I was born in Barnet, England, 1963, of English and New Zealander parents. (The building I was born in was about 100 metres from the imposing looking three-storey brick building at the top of the photo on the Barnet page).
I moved to Milton, New Zealand at the age of eleven. I have lived in Dunedin, New Zealand, since 1981. I studied psychology at the University of Otago, gaining a B.A. and an M.Sc. (my M.Sc. supervisor is also apparently a Wikipedian!)
I currently work as a part-time freelance writer (mainly for the Otago Daily Times) and artist (with two solo exhibitions since 2002).
My interests are wide-ranging, and include art, music (I was songwriter, singer and guitarist for various bands during the 1980s and 1990s), geography, and flags. The latter interest has led to me being heavily involved with the Flags of the world web resource.
Bizarrely, while voting on WP:VFD I've realised that I pass far more of the criteria for notability than many of the people in articles voted "keep". Of course, I'm not allowed to write a Wikipedia article about myself, but - as a little exercise - I've added one here.
Grutness?
It is:
a headland at the southern end of Scotland's Shetland Islands, and
the name I use for my art studio (studio? Oversized cupboard! One day...).
I use the Uffington White Horse as part of my signature, as I do with my painting. Talking of which, if anyone's interested in seeing my paintings, I have a gallery on my website.
Current Wiki-work
Writing
Until recently, I was writing small articles (and occasionally big articles) on New Zealand geography. I've done a once-over of the entire country now, so I'll leave it to others for a while.
I'm occasionally tapping away at some New Zealand music and/or art biographies.
I'm about to start checking through articles on areas closely associated with New Zealand: Tokelau, Cook islands, Niue, and Ross Dependency.
I also take occasional dives into the Wikipedia:Cleanup list - something which is well worth doing (try it!) - and have rescued a few substubs and the like.
Categorising
I spent some time rationalising the categories under which New Zealand geography articles are filed. Hopefully it now looks more like a tree, rather than the web of a drunken spider.
I hope sometime to start doing the same sort of thing on some of the other New Zealand articles.
Currently, though, I'm wading through the Category:Geography stubs, moving articles from there into smaller categories (France-geo-stubs, Africa-geo-stubs, etc).
I'm also quite pleased with what I managed to achieve from the stub that was Gisborne. Same with the Marlborough Sounds, Waikato, Northland, Wanganui, and Coromandel Peninsula. In fact any new and logical article that fills a glaring gap, and any stub that is turned into something meaningful long enough for subsections is a good thing.
I've uploaded a few of my favourite holiday snaps to enliven some articles (see Mokoia Island for an example).
Statistics
As of 02:23, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC), I have:
added 542 new articles and untold categories, disambigs and redirects
