School boy rugby became much more entertaining for the spectators during my one and only season on-field. If youtube had been available during the sixties, this video could have gone-viral in the “fail” category of funny sports videos.

I suspect my ineptitude was primarily caused by “not knowing the rules”, coupled with a lack of natural athlete ability plus a sprinkling of sheer stupidity. The school insisted that everybody play a physical sport (being a member of the Chess Club did not satisfy the criteria), so unfortunately for my team members, I decided to play rugby.

For some reason, writing computer code came more naturally and having passed the famous “aptitude tests” that were all the rage during the early computer employment process, I settled into a geek career that spanned forty five years, and it still continuing today.

The purpose of the Geek Geek video is to “remember to have fun”, to laugh at myself and to offer hope to other “geeks” who prefer to play a non-contact computer game rather than a full-contact physical game.

No computer magazines, no internet, no personal computers, no cell phones and only a handful of friends to talk “computers” with … that’s what “growing up geek” meant to me.

The work Geek may have its origins in the 19th century, but nobody used it in everyday conversation. Geeks of the sixties and seventies clustered around mainframe computers in narrow ties and conservative business suits. We wrote our code in pencil, waited for our “chads” to be removed from punched cards or paper tape, and then negotiated for precious time on the mainframe to compile our program into object code and test.

Personal computers opened the floodgates during the eighties and once computer games became main stream, it wasn't long before our previously excluded friends, joined the ever increasing ranks of computer users.

The Geek Geek video is “just for fun”, to remember to laugh at myself and to justify a reason to find and assemble some photographic fragments of my geek upbringing.