Hello! My name is Michael Richard Cox, born in England, Great Britain, April 1985.
I live in Essex in England in a town called Southend-On-Sea. Southend is a fairly large town with a population, according to Wikipedia, of 110,000 last time I checked. Southend is home to the Longest Pleasure Pier in the World, which has caught fire on many occasions as well as having had ships crash through it! It still stands today and is a popular attraction for the town.
I attended good schools, St. Georges RC Primary School (although I'm not actually Catholic, I'm Church of England) and St. Thomas More RC High School for Boys (and Sixth form). At Secondary school I really started to excel in IT and enjoyed all my subjects!
It was at secondary school through my geography teacher, Mr (Captain!) Mason, that my friends and I were introduced to mountain walking. I have to date been to Scotland once, summiting approximately 5 munroes (Peaks over 3000 feet), Lake district 3 times, climing Helvellyn twice, climbing Striding Edge [the most dangerous ridge in the UK] both up and down, Skiddaw once but still eager to get back to complete the four, with Scafell and Scafell Pike left to complete!
Having enjoyed our previous experiences of mountain walking so much, a World Challenge trip was proposed to go to Morroco to climb the High Atlas mountains. I excitedly signed up for this trip and started to raise funds via sponsorship. A friend and I organised a Murder Mystery evening which was run by a professional company, as part of our fund raising. This included booking the company, organising the use of the school out of hours as well as organising catering and selling the tickets! Although there were not massive profits due to all of the above costs, there were some and it was a throughly enjoyable evening! (Sadly I do not have any pics).
War!
Once the Iraq war started there was a little unease as to visiting Morocco, not by myself, but by the parents of some of the other students. The trip was re-organised to be a Poland mountain walking trip. This turned out to be a very good decision as the walking in Poland in the Tatra mountains is better than the High Atlas. We spent 8 days in Poland and climbed Mount Rysy, 2499meters, 8000feet; the highest mountain in Poland. It was a throughly enjoyable and brilliant trip and well worth the cost!
The Poland trip was in 2003 whilst I was in 6th Form. After 6th Form I got my A-levels and enrolled at UKC, University of Kent in Canterbury, Kent, England. My course title is Computer Science with a Year in Industry. When I applied this was the best University in The Times' list for Computer Science which didn't require A-Level maths as an entrance requirement. (It was 10th overall IIRC).
During my second year I had to start applying for my Year in Industry which resulted in me being offered a chance to work in BT's Research and Venturing department at their facility in Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, Suffolk. I was working on a project researching into advanced broadband support. I learnt alot about business as well as new technologies and techniques including UPnP, Flash, Java and PHP.
For my final year at University I lived with Jem, Jemma and Tom. We had some great times although the work dictated that those times were few! I completed my University degree achieving a First Class with Honours!
Now I am waiting for August 20th whereby I shall be starting my employment with Symbian Software Limited, the creators of the Symbian OS operating system for mobile phones.