--- title: About url: 'https://andywhittaker.com/about' markdown: 'https://andywhittaker.com/about.md' lang: en date: '2026-09-11' description: "Andy Whittaker from Prestbury, United Kingdom General all round good-egg… I've always been interested in electronics and then with computer bits added on. From the age 17 I got interested in the oily bits on cars too. Now I have got all environmental and drive an electric car but what a beast it is…" --- # Andy Whittaker from Prestbury, United Kingdom ## General all round good-egg… I've always been interested in electronics and then with computer bits added on. From the age 17 I got interested in the oily bits on cars too. Now I have got all environmental and drive an electric car but what a beast it is. Although I must admit that the amount of hatred about Electric Cars is unbelievable! My day-job is for a large chemical company designing Instrument Control Systems. The purpose of most of my projects nowadays is to become more efficient and spend less money in the long-term (and hopefully be less of a burden on the plant). One such example is that I have installed a large, on-grid battery system. This is to time-shift the cheap rate night-time tariff to be used during the expensive daytime period. Whenever I have spare cash, I buy extra batteries and increase the capacity of the system, thereby drastically reducing my daytime electricity kWh unit rate. Although the total cost can be seen as high, I think the return on investment is much higher than that can be achieved in a bank; additionally the savings become even greater when energy prices start to inevitably rise. My skills include Microsoft Visual C++, C#, Windows, Raspberry Pi Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux hosting (what this website runs on), Siemens C16x assembly, Bosch ECUs, etc, etc – and changing clutches and engines in my cars! I am formally qualified to the UK's BS7671 Electrical Wiring Regulations and have a BSc Honour's Degree in Applied Computing from Manchester Metropolitan University (~1996). **Location:** Prestbury Macclesfield United Kingdom **Contact:** [Try ECUFix too - although this site is largely retired now](https://www.ecufix.com/) --- ## Why Has AndyWhittaker.com Changed? Back in 2004, my collocated Dell server suffered a hard disk failure and, since it was over 300 miles away from me and housed in a high security nuclear bunker, I let it go to waste. Since then, I now have a bare metal dedicated server but this time hosted by OvhCloud in their London data-centre. Life does get complicated as you get older which leaves you with less and less time to do the things you love. Over the last two decades I've: - been working in Germany (nice people) - got married - built a new house - left work - witness my wife die of breast cancer - dug myself out of a hole - met a new woman - a new job contracting - got married to new woman - invited back to my original company - and turned my life around Now is the time I put some new spit and polish on this place and try to resurrect my old content, as well as add some new content. My new server is loaded up with [Grav](https://learn.getgrav.org/18/basics/what-is-grav) - from January 2026. I've got a lot of previous content to upload and put on, which is going to take me absolutely ages to do… New for March 2026, this server is now running on a dedicated, Ubuntu Linux host in London, UK with OvhCloud. Since most of the hosting software generally runs on Linux anyway, I decided to hone my skills away from Microsoft's IIS onto Linux and Apache. A lot of my old content I've retrieved from which is a great way of researching into how the internet looked way back when there wasn't much of an internet. Don't forget to come back but don't fret too much – life's too short… --- ## Navigation - Previous: [Typography](https://andywhittaker.com/typography.md) - Next: [Privacy Policy](https://andywhittaker.com/privacy-policy.md)