About cowlark.com

so what is this web site anyway?

What is this place?

cowlark.com is the personal web site of David Given . This does not necessarily mean it contains anything useful, sensible, worthwhile, coherent, or even grammatically correct. Warning: prolonged exposure to this web site may result in the loss of time which may have been more profitably and entertainingly used elsewhere.

cowlark.com is carefully designed to be low maintenance. This means it's not going to receive a lot of maintenance. Don't watch this space.

Who is David Given?

David Given is the owner and maintainer of cowlark.com. He's a computer programmer working for the exceedingly nifty Antix Labs, the makers of some extremely nifty mobile phone gaming software (<plug> Antix Game Player allows games written in native code, in C, to be deployed over-the-air to any device running Antix' software, regardless of operating system or even CPU </plug>). He current lives and works in Reading, but not out of choice.

He was born in Scotland sometime in the 1970s. Details of his early life are somewhat unclear but he is believed to have gone to a series of mildly prestigious schools. After graduating from St.Andrews University, he was forced to leave Scotland and work in the barbaric wastes of Reading.

Apart from his obvious and slightly embarassing interest in computers, he also enjoys music, science fiction, writing, cycling (but not too far), tai ch'i, and a number of other things only included here to make him seem like a well-rounded individual.

He also used to keep fish. Minnows.

So what's with the flying cow?

You like it? Have one of your very own.

flying-cow-unscaled.xcf.gz (698.1 kB)

The raw GIMP input file. Feel free to play with it. If you can improve the tail, get in touch.

The reason for the cow is that when I decided to register a domain of my very own and become a member of the virtual land-owning classes, none of the names I wanted were available, and eventually I resorted to typing random combinations of words into the search box. 'cowlark' was the first one that work. Domain registered, the next thing I had to do, of course, was to draw one. That picture took a lot of work. It's a composite of two photographs I found on the 'net, and about five hours effort with the GIMP.

And now to credit the people whose photos I have shamelessly ripped off: the cow is called Star and belongs (belonged?) to the Moton Elementary School zoo. Unfortunately their photo gallery has vanished off the web. The eagle doesn't have a name that I'm aware of but originally lives on this page on Andean spiritual traditions.

The background image comes from stock.xchng, and was taken by Benjamin Earwicker.