I was born in County Durham in England on 28 days approval. My father worked down the mines - which for an open-heart surgeon was a pretty silly thing to do, and because of this it was not long before the spectre of poverty loomed large. On 13th August of that year, my mother had to put the cat down after we were forced to sell the living-room carpet. We were also forced to apply for a council improvement grant to have the house demolished, and we could no longer afford a stand-in to do all the dangerous jokes.
At school I proved that I had an IQ equal to none, and I would visit my grandmother's grave and scoff when she told me ghost stories. It was at school that I had an "A" in English, a "B" in history and a "C" in maths - the teacher told me it was the worst spelling that she had ever seen. Around the same time I showed my abilities in the sciences, and took pure meths at "A"-level.
I went to Newcastle Upon-Tyne University, where I studied Computer Science, and after three unremarkable years, I graduated with a BSc in 1983, and then for 10 months I occupied a position held by many graduates these days - I became unemployed.
I started work at the University of Liverpool Computer Science Department on the 30th April 1984 as a member of the technical support staff. My main areas of interest included user interfaces (particularly on the Macintosh), mobile and ubiquitous computing, offering assistance and advice particularly on Macs and things iOS, making sure the department's web pages were kept up to date (though definitely not the ones you're reading at the moment), and studying the prolongation of adolescence beyond all previous limits. In 1994 I completed an MPhil (I graduated on 12th December 1994) - yes, that's right - "Phil the MPhil" (Click here to see video of a (thankfully) small section of the ceremony!)
In January of 2016 I became a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, taking over from my colleague Terry Payne on COMP327 -
a final year module entitled "Mobile Computing". Since those initial heady days, I've taught a number
of 2nd year modules, and in 2019 I introduced a new
module, COMP228 - "App Development", which was based on some of the materials from COMP327, along with
some additional material.
Reviewers have said of my work "Mr Jimmieson's muse is not fettered by inhibiting factors such as taste".