It sounds quite dull, but there are a few things here which you might quite like . . .

Dragon

Some time ago (well it was probably back in the 1980s) Chris Potter and I set up a limited company called Dragon Strategic Systems Ltd. The initial plan was to produce a computer game about evolution called Dominant Species. This was a Dos-based game with limited graphics, which nevertheless scored highly on functionality and playability; and at the time all serious strategy games were written this way. To bring the game to market, we signed up with an American software house called Raw Entertainments Ltd. Our timing couldn't have been worse. Shortly after we licensed the product to Raw, they suffered a serious decline, and did not market any new products for three years. The bad news was that throughout this time we were unable to market the game ourselves, because Raw owned the licensing agreement, and by the time we got control of the game back, the pc world had moved on, and highly graphic in Windows-based games were now the norm.

It has always been our intention (when time permits) to rewrite and update the game to run under Windows. Some 15 years later, we are starting to get to grips with this, and hope to have something to launch within the next 12 months or so. If you're interested in finding out more, either contact me or visit the Dragon Games website at www.dragongames.co.uk.

More immediately, we are planning to launch a multi-player, role-playing fantasy game entitled "Age of Magic" later this year. Again, check the website for details.

Asserta

I spent the first six months of this year (2000) on secondment as the Finance Director at a new CGU project to set up an Internet business. This was a wide-ranging project encompassing banking, personal financial management, property, family, retirement and other "key life events". Since June of this year CGU merged with Norwich Union and those two firms' Internet strategies were subsequently merged, which effectively brought my involvement to a close and substantially changed the direction the work we were doing. In the meantime however, we had already developed and launched our first Internet project, which is a UK home buying service called asserta home. Personally, I think it's a great site which will improve over time as the functionality and content are enhanced, but in any event, it you are looking for a place to live, or just interested in browsing to find out what is available (whether you can afford it or not) visit the website and check out what's there. If you register, you'll even get updates as new properties become available. www.assertahome.com

PwC

OK, not much fun to report as far as any readers may be concerned but PwC has certainly given me the opportunity to travel to a lot of different places and and meets some pretty neat people. My longest single stint was five years in Budapest (Hungary) but I have also travelled extensively throughout Central Europe, Western Europe, America and the Far East 

The first time I visited Sarajevo, was as part of a Foreign Office expedition. We were collected from Split (on the Croatian coast) by the British Ambassador to Bosnia in his official 'limousine' (which was an armoured Land Rover) for the 8-hour drive across Krajina and Srpska: not the most encouraging of welcomes, and not the most comfortable drive either!