User:Phil Boswell

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Useful information
en This user is a native speaker of English.
GMT This user's time zone is GMT.
This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
he This user prefers to be referred to using masculine gender pronouns.
Image:WikiGnome.png This editor is a WikiGnome.
HP This user is a member of the Harry Potter WikiProject.
LJ This user maintains a LiveJournal  as phil_boswell.
f This user maintains a facebook profile as Phil Boswell.
Helpful but not vital
<html> This user can write HTML.
dad This user is a father.
This user is not a biological parent.
Fun stuff
Scotland This user is of Scottish ancestry.
This user is male.
This user attends or attended University College London.
bss-2 This user is an intermediate bass guitarist.
gtr-2 This user is an intermediate guitarist.
pno-1 This user is a novice pianist.
This user is owned by one or more cats.
This user is skeptical of the Zodiac.
This user is a Virgo.
馬 This user was born in the year of the Horse.
This user eats chili.
This user loves to eat pizza.
This user eats chocolate.
C2H5OH-1 This user drinks relatively infrequently. He or she is probably the better for it.
This user reads The Wikipedia Signpost. Do you?
(single-page edition)

I am a Law Costs Draftsman. Before that I was a Computer Programmer for a couple of decades. Before that I was at university (University College London) and, even before that, school (Haileybury).

I am married with one daughter. My wife is also a Law Costs Draftsman. We live in Amersham.

My interests include reading (a lot) and listening to music (loud). I also manage to watch a surprising amount of TV.

My birthday is September 4 which turns out to be surprisingly public, since I submitted it to various newsgroups a long while back.

Contents


[edit] My first barnstar

From User:Topbanana:

Again, thanks for your efforts - award yourself a wikimedal for janitorial services if you haven't already got one! - TB 11:25, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)


[edit] Cats

We are a cat-friendly family. We currently have four:

Poppy female tortoiseshell not laid-back at all Cats Protection Winter 1997
Daisy female black bossy a family up the road who moved to New Zealand
Bill male ginger/red tabby small but fat, greedy and loud RSPCA rescue 2005-08-27
Stig male mackerel red tabby enormous local cat rescue 2007-07-07

[edit] RIP

Jazpurr male ginger/red tabby Cats Protection August 1995 died August 2003
Motley female tortoiseshell family up the road died Christmas Day 2002
Mimi female black-and-white medicated for thyroid problems;
the escape artist of the bunch		 RSPCA rescue 2003-12-31 died 2006-12-06
Bramble male black laid-back Cats Protection Spring 1996 died 2007-07-01

[edit] Claims to "fame"

Some clutching at straws here, but if I can get an article or two out of it ... :-)

  • I used to own a car (a Honda Civic Shuttle) which had previously been owned by Brian Cant and before him by Pauline Quirke.
  • I went to school with Quentin Stafford-Fraser, co-inventor of the Trojan room coffee pot.
  • I worked for a while with Tim Rowledge who ported Smalltalk to the ARM.
  • I am related (quite a few generations back) to James Boswell; my family tree goes back some 27 generations to Robert Sieur de Bossuille who arrived in England in 1066 with William the Conqueror. It is likely that John Boswell is also a distant relative of some sort simply because we share a surname.
  • I shared a house for a while with one Phil Rainey, bass player for Christian folk rock group Eve and the Garden (and for their previous incarnation as heavy rock band Ascent).
  • I used to work for Codd & Date Ltd, set up by Ted Codd and Chris Date of relational database fame. Of course I never actually got to meet them but some of the stories ...
  • Whilst at University, I worked for a summer holiday with the GRiP Project (building a graph reduction machine with Simon Peyton-Jones, Mark Hardie and Chris Clack. I don't imagine for an instant that any of my code survived past the beginning of term but it was fun while it lasted.

[edit] Pages to watch

[edit] People

Alyson Hannigan - Robert Jordan - Lisa Snowdon - Alan Davies - Alan Rickman - Alex Karras - Alexis Denisof - Amanda Pays - Amanda Tapping -

[edit] Books

Liaden universe - “—And He Built a Crooked House—” - 1632 (novel) - A Crown of Swords - Amelia Peabody -

Alfred Bester (author) -

[edit] TV

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel - Babylon 5 - Crusade - FightBox - QI - Hi-5 - Bear in the Big Blue House - 'Allo 'Allo! -

Related changes

[edit] Pages requiring attention

[edit] Favourite Things

  • Eskimo Nell: not so much a favourite but it's gotta be worth it :-)

[edit] Things that make me cross

[edit] LAUNCHcast

I was until recently a big fan of LAUNCHcast, an Internet radio service provided by Yahoo. Unfortunately they've now managed to annoy me sufficiently that if I can find an equivalent service I'm bailing out faster than a cat out of a washing-machine.

[edit] Useful Stuff (I hope)

[edit] Sub-pages

Harry Potter in Translation works in progress

[edit] URLs

[edit] Templates

[edit] Other Wikipedias

I maintain alternate personas at

[edit] Other languages

I also have accounts on several other wikipedias, just for a laugh since I speak not a word of any of these languages:

[edit] Emergency

I have created an emergency persona at OpenFacts for those horrible periods when Wikipedia is unavailable.

I have also created an account at Wikinfo where I was most startled to discover I already had a User Page without knowing it.

[edit] Discrepancy in naming

I have no idea why I used a space in my name some places and not others, but there's probably some deep psychological meaning which would scare the crap out of me if I ever found out.

For your contributions to Wikipedia and humanity in general, you are hereby granted the coveted Random Smiley Award
by Pedia-I Project Jesus