Andy Gayton

Andy Gayton

Senior Director of Software

Shpongled

On the 28th of September, 1975 - Andy Gayton was born in Gladstone, Australia.

The first computer Andy encountered was a Dick Smith Wizard in the downstairs basement of his older brother's mate. At 5, he learned Basic on the trusty wizard while the 'big boys' hung out upstairs. He learned Pascal, and started to explore the world of BBSs at 13 on a borrowed modem and a dodgy amstrad.

Remember, in those days the Internet was this almost mythical thing, only available at universities or as expensive sections on a few BBSs. At 16 Andy was the head coder for an Australian demo group. He wrote a 3D graphics engine in 386 assembler, but he had already begun to look to the North and dream of someday studying with the legendary Pandas of Japan.

Andy graduated from the University of Queensland in 1997 and went to work for a high-level software company whose clients boasted a good portion of the top ten stockbrokers in Australia. Within a year, he was 53 stories above Sydney. Six months later he quit and headed to Japan to begin his training.

While in Japan, Andy studied the hardly-known mythical Panda Paw martial arts technique. Part of his studies were to carefully observe the elegant danger of deliberate movement that pandas live by. Andy became one of the finest paws of the East, until the faithful day that his Sansei betrayed him over a beautiful geisha. And Andy turned his back on the ways of the Panda forever.

He spent the next year hanging out in a house in Brisbane on welfare and wrote music. Andy fondly refers to this as his blue period. He filled his days with psychedelic bush doofs, metaphysical experimentation with his crazy flat mate, volunteer sound engineer work for Brisbane's community radio station ZZZ, math tutoring and some really poor attempts to try and craft some tunes in hopes of joining the infamous psy-rock band, Shpongle.

From 1999-2000 Andy backpacked around the UK and South Africa surviving on factory work and door-knocking for St John's Ambulance.

Back in oz he got a 4-wheel drive Scooby Doo van with ambitions of trekking around Australia. He and his girl got to Cairns, the far north east of Australia, before running out of cash and going back to the mainstream, this time as a consultant for a company called Trinity, where he discovered Twisted Python (or did it discover Andy?). It was like the Pandas, but not as messy. He quit Trinity and made a secret pact with the gods of Python development - it was Twisted Python or nothing. Four months out of work, naked and submerged in Nevow templates, Andy was found by Revver.

He and his pixie bride are currently working on making the adjustment from living in the tropical rainforests of Cairns, Australia, (population 128,284) to living in Los Angeles (population 3.8 million).

Andy Gayton's recent favorites

Who is Revver?