On Books

I love books like most people love music. I have shelves of them, in just about every genre, and always need more. I can tell you where I got each and every one of them (as far as you know), and pretty much never get rid of them. I'm an athiest, but books get me as close to religion as anything, with the possible exception of the Ghiradelli Banana Split.

On Games

I play a lot of them. I don't pretend to be the greatest player in the world, but I've been round the block more than a few times with just about every form of weaponry and inventory item. I'm a huge believer in stories in games, and games with good ones usually interest me most - especially adventures, RPGs and FPS.

On Photography

I currently shoot with the Nikon D90, typically coupled with an 18-200mm Nikon lens or a 17-50mm Tamron. I like unusual shots, especially of people and weird things seen while travelling. I hate being photographed. I'm aware of the irony.

On Websites

I don't pretend to be a web developer, but I like to dabble. I first built a website because I wanted to learn how websites were built, and since then, each revision has gotten closer to not making professionals rip their eyes out in horror. For the last 5 years or so, I've used ExpressionEngine - easily the best CMS ever made. I also built the current PC Plus site, which uses Drupal.

To Be Continued...

Who Heck Richard?

Who is Richard Cobbett? Richard Cobbett is what I would call myself if I was writing in the third person, but since I've never really understood why people do that on their personal homepages, I'll guess I'll just stick to good old 'I'.

Who am I? I'm a writer, journalist, and freelance producer of many other things involving words - some funny, some serious, some even correctly spelled. My day job is Features Editor on the UK computing magazine PC Plus, but I've done a pretty wide range of things, including fiction, speaking at events, some comics, design, scripting, and a fair bit more. Interested in hiring me to do something for you? My inbox is always open.

Outside of paid writing, I do a fair amount of keyboard-punching in my free time, because being a professional writer is like having the world's most satisfying/frustrating disorder. I'm not complaining though, except when I am. I also do a lot of reading, photography (firmly amateur level, but I like to think I'm getting better at it), comedy and TV watching, and trying to absorb interesting trivia via cultural osmosis. I love mythology, legends and the fun little facts that shows like QI are based on. There may be no real benefit to knowing that the little plastic things on shoelaces are called 'aglets', but knowing it makes me feel good. And now you know it too.

My current ambitions include finishing a book I can bear to let other humans see, getting a few cool creative projects on my resume, and launching Milton Keynes into space. No real reason. I just don't see how it can hurt.

As Seen In...

And a fair few more I don't have pictures of right now, including a couple of short-story books, the Second Edition of Windows XP In A Nutshell, which I updated for Windows XP SP2, dedicated one-shot things like specials on World of Warcraft, and a small stack of miscellaneous magazines and websites both past and present. The specific issues above are almost certainly pretty old, but only because I'm too lazy to keep them updated. You get the idea, anyway. I keep myself pretty busy.