Gary Fleming was born and raised in the West coast of Scotland, near Glasgow, and has only worn a kilt once twice a few times.
He has never had a nosebleed and, unless someone takes it upon themselves to slice it open (not unheard of in certain parts of Glasgow), never will. Low blood pressure means that his doctor has actually recommended that he eats more salt and drink more coffee. The price he pays for this liberal diet is the ocassional black out and collapse upon changing elevation.
In his 24 years, he has successfully completed a degree in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, having completed all of the Herculean tasks that the various lecturers threw at him, coding almost thanklessly. He now holds a position in a pretty respected firm, and continues to code; but now he is paid for it. It is unclear whether Computing influenced his interest in web design and standards or vice versa, but he is interested and becoming more proficient in languages with strange acronyms all the time. He has also started branching out into bizarre acronyms in other domains, but will wait until he can be as elitist about them before mentioning them on Solitude.
Drumming, writing and cinema are key interests. Having recently left a band and begun (initial) work on a minor writing project, these are things that will likely be mentioned on Solitude more and more as they progress.
The original purpose of Solitude was to provide a public space to toy with web design and new ideas while VKPS (the now defunct parent site) was being refitted. As Solitude grew to meet the requirements of VKPS, it took over and replaced it completely. Any plans to revive the main site are on indefinite hold. There are ideas, but I don’t have as much time as I’d like to be able to do it justice.
Solitude is all about my view on different, disparate topics, largely focussed around technology and the web in particular. Music, cinema, and links to places of interest also feature prominently. It will tend to stray into whatever is taking my interest at the time.
This site uses valid XHTML 1.1 for mark-up and CSS 2.0 for style (note: If you find a page that is not compliant with those standards, then tell me about it). Why? I’m not entirely sure any more. It started off being about learning these technologies myself and because it seemed the right thing to do. By producing a site which supports standards, it degrades better in older browsers, is more easily accessed by alternative browsers (mobile devices, screen-readers, non-visual browsers, text-only browsers etc), can be indexed quickly by search engines (a more linked web is a good thing), can be updated quickly and, importantly, can be re-designed in a matter of minutes; rather than weeks.
The site is powered by WordPress. For the first 3 years of its existence, it used the Finetto CMS to make adding posts easier (it takes seconds). Do not try to find it, it was custom built (by me) and is not available to the public yet. It never will be either, since the code behind it was written in younger, more naive days.