About

I'm a maker, a hacker, an engineer, a coder, an artist, a manager, a director, a worker, and a volunteer. If you can't guess, I have ADHD. Squirrel!

The Messy Workbench is an experiment in putting external pressure on myself to complete projects, so I can clear them off of my workbench, out of the project bins, and hopefully into the hearts and minds of my viewers. I hope that in sharing my passion for making, some will be motivated to participate themselves.

I live in downtown Vancouver, Canada, in the beautiful west coast province of British Columbia. My home base, where The Messy Workbench is located, is the office in my shoebox sized apartment. City life is great, but I'm well past the number of projects that can comfortably fit in my office. The workshop space where I do my machining, welding, and larger or messier builds is the Vancouver Hack Space, a non-profit community workshop, and one of Canada's oldest hack spaces (aka makerspace, but it pre-dates that term). I've been a member for over a decade, am a former director, and still do a fair bit of behind-the-scenes admin stuff as it's completely volunteer run, so we all have to do our part.

My accent throws some people off, as it's not quite from any one place. The most prominent part of my accent is Australian, though I'm from a part of Australia that has a much more subdued accent than what most think of when they think of an Australian accent. To add more confusion to the mix, I was born in Wales to a Welsh father and an English mother, and, although I don't consider myself Welsh as my family emigrated to Australia shortly after I was born, it did of course influence my accent. Yes, I'm a triple citizen!