What do you enjoy most about your role at Gamma Solutions?
Completely different to how I first imagined a career in IT. I originally pictured being stuck within four walls resetting passwords and turning PC’s off and on again for users. Instead, I’ve seen how Apple Farms automated the process of washing, sorting and applying the little stickers to apples. I’ve seen how thousands of French fries are made per minute. My favourite discovery is how a ‘box factory’ can be so fascinating – yes, a factory that makes cardboard boxes.
What’s a hobby or activity you enjoy outside of work that might surprise your colleagues?
I can do a 1 handed handstand.
If you could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, who would they be?
Child Tony, Teenager Tony and Old man Tony. It would be an incredibly interesting conversation – and the food would suit everyone’s taste.
What’s a recent book, podcast, or show that you’d recommend and what did you learn from it?
Favourite Podcast is ‘Stuff you should know’ which sounds kind of pompous, but it’s just a show about two fellows talking about topics of interest. Latest one was about something called Molecular Gastronomy. You may remember a few years ago, Chef’s like Heston Blumenthal who specialised in foods created in unique ways e.g. liquid nitrogen, spherified flavouring (think burstee’s from HJ), foods that look like something, but turned out to be something else. This school of cuisine all came from when a Professional Chemist failed to correctly make a Souffle from a recipe – he then used his expertise in chemistry to represent our everyday dishes in scientific notation so that cooking became more of a science than art. E.g. the recipe for garlic aioli can be notated as: O[10-5, 10-4] ÷ W[d > 6 x 10-7].
What’s one thing on your bucket list that you hope to accomplish one day?
Create a universe of some sort.
One of the most impressive things I’ve seen is when writers, movie makers, game developers create this universe that is full of peculiar characters and stories and share them with the world which then spawns more universes and stories. The best example of this is the Tommy Westphall Conspiracy where at the end of a 1980’s sitcom St Elsewhere, it zooms out and we find out the entire series happened in the mind of an autistic child. The theory goes that if you follow the trail of crossovers, Cameos, spinoffs and brand items appearing in the shows there this incredible universe that’s created that’s still going on today. X-Files, Everybody loves Chris, Arrow, Breaking Bad – all these shows can be traced back to St Elsewhere or in the mind of Tommy Westphall!
