More details about me
	Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. The Mikado, by W S Gilbert

I'm not under any delusions that my life history is going to be interesting to anyone. This page is really here so that if you're thinking 'I wonder if this is the David Matthewman I used to know...?' you should be able to work it out from what I've written here. Yes, there is more than one David Matthewman. One of us is a Sweet Pea grower from Pontefract. That's not me.

At school

I attended Great and Little Shelford Church of England Primary School (to give it its full title) from 1972 to 1979. On the first day I was there, I was offered milk - this being in the pre-Thatcher days before free milk was considered a needless extravagance. Nowadays I drink milk by the pint, and very refreshing it is too, but at the age of four 'milk' was this horrible white stuff that was just about bearable on cornflakes, if you piled on the sugar. Besides, the milk you got at school was lukewarm and smelt vaguely like vomit. I declined and asked for Ribena. Curiously enough, they didn't have any, which I got quite upset about at the time. All things considered, it's a tribute to my teachers that I made it to 1979 without someone throttling me.

All my teachers were great, but special mention must go to: Mrs. Shackleford, who nurtured my interest in ornithology, bore my 'I know it all' attitude with stoicism and read us C S Lewis; Mr MacKinder, who first taught me what fun maths and science was; Mr Doyle who continued the good work and introduced some much-needed discipline into my writing; and Mr Starling, the headmaster, who introduced me to a diode computer and took the lot of us to Cumbria to see real dales and fells and waterfalls and sheep and curlews and...

Sawston Village College came next, from 1979 to 1984, where a group of hard-working underpaid teachers helped me to get my O-levels. In my second year I played Second Peasant in The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew by Robert Bolt, which starred one Steven Mackintosh in the role of Oblong Fitz-Oblong - Steven left Sawston for drama school soon after, and has gone on to far greater things, including playing 'The Street' opposite Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect V, and starring in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Not seen them? Do.

I hasten to add that I don't keep in touch with Steven, and he certainly wouldn't remember me. For that matter, I've lost touch with just about everyone from Sawston, so if you're reading this, were at Sawston and remember me, drop me a line.

My A-levels were done from 1984 to 1986 at Hills Road Sixth Form College. I cannot praise HRSFC too much - I'm proud to be an ex-Hillie, and applaud the fact that Principal Colin Greenhalgh was recently awarded an OBE. He's a prime example of the sorts of people who should be getting them.

While at HRSFC, I was heavily involved in the theatre - trying my hand at acting, writing and sound design. While the best production I was involved with was almost certainly Suddenly Last Summer, I had the most fun in our first-year revue called Scrambled Egos. This was a team effort, done alongside Altay Eralp, Corrina Downing, Barnaby Shepherd, Steve 'Ed' Stigwood and Steve 'The Feet' Andrews, a bunch of comic geniuses with whom I was really not worthy to share the billing.

At college

I did a degree in Engineering at Churchill College, Cambridge between 1987 and 1990, followed by an abortive PhD in Materials Science between 1990 and 1994. Churchill is one of the 'newer' colleges, and has a solid college comunity spirit because: (a) it's a mile from the town centre (b) it's 70% scientists, so no one else wants to know, really. You don't get bothered by tourists, because it's basically built from concrete, but that suits Churchillians just fine.

One thing Chuchillians can do is throw a party. Every February the Churchill Spring Ball happens, at a fraction of the cost of the May Balls but with just as much fun. Girton used to compete with Churchill for a few years, but Girton had the major disadvantage that its college authorities hated the ball, while the authorities at Churchill loved it. So, while we'd have the full resources of the college more or less at our disposal, and provided at cost or free, poor Girton was charged £4000 by the college just for the privilege of holding the ball in the first place. As someone who worked himself into the ground on three consecutive ball committees, I seriously appreciate that.

Other things that I did at college when I should have been studying include: writing a stage production of Pink Floyd's The Wall, being a very unsuccessful student union hack, coxing various boats, and writing and taking photographs for the college magazine, Winston.

At work

My first job was working for British Rail as a sponsored student. I worked in the Research Division at the Railway Technical Centre in Derby. It may amaze you to learn that BR did any research at all - otherwise wouldn't it be able to identify the 'wrong sort of snow'? - but it did, including a lot of work for foreign railway companies. As with all students, I was shunted round various departments, mostly those on the Mechanical Engineering side.

You may have heard of the excuse 'Leaves on the line'. It sounds a bit poor, really, doesn't it? Nonetheless, it's a genuine problem - the wheels of a train and the track are in contact over a very small area, and pulped leaf debris gets between the two really easily. The first problem this causes is simple - the wheels slip and the train either won't start or (more usually) won't stop.

The second problem is less well known but more serious. As a train travels along a track, it completes a circuit between the two tracks. This is detected by the signal box, allowing them to tell which bit of track the train is on. Unfortunately, pulped leaf debris is a good insulator, and leaves on the line can stop the circuit being completed, with the effect that trains literally disappear from the readout in the signal box, to the obvious alarm of of the signalman.

One project I worked briefly on was meant to tackle this problem - it was basically a plastic sweeping brush attached to the front bogie of a train which would sweep the track clear of debris. I don't know if it was ever used in anger, but it had a pretty fundamental flaw. Track maintainance crews often lay detonators - small explosive charges - on the track a few hundred yards from where they are, to alert any oncoming trains that there are people working on the track ahead. The train runs over the detonator and sets it off. Unfortunately, the leaf brush tended to sweep the detonator aside without detonating it, which was obviously not a very good idea.

My favourite project was the Aerodynamic test track in Michleover. This was used to test airflow round a passing train, especially in a tunnel. How was this done? Well, basically you take a 200-foot-long straight piece of track at 1/5 scale, cover it in a tent, and fire model trains along it at up to 100mph using a massive Kevlar catapult that takes over a minute to wind up to full tension. This was very nearly as much fun as it sounds, and even better was the rubber-band-and-string arrangement that tried to stop the train again at the far end. This used to fail regularly, leaving the train to plough into about forty blocks of oasis that stopped it rather more messily.

I left BR when started my PhD, and the next job I got was when I decided to quit the PhD, and earn an honest living. I ended up as first Deputy Editor then Editor of Acorn User, "The best-selling Acorn magazine in the world". While this was, admittedly, the seminal case of being a big fish in a small pond, it was more fun than it would have been in, say, the PC market. The Acorn computer market is small enough that all the major players know each other, and it's friendly and helpful as a result.

Not long after I became Editor of Acorn User, I found out that one of the larger companies in the market - Computer Concepts - was in search of a full-time Web designer. The company had recently expanded into the PC market (as Xara Ltd), and was becoming increasingly interested in the possibility of selling products on-line. I explained that, while I'd love to do the job, I had only just settled in as Editor and felt I had another couple of years to go in the role before I'd be ready to leave.

Then I thought about what I'd just said, compared the job prospects of the Editor of a (shrinking) niche computing magazine with those of a Web designer working in on-line commerce, slapped myself very hard round the head and phoned Computer Concepts back.

I worked at Xara for just under four years. It was a great place to work, both in terms of the people and the location. UK readers may recall a Strongbow advert featuring Johnny Vaughn 'loafing' in the swimming pool of a large stately home. That's Gaddesden Place, where Xara's based and yes, we could use the swimming pool. And the snooker table. And the tennis courts.

In February 2000 I left Xara to work for my current employers, Sibelius Software. Like Xara, Sibelius started in the Acorn market and I knew the Finn brothers (who founded and run the company) fairly well. I was reluctant to leave Xara, but Sibelius is based in Cambridge, and I'd always fancied the idea of moving back there. Sibelius is another excellent company to work for, and we've just moved to spanking new offices near the station with about four times the space.

At play

Ahem. Yes. Well. The thing is that what with being rather busy at work, and spending much of my time with my partners Liz and Laura - both of whom live in Leytonstone - I don't really have all that much in the way of spare time at the moment.

As has already been noted, things were a bit different at college (see under 'PhD, total failure to finish'). And while I was working for BR they foolishly gave me an all-stations pass, so I did a stint as a track-basher (not, and I'd like to make this totally clear, a trainspotter - a track basher notes down stretches of track travelled over rather than train numbers, so that's all right then). I've recently made a habit of holidaying on a canal boat, which I recommend for anyone needing to relax. For one thing, if work needs to get in touch with you, the buggers need to search fifty miles of towpath.

I have a pet iguana called Idris, who'll get his own home page when I get around to it.