Hi, I’m Alex Skud Bayley, and this is my personal website.
infotrope, noun, something that seeks out information. Origin: Neal Stephenson, “Cryptonomicon”, 2000:
The place has been well looked after, but as Waterhouse draws closer, he can see black lianas climbing up the brickwork. The root system that he glimpsed in the Underground has spread beneath forest and pasture even to this place and has begun to throw its neoprene creepers upwards. But this organism is not phototropic — it does not grow towards the light, always questing towards the sun. It is infotropic. And it has spread to this place for the same reason that infotropic humans like Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and Dr. Alan Mathison Turing have come here, because Bletchley Park has roughly the same situation in the info world as the sun does in the solar system.
About me
Born 1975, in Melbourne, Australia, where I lived for most of the next twenty-five years. Employed, 1990-something to 2011, in the technology industry, particularly in the Internet/dotcom/web development field, and in open source software, where I was most closely associated with the Perl programming language (approx. 1998-2007). Along the way I lived and worked in Ottawa, Ontario (2001-2004); Sydney, New South Wales (2005-2006); and San Francisco, California (2008-2011).
My interests are many and varied, and include everything from social justice to sailing ships. It’s a rare day when I don’t open dozens of Wikipedia tabs, and if you get me started I’ll probably tell you more about my latest enthusiasm than you ever wanted to know. Sorry about that. I do try and notice when people’s eyes glaze over.
My most hated interview question is, “Where do you want to be in five years’ time?” Answer: wherever life takes me! I may not have a grand plan, but grabbing opportunities when they pass my way has worked pretty well so far, and at the very least, I’ll have a wealth of stories to tell in my old age.