Ben A'Lee
From TermiSoc: A WikiHistory
Ben "MartianSpider"/"bma" A'Lee
Positions Held
2008 - present - President
2006 - 2008 - Secretary / Head Technical Officer
2005 - 2006 - Head Technical Officer
2004 - 2005 - Secretary
About bma
The gothic broomstick Head Tech Officer, in eternal war with Skippy.
Ben showed up about a month after Freshers' Fayre 2004, having decided he needed to get out more. He soon got elected as the new secretary, the previous incumbent (Tempy) having gone off in a huff some weeks previously. His main competition for this role was a beer glass in the Skiving Scholar, it being thought unfair that he just be given the position without any kind of democratic process.
At the AGM in February 2005, Ben successfully bribed his way into the position of Tech Officer, taking over from the soon-to-graduate Gemma Peter, part of his ultimate plan for world domination. It is a dirty lie that the boxen have had more problems since he took over than ever before, he's just unfortunate enough to have to deal with problems caused by Dave a few years previously. Honest.
The following year, despite wishing to give up the rôle of Tech Officer, Ben wound up being voted in as both Secretary and Tech Officer. For two years running.
In 2008, against his better judgement, Ben put himself forward for the position of President, being vacated by the soon-to-graduate Rich Jeffery. Unfortunately, people actually voted for him, leaving him in the unenviable position of having to actually run the society.
Summer came, and Ben embarked on an industrial placement at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, doing strange things to Javascript - deleting it, mostly.
Last Sighting
Spends most of his time in his room, fiddling with his computers (especially if the alternative is actual work) and listening to The Sisters Of Mercy. His current projects include learning C++ and German, mucking around with webservices in Python, and installing Debian on as many computers as he can get his hands on.
Interesting Facts
Ben never blinks and eats nothing but one mouse a week, on Tuesdays.
He is a seasoned Fundie hunter.
Hardware
Currently usable machines:
- daltrey - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ running Debian GNU/Linux; 1GB RAM, 160GB and 120GB IDE hdd.
- gilmour - Lenovo 3000 C100 laptop running FreeBSD; 256MB RAM, 40GB hdd.
- bolan - Linksys NSLU2 running Debian GNU/Linux; 30MB RAM, 320GB hdd.
- jagger - Bytemark virtual machine (User-Mode Linux) running Debian GNU/Linux; 100MB RAM, 10GB hdd.
- joplin - Sun UltraSparc 5 workstation running OpenBSD; 128MB RAM, 4GB hdd.
- knopfler - Apple iMac G3 DV SE running Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger"; 128MB RAM, 40GB hdd (yes, a non-Linux box!).
- freddie - Tiny Pentium III 866 MHz thing running FreeBSD; 128MB RAM, 20GB hdd.
Ben has a tendency to collect odd bits of hardware, including an 80286 laptop (circa 1988), an early PowerMac (circa 1995), an Alpha workstation (technically belonging to TermiSoc) and half a dozen Pentium-era PCs. He has very little free space.
