LlamaLAN

Lewisham, London - And a darkness shadowed the land. What with it being before dawn, this was quite normal for a month like March in a year like 1980.

28 years later, I'm still here, thinking I'm breathing air. A fervently religious, star-wars obsessed, smoothie drinking IT technician working in local government, with many extra-secular activities. One such activity is LlamaLAN, as one head of the Cerberus-like entity that is LlamaLAN management. This particular head, apart from frothing regularly, spits out doodles and website themes now and then to support each up and coming LAN event. "But," I hear no one ask, "what got you here in the first place?"

Well, I've been playing games since the dawn of home computers. Dad was a keen gadgetron (and ran his own business for quite a few years), and bought us boys a box named the Dragon 32, in 1982. I barely remember this, but I remember the logo. When the highly acclaimed Amstrad CPC 464 was released, Dad bought us one of the first in the country. I started coding on this bad boy. Our IBM Compatible days began with a CGA system, and the first IBM PC game I ever played was Alley Cat!

'Pox' Fowler, 'Hatstand' Williams, 'Von Paulus' Vallack and 'Stella' Phillips kicked off clan FTD back in 1999 on QWTF, moving on to Q3F shortly afterwards, and I joined as a lowly minigun-toting defence leader. I've been assisting in the lead of FTD, on and off, since April 2001, now playing the excellent TF2. In September of 2001, Kanonfodda joined our merry band in the IT department and also signed up for FTD. Getting stuck in to clan activities, he was soon after assisting me with the clan's website, and then all kinds of wicked cool apps like... LlamaSTATS!

I've been making LlamaLAN's posters since the first back in November 2002, which started out as simple Photoshop knockups. I was just putting images together and inventing the stupid titles until LlamaLAN VI, when I fancied taking things a bit further. LlamaLAN VI was the first poster featuring all original art; however, it wasn't until LlamaLAN VII that I did it properly, practicing a number of sketch, ink and photoshop techniques. I was quite chuffed with it, and LL7's work was well received, so I carried on.

I also scratch my head over t-shirt designs, trying to think up something a bit different each time. The website and forum's visual themes are also in my remit. When coming up with the concepts for LlamaLAN VIII's advertisment poster, we realised it would be fun to give the entire LAN a Hawaiian theme. This meant the site's visual theme was also given a Hawaiian facelift, and thus created a rod for my back - it looks like we'll be theming each LAN (and thus the site) with every future LAN event. Joy!

I don't tend to floss but keep regular exercise a part of my week's routine. My two cats are rather fat and fluffy.

So, I also do some other things.

I have a blog that I occasionally write into, mostly when I have interesting dreams.
I made this English to Yoda-speak site. I wrote a Google gadget to tie into too. It's proving quite popular.
I dress as Darth Vader to entertain kids (big and small) and raise money for charity. I need to do this more.
I have a gallery on deviantArt too. Buy yourself a big LlamaLAN poster. I have!

Out of interest which local government It department do you work for as me onion and dezz also work in local government.

The well-loved Medway Council!

Myself Dezz and Onion all worked together at Thanet council up until last year when I got poached by Swale

Ah I remember CD mentioning a crowd from Thanet. Public sector isn't so bad, suits me fine (for now). We recently rearranged into an entirely revised way of working and that's helped keep the job from becoming overly stale.

Yay more LA IT staff.
Do you know Rachel Bull , cause she is my GIS counter part in your council ?
My first pc type thing was an Atari console , with ping pong and then came the awesome space invaders.
Next was ZX spectrum , where i learnt to code in Basic , along side the games and the horible loading noise and screens.
After that it was 8086 all the way , and added assembly , fortran and some more basic coding.
Somewhere along the line i realised that i didnt like coding any more and moved to being a dumb user .. now ripper supports my gaming issues , onionstar and gangsta support my hardware , software and web issues.
they are my personal IT biatches .. /dezz ducks

I am sure that next time we meet it will be the best LL ever

peace out.
dezz the hippy

I demand one of you lot give me a job in one of your IT departments, now!

Please, with cherries and cream? ^_^

I don't run things, yet. Keep your eye on here, m8!

You forgot to mention the much loved "camp miester" and sometime engineer (Q3F stylee) called Von Paulus!

Goodness me Brigadier, you're right. Editted!

Gamer from the 80's. From the Atari VCS onwards.....

FPS fan since Wolf3D, became a big Quake player in 96 and moved through (and got stuck on) to Quake III Arena. Now playing QuakeLive and moved into a clan there.
Autodidactic in everything he knows.

Get your own bloomin intro thread you hijacker!

Oops. I thought this _was_ the thread.
My bad! Delete my post

Nah I'm not that offended. It's nice to have you stop by, even if by mistake. I have some toasted buns in the oven if you want to hang around a bit longer...