User:Koltregaskes

My name is Kol Tregaskes, born on the 4th November. I am a 30something guy from the UK. I currently looking after my mother, her house and my lively dog, Kaz in Kent while also trying to pursue my interest in photography. My background is more IT though than art/photography, my job is a Project Co-ordinator with a telecoms company in Surrey. The details...

Personal life

I'm normally a quietsome sole who keeps himself to himself and generally get on with everybody I meet (and have met a wide variety of people along the way). I'm very friendly, helpful and reliable and if I start something then I do it and do it well.

Home-life

At the moment live in Kent, in a small town called Edenbridge. It's my second stint here, first was when I was made redundant and had to move out of my Croydon house. The second was when my contract job came to an end and I decided to move back to my parents home to help my Mum out with looking after my very poorly Dad. Sadly my Dad died in January 2008 so it is now just my Mum, my dog, Kaz and myself in the house. In between my two stints I lived in West Berkshire for 3 years. The first two years were in Newbury then last was in a town called Thatcham, just down the road. Previous to all this I lived in Croydon in theSurrey/South London area, where I was born and breed (for over 20 years).

To me Croydon s a typical London suburb, very closely linked to London. I was much happier in West Berkshire which was more rural but at the same time still had some modern touches. Edenbridge is very rural and I'm only minutes away from big fields and long countryside walks. It's great for landscape and nature photography but doesnï¿½t have the town/city feel that I still like. Saying that it can take just 50 minutes to get to the capital on the train. And thatï¿½s where my ideal location is, at least closer to the capital, somewhere like Teddington in the Middlesex area, which gives me great access to London but also very easy access to scenic places like Richmond Park. It's also not too hard to get out of Greater London and to the rest of the country from there.

At the moment house prices and even rental prices are a little too high for me to find my own place but happy to still around Edenbridge and work is very close.

Work-life

Before my current job I had a try at the games industry again. It had been about 8-9 years since I had worked in the industry last. Boy had it changed! I was back in QA (Quality Assurance) and working for The Creative Assembly who are famous for theirTotal War games. CA are a huge developer! At the time there was 150+ people working from their Horsham office. QA was highly organised. No more simply getting a bunch of guys a CD and letting them ï¿½playï¿½. There was test plans, computers were linked toVisual Studio, testers were specialised in audio, multi-player, gameplay, etc. It was very impressive. I was only there for 5 months though. I felt the 2hrs+ journey was a little too much and needed something closer to my current home. Luckily, with a lot of help from ex-colleagues, I found my current job. :-)

My previous adventure was in West Berkshire where I worked as a contractor on various Vodafone projects. I was actually only supposed to be there for 2/3 weeks but the job just went on and on and I was there for a total of 4 years! I worked as a Systems Integrator for a large engineering company called Bechtel (on a Vodafone railway project) then as a Technical/Project Co-ordinator for Vodafone proper on several projects including one to implement broadband speeds onto Vodafone's network (so you can now browse the Internet on your Vodafone mobiles much faster thanks to us :-))

As I said above I used to work in the computer games industry. My first ever job was as a games tester. It was brilliant, someone paying me to play, er, test games all day. I learnt a lot there, not just about testing but also about computer hardware and customer support. I soon moved into the IT side of things (so Iï¿½m a little bit of a techie/nerdy-type). 7-8 years I spent in games; I worked for publishers,Warner Interactive, GT Interactive, Infogrames(who later bought Atari) and then the ï¿½godfathers of gamingï¿½, developers, The Bitmap Brothers. I was with the Bitmaps for 3 years as their webmaster (I made their web site by the way) and administration manager before being made redundant. During my time in the games industry I met so many people, from various countries and some great characters and creative individuals. It was a brilliant, a wonderful experience.

But being made redundant twice in 3 years was a wake up call and left me with no confidence that a job is permanent. My first four years in telecoms were as a contractor. I kinda like it but it also had its drawbacks. OK the money at first glance looks a lot better but there are many disadvantages, such as higher risk, large tax bills,shorter notice period, less work generally and more responsibility. The world of contracting and specifically the telecoms industry can be as violate as the games industry. From about 2007 to 2009 work was scarce.

Before taking the Creative Assembly job and just after my Dad died I was out of work a lot. I took on admin work here and there, which included working at the BBC. The role was going to be data entry but it was more involved than that in the end. The project was supposed to last until August 2008 but we completed much early (mid-June). It was perhaps a little step back but it had been 6 months since my last full-time job and these things are to be expected. Besides, I wanted something a little less stressful to start after the passing of my Dad in January of the same year. What it meant, though, was money in the bank and a return to London after a 6 year break. It was interesting to work at the BBC and to get a glimpse inside one of the best things the UK has produced (IMHO).

I'm glad that I've experienced the world outside games it was a big culture shock when I started at Bechtel as things were perhaps more professionally done and more organised (at least from my first stint). Again, I learnt a lot with Bechtel and Vodafone and has put me in good stead for future work.

Interests

I guess I have quite a few interests. Of course my main interest is photography (see below) but I also love:

Music: I absolutely love music and always got something playing at home or on the move. I'm always searching for new music too, via Zane Lowe and the other Radio 1 specialist DJs, iTunes alerts, MySpace, movie soundtracks, xfm, Last.fm, 6music,and Amazing Radio. My main genres are trance, rock, alternative dance, indie, trip-hop/downtempo and breakbeat. But anything goes except probably jazz, blues and opera (though don't mind a bit of classical).

My top artists are (in order roughly) Radiohead, Hybrid, Prodigy, Union of Knives, Lamb, Unkle, Oasis (pre-split), Nirvana, Placebo, Portishead, The Killers, Sneaker Pimps, Snow Patrol, Chemical Brothers, Hooverphonic,Coldplay, Frou Frou, 8mm, Maps, Bat for Lashes, Damien Rice, Filter, Paul Van Dyk, Linkin Park, Cardigans, Keane, Foo Fighters and Orbital.

With the expectation of the artists above and a few others I find that I rarely like a whole album completely nowadays and so my music collection consists more of singles than albums. I generally listen to new-found music over my older stuff. I don't really watch music videos and read about music, so don't see the bands or know much about them except what they sound like but do watch any festivals, like Glastonbury and live shows like Later... with Jools Holland when it's on TV. Perhaps strangely Iï¿½ve dreamt about being a DJ but I've never touched a set of decks ever and also to play the violin. When I was young I watched MTV all day long but now I don't have the channel and most music shows have gone from TV.

I long for Pandora to be available outside the USA one day but Spotify is a very good alternative.

Movies: I'm a big movie fan and watch as many movies as I can. I don't particular have a favourite genre, I like horror, action, thriller, science-fiction, comedy and animated films. My favourite movies (in rough order) are Sunshine,Seven, Matrix trilogy (mainly the first one though), Children of Men, Bourne trilogy, Predator, Aliens, The Departed, Usual Suspects, Saw (just the first one), The Ring, Black Hawk Down, Zodiac, 2010, thePirates of the Caribbean movies, Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Meet Joe Black, Memento, High Crimes, Basic, Lï¿½on and Good Will Hunting. I also love Inception and would put it in my top 5 easily - but Iï¿½ve yet to decide exactly where. :-)

I mainly rent out movies from the likes of Blockbuster and Lovefilm. I like movies that have a twist or two or have a great ending but hate movies that have poor acting and even poorer storyline. A good storyline is important but I can ignore it a bit in good special effects movies. I try and find new movies to watch via IMDB and Flixster by looking at the actors, directors and writers I've liked in the past. Generally I like movies by David Fincher, Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski, James Cameron, John McTiernan, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan, Gore Verbinski, Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, Andrew Kevin Walker, James Patterson, Philip K. Dick and Robert Zemeckis.

I'm a big fan ofJohnny Depp, and my other favourite actors are Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Ashley Judd, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Charlize Theron, Christian Bale, Clive Owen, Colin Farrell, Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Giovanni Ribisi, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, John Cusack, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Ryan Gosling, Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise.

TV: OK not a big interest as most of it is trash nowadays but I thought I'd list what type of things I do watch on the box. I mainly watch documentaries. It doesn't really matter what, so long as it's not too dumbed down, programmes such as wildlife, nature and world current affairs or anything presented by David Attenborough or Brian Cox. I also watch the odd comedy show like Have I Got News for You and dramas like Waking the Dead and Messiah. I don't watch any reality TV apart from the Apprentice, which is great and extremely well created. I also watch ï¿½boringï¿½ things like Newsnight and Question Time, Plus England, Liverpool football matches or Rugby Union games that are lucky to be shown on terrestrial TV as well as tennis, F1, cycling and athletics. I also like US shows such as The Fringe, Supernatural and in the past Lost, X-Files and 24. Luther is probably the most recent new favourite series. Oh and I cannot miss a Top Gear show.

Sport: My favourite sports are rugby, football (I've been a supporter of Liverpool FC since I was 4 years old), tennis (I long to get to Wimbledon each year), motorsport (Formula One and rallycar mainly). In the past I was good at athletics and ran for my school in a county championship. I was a pretty fit lad then and also cycled a lot and played football every weekend. In the last few years I've started cycling again (mainly to get around and get to work) but I don't do enough exercise and want to combine cycling with photography in some way. I can be tempted to play the odd snooker or pool game and I guess if you pushed me I could play squash but have done either for a looong time now.

Computing: I've used a computer in some form since I was little and now that computers are everywhere there isn't a way to get away from them. I learnt how to build PCs during my early days in the games industry and learnt most of what I know during at work.

Computer games: Since I've worked in the games industry it probably goes without saying I like games. Saying that I went for about 6 years without even picking up a game after I left the Bitmaps in 2002-2003. Iï¿½ve (perhaps unfortunately) got back into games in the last few years and now have all the major consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 and a Wii, which never sees the light of day). The Xbox get the most use and if a game comes out on multiple formats I will always buy the Xbox 360 version (Sorry Sony).

Web development: I used to do a bit of web development. It was one of my roles at the Bitmaps and had previously created my own sites. Iï¿½ve created a few sites over the years, nothing too complicated. Now Iï¿½m after the simple life and have my sites under WordPress.com. I donï¿½t know HTML too well but can figure my way round it if need it.

Art: I have been known to draw in my time. Well I was a very keen artist when I was young. I drew all the time during my school years. But after school I stopped. I'm not sure why, though I feel it was something to do with feeling I had reached my best and finding it wasn't that good. I can happily draw with a pencil, the problem is I'm pretty awful with every other media and so decided against art at college. Instead I went for a more technical drawing course but it turned out to be not at all what I was expecting. I failed this course and have never drawn since. I feel it will come back and I plan to combine my pencil drawing skills with my potential photography skills. As with photography I would like to take a course so it's just a matter of time (and money). In both I feel I need to learn the techniques better than I was ever taught at school. Iï¿½m a fan of photography too and always browse Flickr for great images. I'm also interested in digital/computer art.

Comics: This relates to my art interest. Sure I read them if I can get my hands on any but it's the artwork that interests me the most. I mainly read big-name US comics (which are not so easy to get hold of in the UK unfortunately). I think if I had any spare money it would be spent on buying comics. As I don't have any spare cash and don't think I will for a few years, comics are firmly sitting on the backseat for the moment.

Science-fiction: Love it, this and futurism or whatever you want to call it. I love reading it, I used to love drawing it and I love watching it (TV shows and movies). I guess I wish I could live in some of these worlds or be able to experience the future but, of course, this is not possible.

Reading: Perhaps not as interested in reading as I was, it's still an interest nevertheless. As mentioned above I tend to read science-fiction but also science itself. I do have a dream I will be writer when I'm old and wrinkly but I haven't the first clue about writing.

Sci-tech: I really like science and technology. I used to subscribe to a science magazine, New Scientist and it became my favourite mag. Science documentaries are perhaps one of only a few reasons why I still watch TV.

Space (Exploration): Did I dream of being an astronaut? No, not really. But I've always been interested in space - I read lots of books when I was young and always watch documentaries on the TV.

Technology: Iï¿½m a gadget freak, I admit it. I love my mobile phone (HTC Desire Z Android device) and computer. Iï¿½ve not jumped on the new tablet bandwagon but hopefully weï¿½ll get a decent 7ï¿½ Honeycomb tab soon.

Dogs: Well Golden Retrievers definitely. I love my dog, Kaz and my previous dog, Max. They are just a fantastic breed! I do dream of being a breeder at some point. It's expensive initially and time-consuming but it looks very enjoyable in the long run.

Walking: I'm a keen walker (well I don't have and don't want a car), but I'm no rambler. I've walked plenty round Edenbridge and can walk for hours and hours. It's great being outside and you can capture some good photos along the way. :-)

Cycling: I used to cycle to work every day when I lived in West Berkshire. While I was living in Thatcham I could cycle along the canal from my house all the way to the Newbury high street - it was great! I'm a beginner but would love to go out trekking in the future.

Social media: Even though Iï¿½ve been using the net since the late 1990s it took FriendFeed (back in 2007-08) to really get me involved with social media. I was late to joining the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Iï¿½ve probably made up for it since. FF and Google+ are currently my most visited services. Iï¿½m not a big FB fan and Twitter is mostly one-way now. Iï¿½m on my social sites and you can find my main social service here. I think I could be considered as an online curator as I dig up and share a lot of articles via the likes of Google Reader.

Photography: Oh yeah I'm interested in photography too. :-) I don't think I need to go into too much detail as the pages here and posts on my blog have explained it but I've had a camera for eons. I decided to upgrade from my compact in 2006 when I got my first digital SLR camera, the Nikon D50. I've not looked back since and my interest has grown and grown. I upgraded again to a semi-pro camera, the Nikon D300 in late 2007 and are slowly making the jump from happy snappy. I have no particular main genre(s) so will try my hand at anything, well perhaps not weddings. ;-) But I do like nature, landscape and wildlife photography.