be nice if you’d stick around and see how things develop, maybe even give a bit of feedback from time to time – good, bad or indifferent, it all helps.

So, hope you keep reading and that you’ll find at least a few things that interest you.