My name's Ian Devlin, and I originally hail from the city of Limerick, in the midwest of Ireland. Currently I live in Cambridge, UK, where I have been since 1998.

On finishing my BSc in Computer Systems from the University of Limerick in Ireland, I came over to Cambridge to work for a company called Vocalis Limited, who were based in Great Shelford. I worked my way up there to become a senior software engineer and also a consultant. I stayed there until 2004 when I was made redundant, following a takeover by Fluency Voice Technology Limited. I was unemployed for a while before I started work at Jagex Limited (also see RuneScape which is the game they develop). I worked there for 2 years as a web developer. I left in January 2007 to start work as a project manager for Play To Win TV Limited, based in London, who were a tv company. Unfortunately I was made redundant from there, and the company is now defunct. I now work for Sagentia Ltd as a country manager, basically a project manager responsible for delivering the Vodafone Money Transfer project for a particular country. For further information you can either view my CV or go to my LinkedIn profile.

I've always been interested in computers from a younger age, but since my dad is a computer engineer I suppose that's not too surprising. We always had a PC at home, some broken machine that my dad brought home from work that he'd fix and "forget". I remember being awestruck by an XT, then an AT, 386 and the heady heights of a 486! I didn't code that much though, like many others in my industry, although I did dabble a small bit with BASIC, though not much. These days I don't think of computing as a hobby, although I do use my PC a lot for various other things, and I have been known to code in my spare time, be it with HTML, C, Java, CSS or PHP.

Computer gaming is something I've really got into since having my own PC here in England. Yes I played computer games when I was younger, pacman, space invaders, frogger, monkey island and things like that, but I really got into it and especially online gaming when I lived alone here in Cambridge. I started to play Battlefield 1942, and still do, even though it's an old game. I've been playing in an online tournament over at WaW under the name of Sionnach since 2003, and it's still going strong. Nowadays we use the Forgotten Hope mod, which adds realism and more excitement to the game. I also play Brian Lara's cricket games.

Sports is something I have always been into. I'm a great armchair sports fan and know the rules for many sports as I've followed a lot of them at some stage or another. I used to play cricket back home in Ireland, playing for both Limerick CC and ULCC (represented them in 1996 at the intervarsities in Belfast!). Since I moved to England, for some reason I've not continued the cricket, but I play a lot of football, mainly in 5-a-side leagues where I usually play in goal.

History is a subject that I have always loved. Annoyingly, due to choice restrictions at school, I didn't do it for my Irish Leaving Certificate (~ English A Levels), but I've always had a healthy interest in it. Be it bronze age, Egyptian, Napoleonic or World War II, I'm interested in it. I also enjoy watching archaelogical programs such as Time Team on Channel 4. I find it fascinating to see how much information the team can gleam from an archaelogical dig and piece together a knowledgeable history of a site.

I love reading. I am usually in the middle of a good book and hate not having one to read. I tend to read novels on varied topics such as crime, murder mystery, detective, war, special forces, historical, to name a few, but I've also been known to read and enjoy some of the classics such as War and Peace (which I quite enjoyed!). Some authors who I regularly read (in no particular order) are: Kathy Reichs, Jeffrey Deaver, Patrick O'Brian, Simon Scarrow, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Goddard, Wilbur Smith, Edward Rutherfurd and of course the great J.R.R Tolkien.

I do of course have a social life and enjoy nothing more than a few pints down my local pub with some friends. Sometimes I regret this the following morning, but sure hey, you only live once. Cambridge is not renowned for it's nightlife, but it does have many great pubs in it, albeit not in the city centre. There are many bars that are in the centre, which I also visit, depending on my mood! I love nothing more than a few pints down my local pub back home with my dad and anyone else from the family who cares to join us!

Coffee, coffee, coffee. I love coffee. I probably drink too much of the stuff, but there you go, we all have our vices in life and to be honest things could be a lot worse! Have you ever tried the Tassimo coffee maker? I bought it when it first came out, and although they keep reducing the number of drink discs you get in a pack, this machine is great! My favourite is the Caffé Crema, but you can of course get other types as well. I do also enjoy coffee from a regular filtered coffee machine, but am not too keen on that instant stuff.