John Cook UK

My name is John Cook and I live in Watford (the one in Hertfordshire/Herts), hence one of my online handles being WatfordJC (other handles include TheJC and JAWC).

I started consolidating my content in 2014 under two new websites: JohnCook.UK & WatfordJC.UK

John Cook (WatfordJC) shaving with a straight razor.

This is the home page of my site, and where all new content will be aggregated.

Prior to new content being added in a new year, this page gets archived.

About Me

I have autism (ASD, Asperger's) and due to depression I lose interest in things and as a result try to find something new that may hold my interest. As a result, while I do have the trait of having intensely focussed interests, the loss of interest in things means the intial focus may only last a few days or months.

This means I have an election manifesto on this site from when I nearly ran in the 2010 General Election (my first prospective nominee talked me out of it because of the potential caseload), and in terms of navigation alone I have an interest in apiary and geodetic transforms.

In terms of IT skills, the DWP once forced me to attend a two week course on Microsoft Office. They sent me away after 30-60 minutes because I said "I was teaching this in primary school" so they had me complete the last exercise from each module to test whether I'd learn anything at all. The only computer qualifaction I have ever had is CompTIA A+ certification (30 August 2013) which I let lapse on 30 August 2016 as I found their costs expensive and CPD requirements onerous.

I have taken a hen husbandry course as I was thinking of getting chickens at one point, and from 25 September 2009 to 25 September 2012 I was accredited with the title "Standard first aid" by the British Red Cross after an advanced first aid course that covered everything from CPR on babies to moving someone with a suspected neck/spine injury when necessary (the general rule of "don't unless absolutely necessary" gets expanded on).

Professional Status

I have a number of hats that I have worn over the years due to my interests, however to avoid being forced to do another IT course these are probably the most pertinent:

  • First personal domain name registered June 1999.
  • Wikipedia editor (and recent changes patroller) on-and-off since 2006.
  • Nominet Registrar (Tag: JOHNCOOK), 2014-present.
  • Record label, 2016-present.
  • GitHub user (username: watfordjc), 2016-present.
  • RIPE Atlas probe host (Probe ID 31987), 2017-present.
  • Director of John Cook Limited, 2018-23.
  • Voluntary Data Protection Officer (for organisation John Cook), 2021-24.

Migration Process

During the transition from watfordjc.com, watfordjc.co.uk, and thejc.me.uk, content from my old sites was either migrated to this site or permanently removed.

Some blog content and content in MySQL dumps have not yet been migrated due to the work involved.

Posted by on .

Last updated on .