Secondary: Newington College, Sydney, Australia. Tertiary: BSc (Geology), BA (Economics and Philosophy), MSc (Artificial Intelligence), all University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Work history: software development, lived for the last 20 years off royalty payments from a large multinational corporation for a manufacturing-warehousing-financial software suite (Oracle-based) that I wrote. Greatest interest since 1974: AI. Three software patents: two for a method of associative computer processing, one for encryption.