Apologies for starting an off-topic thread here...

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been around this forum for several months, now. The fact is that I was made redundant from my job at the end of January (credit crunch and all that). What surprised me about this was that I greeted it with a feeling of relief, since I had been feeling dissatisfied for some time prior to that.

Anyway, I took a while off to try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and rapidly came to the conclusion that 30 years of being a code monkey, sitting at a desk, facing the commute day in, day out, was enough. I simply couldn't face doing it any more: I had to make a change. I've now had about 8 months in which I haven't written a single line of code, and I cannot say that I miss it in the slightest.

The upshot is that, at the ripe old age of 53, I've gone back to college to study one of my first loves; photography, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I just thought that I should pop back here and explain my absence to those who I've got to know and respect through this forum and who, my vanity tells me, may have been wondering what had happened to me.

So, let me just say a big thanks to the regulars here, from whom I learned so much in a previous life, and to wish you all the best for the future. In making this (fairly scary) change in my life, I feel a real sense that I'm doing something right - may you all have the same feeling in whatever you do.

Regards,

Graham