Murray’s life o’ software began with his forehead pressed to the cool glass of the window that offered the best chance of catching the earliest glimpse of the Royal Mail van slide into view. There he waited, and then waited some more, for the delivery of a 16K ZX Spectrum during the depressingly long and pointlessly sunny summer of 1982.
Some might say that those many months of unfulfilled expectation were the perfect preparation for a career in software development - but Murray drew another lesson. As he sat bathing in the coruscations of the family telly, FOR
-NEXT
ing through a neon palette of eight vibrant colours, he was illuminated with a certainty that the infinitely twisting combinations of these few terse instructions could make the world more wonderful.
A few brief decades of photo bombing accepted wisdom and scattering unclothed emperors to crouch behind hedges followed - until fate’s tumbling dice bumped him into NCR Edinburgh, where he found himself surrounded by people equally keen to make tomorrow a little better than today.