tomcosgrave's profile

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Name: Tom Cosgrave
Joined: sometime in 1999

Contributions

MeFi: 84 posts , 570 comments
MetaTalk: 1 post , 23 comments
Ask MeFi: 4 questions , 8 answers
Music: 0 posts , 0 comments, 0 playlists
Music Talk: 0 posts, 0 comments
Projects: 0 posts, 0 comments, 0 votes
Jobs: 0 posts
IRL: 0 posts, 0 comments
FanFare: 0 posts, 0 comments
FanFare Talk: 0 posts, 0 comments

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Favorites: 2
Favorited by others: 70

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Links to: 12 users
Linked by: 8 users
MeFi tags: brokenlink (14) ireland (11) obituary (6) terrorism (5) bbc (4) death (4) obituaries (4) politics (4) blogs (3) design (3)
Ask MeFi tags: laptop (2) sony (2) vaio (2) PHotojournalism (1) Photography (1) PCG-C1VE (1) monitor (1) japan (1) Freelancing (1) drivers (1)

About

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

I've been on MeFi since 1999 and am user 131. Does this make me old skool? I mostly lurk these days.

My nickname is well...my name. I know, it's very boring. No strange and weird story here, I'm afraid!
I was born in Dublin, Ireland and live there to this day.

I first got online when I was an intern working in a software company in Cambridge MA, USA back in 1995. I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen - all that information! All those other people around the world!

That same year, I wrote my first HTML page by hand (no WYSIWYG tools back then!) and I swore that I'd never be writing HTML for a living, and that I'd be a software engineer writing Java. This turned out to be a case of "famous last words", as I ended up turning my back on software engineering and went into web development.

I'm also studying for a law degree by night and aim to diversify away from programming. Assuming I get the degree, I'll look at gettiong a MSc in something computing related as well and look at getting into the intellectual property side of things.

I'm a keen amateur photographer and maintained This Is Diopter, my photoblog, which is now on hiatus, due to work and study related madness.

I'm also a member of the Irish Labour Party and am politically active, and would like to run in local elections for a county council seat in the future. In US political parlance, that's something like a district supervisor seat.

I also enjoy music, motorsport, reading and of course, eating and sleeping.