Nick Kaijaks - Biography

Who am I?

Well, I'm a chartered physicist, with a PhD in physics from the University of Warwick. I am married to Ros and have a lovely baby daughter called Jessica, born in April 2006. We live in Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, a town about 10 miles from Coventry and about 15 miles from Birmingham. Since 1996, I have run a part-time design consultancy, Pinxit Design offering music typesetting, graphic design, copywriting and editing for both print and web media. I was consultant designer for the Music Centre at Warwick from 1995-2004. My day job is Information Design Manager for Warwick Business School.

If you want to know more about my other interests (i.e. those not accounted for above), just keep on reading...

Whither Kaijaks?

Excellent question, I'm glad you asked. Kaijaks is a Latvian name (and hence the jis silent), which is inherited from my grandparents who fled Riga, the capital of Latvia following its invasion by the Soviet Union in World War II. I was born and bred in London, and my first language is definitely English (and RP at that). However, I understand spoken Latvian reasonably well, having had it spoken around the house in my early years. However, my written Latvian is only informal, and probably not very grammatical. If you write to me, I much prefer English - I'm perfectly fluent in that ;-) Anyway, if you want to know more about Latvia and Latvians, I recommend Latvians Online and Ints' Latvian Resources. Of course none of this offers explanation for my fanatical support for Wales in all sporting events. You'll have to get in touch with me if you're that interested in the reasons for that...

Nostalgia

This is the sixth significant generation of my Web site since I first created a public_htmdirectory, back in 1993. For nostalgia's sake, here's a link to the original Cap'n Fishy photo of me that appeared on that first site. To put things in perspective, this was a 256 colour GIF scanned with a three-pass hand scanner, in the days before JPEGs existed(!), when Mosaic was hot, and when most people thought the 'net was something you caught fish in...

A couple more nostalgic links... Here is a link to reality and a copy of my disclaimer.

Dreeb! Dreeb! I am a Home Page Virus! Copy me into your home page today! [aside]

Where do you want to go today?®

Interests

• Well, I'm a Chartered Physicist with a PhD, so I must be interested in that...
• I hand-code dynamic XHTML using Eclipse as a tool of choice, and I'm a member of the HTML Writers Guild.
• I was for many years a keen user of RISC OS workstations, as they were always such usable and productive machines. I use a virtual one now. Under RISC OS, my workhorse application was Ovation Pro, the page layout software, which is now also available for Windows. My main work nowadays is on Adobe Creative Suite 2 on Windows XP workstations, with linux servers like the one you're reading this web page on!
• I've experience of Pascal, BASIC, Fortran and C, and I used to develop in Delphi 6 Enterprise.
• I'm a bit of a news addict. Drip-feed me with BBC News and I'll be a happy man ;-)
• I'm a musician, who...
  • Sings in choirs, including the gold-medallist University of Warwick Chamber Choir, and Warwick Phoenix Singers
  • Sings in musicals, with Warwick Phoenix G&S
  • Plays the guitar, left-handed, self-taught
  • Listens to all sorts of music, from classical (particularly early music), through rock and pop to chillout/trance. In particular, I should bow respectfully to the late great Frank Zappa.
  • Was Secretary and President of, and original Web site designer for The University Gilbert & Sullivan Society, now rebranded as Music Theatre Warwick (oh, yes, I did the logo for their rebrand).
  • Created the original University of Warwick Music Centre Web site (although that's now student-run)
• I'm also well-known for being a nutter about Penguins! (try a live Penguincam!)
• Buffy slays! Or slayed, I should say :-(
• I have been known to consume the occasional single malt whisky and glass of wine - indeed I ran the University Wine Appreciation Society Web site for a couple of years - however, I do try to avoid drinking them simultaneously.
• I watch international rugby union and support Wales fanatically (Cymru am byth!).

Cool links

The second commandment of web design is: Thou shalt have cool links.
Of course, nowadays, they all go in blogs'n'stuff, so here is an eclectic, nostalgic selection. Try that for a tongue-twister... Anyway, if you spot linkrot, please let me know via the link at the bottom of the page.

• The weather forecast for today in Coventry, courtesy of the Bablake Weather Service
• For culture, visit The WebMuseum
• Drop in at Salon
• amazon.co.uk deliver
• If you're short of cards, try the World Birthday Web (WBW)
• Obviously Spatula City needs no introduction...