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I'm Alaric Nightingale, I'm currently an undergraduate reading a degree in Computer Science at Clare College, Cambridge University. Concordantly I now spend most of my year in Cambridge, where I split my time largely between work, sleep, procrastination and playing badminton. Frequently I'm to be found doing something on a computer or learning something new, occasionally even work related. I'm rather addicted to information and usually spend at least an hour a day reading news sites.

Originally I'm from Canterbury in Kent, where I spent my formative years. Canterbury is a nice (very) little city which has lots of good little pubs and an antiquated Grammar school system. Which meant I attended the local single sex grammar school, which although is academically very sound seems a very archaic notion.

I also spend a lot of my vacation time on the Isle of Mull in Scotland, where we now have a house that's considerably more accessible for my (physically) disabled sister. She adores the quiet, and the very beautiful view from the patio window up there. Although we've previously explored the entire island, we now mainly stay on the Ross where there are less midges and we know the most people. Only venturing to the north end when we need to do a big shop.
It can be fairly lonely, as all my good friends are from school or uni and literally hundreds of miles away, but I'm normally only there for relatively short periods of time so it isn't that bad. And I take my computer with me.

I've usually got music playing when I'm in my room at uni, I seem to have fairly eclectic tastes nowadays and my playlist can vary from Jazz to classical to punk to rap and hip hop and the occasional bit of happy hardcore to remind me of the early nineties. My favourite band has to be Cypress Hill, who I've consistently listened to for years, when other bands have just been transient.

My taste in films is also suitable odd, I'm a massive Tarantino fan and delight in the genius of Pulp Fiction, although Kill Bill was somewhat ground breaking it wasn't as neat as Pulp Fiction's story. I guess I'm also a stereotypical male as I like traditional action films and martial arts movies fully of blood, gore etc. But then again I also have some other tastes: such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (a very funny black comedy), 'chick flicks' because I love happy endings even if they are inevitable, and generally funny films. I'm not much of a fan of horror films and can simply detest sci-fi films.

A few years ago now my family spent a few summers in Italy, mainly split between Tuscany and Venezia. In Tuscany we stayed just outside the fairly small city of Lucca, which was really enjoyable and noticeably a lot less tourist ridden than the magnets that are Pisa and Florence. Although the relaxed walled city of Lucca was very pleasant it pales in the memory in comparison with the majesty of Venice. I spent a great many years wanting to pursue a career as an Architect before finally changing my mind to Computing, and I adored lots of the architecture of Venice. A building that sticks out in my mind for elegance, if not anything particularly ostentatiously in scale, was the Palazzo Contarini del Fasan, opposite Salute on the Grand Canal. One day I intend to go back and revisit all the galleries I visited, and sit and relax in the Campo Santa Margherita enjoying the long warm evenings.

You may or may not have noticed by now that I'm more than a little obsessed about computers and will happily learn new things just for the fun of it. The aspect of computing that interests me the most is security, this is probably because it seems to both be constructive and destructive, and requires a certain amount of doublethink, with some aspects being common sense and others being totally unintuitive. I spend my vacations reading security text books, and try my best to keep up with developments on the web during term-time. I'm not sure how I'm going to work my way into the security industry, I'd like to pursue a PhD in Computer Security after my degree but it's currently looking fairly unlikely to be possible.

Superficially it may seem that my change from Architecture to Computing was a huge change, but I regard them as not to dissimilar. The aspects of computing I most enjoy are the practical aspects and the creation of a product, this isn't too far removed from the notion of Architecture or product design (one of my A-levels). The concepts of fulfilling a client's brief and the design process are very similar, it's just the construction stage that differs. I tend to regard myself as better at programming than drawing out plans etc, as it's more cerebral and I get less bored whilst doing it. Although there's a lot to be said for learning the theory of computers and computing, I do get quite frustrated when it's totally dry and not of any tangible use to me.

Something I've been doing for years now is webdesign and server-side scripting. I always get the impression that people regard this as difficult in some way because they don't understand how it's done or something. It just seems like it resides in an overlap between compsci and design and I don't find it difficult in the slightest. It appears to be a subject matter that a lot of people can identify with and know exactly what they want, so it seems that it's something people always want doing. I'm trying to move away from it to an extent now though, because I want something challenging and not to be caught permanently in webdesign.

When I'm not hanging around on a computer, or learning about computers I'm usually either watching tv or playing badminton. I'm now the Clare Badminton president and consequently also the first team captain, as this alone wouldn't be enough badminton I now also play at a local Cambridge club. I also occasionally play table football for Clare. I'm not really a clubbing type of person and much prefer sitting in a pub or playing table football in the bar when I do go 'out'. I don't have nearly enough curries when in Cambridge, only ever having them for special occasions rather than weekly like at home!

One of the things I get asked about most frequently is my fairly unusual name, I'm never sure if people think I'm foreign, but I'm not, unless you count part Scottish as foreign!
The first instance of the name Alaric seems to be the King of the Visigoths that sacked the Roman Empire in 410 AD. This is probably why lots of websites list the meaning of Alaric as "noble ruler" and other such analogous statements. This was, however, not how I got my name. My mother met someone called Alaric, and immediately told him that she'd call her first son that, because she liked the name so much. My dad being a classicist has, curiously, nothing to do with it. It's just mildly ironic that he's got a child named after the person that destroyed his subject!