Some Stuff About Me

Hi, I'm Raj, webmaster of LordOfTheMoon.com and this is the obligatory biography page. You might be wondering why I chose the rather odd name of Lord of the Moon for this site. Well, for one thing, it's better than RajNet which is just plain boring and it's also (so I've been told) the meaning of my name.
I'm currently in my third decade on this planet, not tall enough and a little overweight. I have a degree in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow and having spent four years enjoying myself (apart from the actual work), now I have a Real Job as technical officer and programmer at the IT Education Unit of the university.

I'm originally from Northern Ireland and was born many moons ago in 'Derry. <– Note that I don't give a damn about sectarianism (see my peace page), I prefer to say – and write – "Derry" as opposed to "Londonderry" because it has half as many syllables and is easier to write and say, so there!

Ahem, like I said before I got side-tracked, I'm from near the market town of Strabane and about 13 miles from 'Derry. I really love my home but have, over the past few years, grown to love the city of Glasgow which I have adopted and taken as my home. Before I came to Glasgow, I had heard all the negative aspects of the city: it's drug problems and unemployment to name but two. But that's just one side of the coin. Glasgow was the 1999 UK city of architecture and design. It is a very beautiful and ancient city with some of the friendliest people that I've met in a city.

My formative years were spent in primary education at Strabane Primary School (that's between the ages of 4/5 and 10/11 for anybody not familiar with the primary education system in Ulster).
Following this, after passing my 11+, I went on to Strabane Grammar School and spent the next 4 years having a ball and then realised that I had my GSCE exams in three months and so needed to start working . I must have done something right since I came out with 5 As, 3 Bs and 2Cs.

Right, with this out of the way, I could doss about for another year in Lower VI (possibly the best school year ever), before I had to get down to proper work at computing, maths and physics. Once again, I did pretty well and came out with an 'A' and 2 'B's. At the same time I also took GCSE information systems (computing) since we weren't offered it in 5th year (as we're such a small school) and came out of this with an A*. This gave me more than the grades that I needed to study here at the University of Glasgow, and I am really glad that I came - although it was quite a culture shock coming to university that has 3/4 the population of my whole county!

As you can tell if you've been having a butcher's hook around this site, I quite like science fiction, I think that this is a great form of escapism and the genre has spawned some of the greatest literature in the world. HG Wells' War of the Worlds and The Time Machine are acknowledged classics and I believe that JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is the best work of imaginative fiction of the century (and a poll carried out by Waterstones bookstores agrees). I don't just enjoy SF, but enjoy several of the classics and am also hooked on the works of Jane Austin. I have read Pride & Prejudice about seven times since the BBC adaptation in about Autumn 1996 and after I read it for the first time, I was inspired to read the rest of her works and was very impressed, especially by Persuasion and Emma.

I was raised as a Hindu but now that I have learned to think for myself, I can only consider myself as an agnostic, but religion is a pet hate, so I won't go on about that here, but suffice to say that I consider most forms of religion as a way of herding people like sheep. I suppose that some people might find this controversial, so if you want to have an argument then email me and I'll be happy to argue with you.