FatPhil is Phil Carmody, younger (37) child of parents Mary and Michael, my sibling being my sister Christina. Before you ask, yes, it is an Irish surname; however, only the single expected paternal bloodline can be traced to Eire. I've got better claims to being Welsh and German than Irish.
I gained the nickname FatPhil many years ago, whilst I was at university. I do enjoy toothsome food (look toothsome up in a dictionary), and find it nearly impossible to leave a plate, or a turine, or a table whilst it still has delights for my tastebuds! (<SOAPBOX> I also find it offensive to see good food go to waste when there are so many people in poverty - we should all appreciate these things and not take them for granted </SOAPBOX>.) Consequently I used to often end a meal so absolutely stuffed that I would be visably far larger than when I started! At such times I used to lean back with a contented grin, pat my belly, and say 'I feel fat'. From then on, 'fatness' was always associated with contentedness. In fact, anything that went well for me was described as fat. Within a few months, to my friends Helen and Walter in particular, I became Fat Phil. It's stayed with me...
My background is mathematics - Trinity, Oxford.
I spend almost all of my time as a software engineer nowadays. My CV is long and complicated, as I'm a bit of a David Banner character - going places, solving problems, and leaving when everything's sorted out. (OK, some companies would have problem after problem after problem, so I stayed for many years.)
Do you mean really or virtually?
Constrained by corporeal limitations, most of the time I can be found in Kivenlahti, near Helsinki, Finland. I'm not unwise enough to give out my address and telephone number here, obviously.
I've had a presence on the internet for a fairly long time. I was using e-mail in 1989/90 for example. It was a real eye-opener - technology was fantastic! I disappeared off the internet for a few years but came back online in 1993 when I was in Finland. Whowhere for many years listed me as being phil@hit.fi, but that died years ago! HIT also 'gave' me my first WWW presence, or should I say I briefly had root privilege and added a link from their web pages into my own area! So, yes, I've had a web-presense since 1993, which is more than about 99.999% of the online population. That particular page also disappeared, and now I am left with the following:
...hidden...
Aren't you already here?
Guess what - I'm FatPhil on IRC as well! I'm almost always on IRCnet, OFTC, and SoylentNews networks.