I was born in Glasgow, Scotland and educated at Strathclyde University (Physics) and St Andrews University (Computer Science). I am married to Anne and have two daughters, Alison and Jane who are now both beautiful young women. Outside work, I enjoy cooking, photography, and hill walking.

I am generally interested in good food and eat out in in restaurants fairly often. I started to write down my experiences of eating out for delegates at a conference in 2004 and this has now evolved into a series of mini restaurant reviews (mostly in Edinburgh). Follow the restaurants link above to read these.

I speak Scots and English plus a bit of French. I read books on a wide range of topics including fiction of various types, history, popular science, food and cooking, nature and the environment and travel.

I joined the School of Computer Science at St Andrews University, Scotland in April 2006 after almost 20 years (1986-2006) as a professor of software engineering in the Computing Department at Lancaster University in northern England. Previously, I was a lecturer in Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh (1975-78) and at Strathclyde University, Glasgow (1978-86).