User:Phil Boswell

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Useful information

en

This user is a native speaker of the English language.

GMT

This user's time zone is GMT.

This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

he

This user prefers to be referred to using masculine gender pronouns.

This editor is a WikiGnome.

HP

This user is a participant in the
Harry Potter Task Force.

LJ

This user maintains a LiveJournal as @phil_boswell.

This user maintains a Facebook profile as Phil Boswell.

This user simplifies Wikipedia referencing with ProveIt.

Helpful but not vital

<html>

This user can write HTML.

Dad

This user is a father and proud of it!

This user is not a biological parent.

Alba
This user is of Scottish ancestry.

This user is male.

University College London, by William Wilkins.jpg

This user attends or attended UCL

Musical stuff

bss-2

This user is an intermediate bass guitarist.

gtr-2

This user is an intermediate guitarist.

pno-1

This user is a novice pianist.

Literary stuff

This user likes to read using a Kindle Fire.

This user is a fan of Naomi Novik's Temeraire series.

This user enjoys the Lord of the Rings book and movie series.

This user enjoys the works of
J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Silmarillion

This user not only likes The Lord of the Rings, but The Silmarillion as well.

7+1

This user enjoys the Discworld series.

This user is an Easterner. Doesn't trust elfs.

Edible stuff

This user eats chili.

This user loves to eat pizza.

This user eats chocolate.

C₂H₅OH-1

This user drinks relatively infrequently. he is probably the better for it.

This user really likes
TABASCO pepper sauce .

Miscellaneous stuff

This user subscribes to
The Signpost.

This Wikipedian has downloaded the Universal Edit Button. Have you?

This user enjoys an ad-free internet thanks to Adblock Plus.

This user is owned by one or more cats.

This user is skeptical of the Zodiac.

This user is a Virgo.

馬

This user was born in the year of the Horse.

Free

This user's TV service provider is Freeview.

This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years (21 years, 1 month, and 3 days).

About me

I used to be a Law Costs Draftsman (from 2000 to 2013): now I work for the company writing the software that I used for most of that time, and provide aid and succor to my ex-colleagues over the phone! Before that I was a Computer Programmer for a couple of decades. Before that I was at university (University College London) and, even before that, school (Haileybury).

I am married with one daughter. My wife is a Law Costs Draftsman. We live in Amersham.

My interests include reading (a lot) and listening to music (loud). I also manage to watch a surprising amount of TV.

My birthday is September 4 which turns out to be surprisingly public, since I submitted it to various newsgroups a long while back.

Barnstars
My first barnstar	From User:Topbanana: Again, thanks for your efforts - award yourself a wikimedal for janitorial services if you haven't already got one! - TB 11:25, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)
Pea Galaxies	Thankyou very much for your considerable work on the 'Facts and figures' table. This must have taken a lot of time and effort. Well worth it though! Richard Nowell (talk) 11:31, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Cats

We are a cat-friendly family. We currently have two (NB: they were already named!):

Roger	male	black	quite bonkers	local cat rescue	November 2011
Teabag	male	gray tabby, white underneath	yowly, as befits his distinctly Siamese features	local cat rescue	August 2014

RIP

Jazpurr	male	ginger/red tabby		Cats Protection	August 1995	died August 2003
Motley	female	tortoiseshell		family up the road		Died Christmas Day 2002
Mimi	female	black-and-white	medicated for thyroid problems; the escape artist of the bunch	RSPCA rescue	31 December 2003	Died 6 December 2006
Bramble	male	black	laid-back	Cats Protection	Spring 1996	Died 1 July 2007
Daisy	female	black	bossy	a family up the road who moved to New Zealand		Died 1 June 2011
Bill	male	ginger/red tabby	~~small but~~ fat, greedy and loud	RSPCA rescue	27 August 2005	Died 5 June 2011
Stig	male	mackerel red tabby	enormous	local cat rescue	7 July 2007	Died 2 November 2011
Poppy	female	tortoiseshell	not laid-back at all	Cats Protection	Winter 1997	Died 1 February 2014
Snowdrop	female	white	fluffy, hissy, greedy	local golf club sold for redevelopment	Spring 2010	Died August 2014
Biscuit	male	red tabby	adventurous	local cat rescue	August 2014	Died 27 October 2021

Claims to "fame"

Some clutching at straws here, but if I can get an article or two out of it ... :-)

I used to own a car (a Honda Civic Shuttle) which had previously been owned by Brian Cant and before him by Pauline Quirke.
I went to school with Quentin Stafford-Fraser, co-inventor of the Trojan room coffee pot.
I also went to school with Stephen Mangan, now internationally famous for acting and stuff.
I worked for a while with Tim Rowledge who ported Smalltalk to the ARM.
I am related (quite a few generations back) to James Boswell; my family tree goes back some 27 generations to Robert Sieur de Bossuille (see Clan Boswell) who arrived in England in 1066 with William the Conqueror. It is likely that John Boswell is also a distant relative of some sort simply because we share a surname.
I shared a house for a while with one Phil Rainey, bass player for Christian folk rock group Eve and the Garden (and for their previous incarnation as heavy rock band Ascent).
I used to work for Codd & Date Ltd, set up by Ted Codd and Chris Date of relational database fame. Of course I never actually got to meet them but some of the stories…
I also worked for Thames Water for a while, giving me an unenviable knowledge of the Thames Valley by way of the various Sewage treatmentworks and pumping stations…
Whilst at University, I worked for a summer holiday with the GRiP Project (building a graph reduction machine with Simon Peyton Jones, Mark Hardie and Chris Clack. I don't imagine for an instant that any of my code survived past the beginning of term but it was fun while it lasted.