Welcome to the personal website of Toby Andrew Inkster. Until recently, I was a maths and computer science student at Imperial College, London. I am now employed by the National Childbirth Trust, Europe's largest and best recognised parenting charity.
As a long time user and abuser of the Web (about 7 years), I have come to the conclusion that most websites suck — this one is (of course) excluded. To help remedy the situation, I've begun writing an HTML tutorial. It's not finished yet, but I've done a couple of chapters already.
In my effort to improve the web, page by page and site by site, you can often find me in the alt.html.critique newsgroup.
My computer runs an operating system called Linux and in the Linux section here you can download some Linux programs, some of which I have written myself and some of which were written by others, but I have packaged up for easy installation.
Although by no means an expert, I also hang out sometimes in the uk.comp.os.linux newsgroup to help out newbies and ask the occasional stupid question myself!
I am also interested in cryptography. As the UK government (and many other governments worldwide) have recently begun trying to model the world on George Orwells 1984, I think it is important that regular citizens use strong cryptography to protect their emails from government meddling. PGP is one of the best ways to do this. Also, check out the Steganography Challenge and see if you can find the picture of a cat!
Outside of computers, my biggest interest is probably music. Although I have been neglecting my guitar of late, I used to be in a band called Good. As for listening, my tastes are eclectic — I like roots rock through to punk pop and can occasionally be found listening to the works of Beethoven and Lizst. On this website you can find some random information on my favourite bands. I am also a collector of unofficial live recordings, commonly known as bootlegs, although lately I have had less time to indulge in this hobby, no doubt to the joy of The IFPI.
I used to be employed part time as a chef. You can find some recipes on this site.
This site is customisable. Click on any style in the "Site Style" box and the whole site will change appearance. Some styles may not be supported in Internet Explorer, so for the best experience at this site (and on the Internet in general) I recommend Opera, Netscape or Mozilla.
This site is all Copyright © 1997-2004 Toby A Inkster. All rights reserved. So there. :-)