How a Beige Keyboard Changed My Life: From C64 to NZBs to CTO

The Commodore 64 probably saved my life.

Some kids grow up hoping to change the world. I was just trying to escape mine. A beige keyboard was the start of my (eventual) way out.

Insert Tape. Press Play. Escape.

My first computer was a Commodore 64. I don’t remember if it was "new" or second-hand. Either way, it was magic. Beige-colored magic. A clunky keyboard, a cassette drive, and that slow, screeching sound of a game loading from tape for what felt like a lifetime, only to sometimes crash before it started. Time to retry. Can you imagine kids waiting for that now?

Later, fast loaders came along, little hacks that made games load quicker, and sometimes, if you were lucky, they’d play music while you waited. I remember first hearing the loading music for Myth: History in the Making (listen). It floored me. These weren’t bleeps; this was music pulsing from a beige plastic box via the TV. It was epic, dark, hopeful… somehow all at once.

And those crack intros, wow: flashing logos, scrolling text, and chiptunes from groups like Fairlight; they felt like secret doors to something bigger—something I felt was missing in my life. It sounds bizarre, but I'm sure my brain started thinking in synthesized music patterns when I worked. Even now, when I hear them, something wells up. That sound—those sounds—still mean something. I still code to that music and sometimes recreate those demos.

Machines like it became an escape. A constant. A portal out.

Disconnected from the Source

Computers weren't just an escape; they felt like survival.

I grew up in Northern Ireland in a broken home. We didn’t have much and never went on holiday. Post-separation of my parents, joy was seldom. I felt increasingly withdrawn and alone throughout. I was fundamentally broken. I remember a childhood friend who used to go on summer trips to America and Canada. He’d come back talking about snowboarding, Universal Studios, and eating "Wendy’s burgers." It always sounded like an epic adventure filled with happiness and family; it highlighted all I didn't have and would never have (I thought).

I’d listen with awe, sadness, and quiet jealousy; all I could feel was self-loathing.

I could only travel virtually through screens, games, music, and code, and I convinced myself this was all I needed. But, deep down, I promised myself that if I ever had kids, they wouldn’t have to suffer a broken home. They'll be happy, and they’ll see the world with me. This is a strangely sobering thought that I don't think a child should ever have to consider.

At school, life wasn’t much better. I was bullied for wearing worn clothes and shoes or not fitting in. I wasn't cool. I didn't play sports. I was as pale as a ghost. I wasn't invited to parties or play. When I went, I often felt like a social pariah, and as kids got older, they got more cruel. I started skipping school and got referred to social services more than a few times (sorry, Dad).

But I had computers. Weren't they better than people anyway?

During those first few years with a C64, my setup was a tangle of wires in the corner of the living room, with tapes stacked in plastic tubs, usually acquired from Smithfield market (a "bazaar" in Belfast), and a few joysticks that barely worked. The glow of the CRT was the only light some nights. My vice? Discount games and multi-loaded tapes from "Stephen's Dad Around the Corner" were always for a "good price."

Games made me curious. What made them tick? How did graphics render? How was music produced with the SID chip? At first, I didn’t know I was "programming" when I’d copy listings from issues of Zzap!64 or Commodore Format, wondering why they never quite worked the first time; oops, probably a typo on line 1720. POKE 53280,15? Oops, just set the border color. I just knew it was fun. It gave me a sense of control when everything else felt chaotic. For a few hours, I could make something do what I told it to, even if it meant breaking it.

Not much changed as I moved from the C64 to a second-hand Amiga; I played Shadow of the Beast until my eyes hurt, swapped disks during Monkey Island, and learned patience waiting for Deluxe Paint to load. Eventually, I got a "heavily discounted" PC. The hum of the CRT and aversion to sunlight stayed constant, but the novelty of what I could do expanded dramatically. By the mid-90s, you could buy CDs filled with collections of (illicit) software, like Visual Studio for coding, SoftICE for debugging, or IDA for disassembling.

I developed skills with new tools: breaking game protections and writing "trainers."

That was way more fun than the grueling oppression of school and the bullies I had to face at the time. Eventually, I dropped out with "almost nothing worthwhile" on paper. I had maybe three GCSEs to my name. Like something Del Boy would brag about in Only Fools and Horses: “Rodney's got three GCEs!” as if it was an achievement. It's hard to imagine that now. Three GCSEs don’t get you far, certainly not into an engineering degree, let alone a good job.

Choose the Red Pill

Instead, a supermarket job got me better Internet access, leading me to discover a new escape. One that was a bit like the BBSes that we used to dial into but gaming-oriented: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), known as the precursors to MMOs. They are entirely text-based worlds but filled with other players. "Hitter," "Tank," or "DPS," or any MMO term? All from MUDs. AvatarMUD was the one that got its hooks in me. It was properly addictive, and I started spending time with people that I got along with; it was lovely to connect with people.

Coding curiosity kicked in again, and I started building my own MUD from scratch.

I built on a codebase called DikuMUD, where I started learning "real" programming using C/C++ at the systems level and started turning illicit skills into creating things of real value. I figured out how networking and sockets worked, how to multiplex connections, manage game state, scale a server, access databases, etc., you name it. There were no tutorials, no GitHub, just trial and error and the motivation to make a description appear when you typed look.

You can't go back to sleep once you’ve woken up; I was on the path to being a professional.

Follow the White Rabbit (to alt.bin.newz)

I wasn't a hacker; I just wanted to build. Lucky for them.

Back in 1999, there was a Usenet indexing site called binnewz.net. It was all manual then: copy-and-paste jobs, hand-labelled "curated" listings. Eventually, around 2000 or so, the owner gave up after pressure from competitors and said, “It’s not fun anymore.” They dumped their ASP-based code online and encouraged others to build their own. It caused a little explosion that landed on my radar of interest.

The “Binnewz Clones,” people called them. Among them was one called Newzbin.

It stood out: written in PHP, not ready for primetime, different. At the time, I was already experimenting with PHP to build a web interface for the MUD I was working on, and I thought it'd be neat to get involved because I was curious to learn more, so I reached out and sent a few code snippets. I didn't expect to hear much, but their reply was simple: "Come to IRC."

I did. And before I knew it, they’d given me root access to the servers. They issued it within the first day or two of my being there on IRC with them, to my complete surprise. I still laugh about that today. Imagine handing the keys to your house to a stranger online; that's more or less what happened. What if I wanted to put those illicit skills to good (bad?) use? Lucky for them, I wasn't a hacker; I just wanted to build something great.

So we built Newzbin. At first, it was just a hobby. I worked day and night to create the site's first public iteration, and then the original creators drifted away, and I took the reins. That’s when I brought in the two co-lurkers in the IRC channel who would become my co-founders. The three of us turned it into something serious—a business. A company.

It was a Usenet search engine ahead of its time in many ways. Usenet was the technology that predated the Internet, but we were doing something new and exciting. We didn’t host anything, illicit or not. It was "just" a smarter search index, pointing to what already existed on Usenet. At its peak, we had over 500K active users, half of whom paid. It pulled in over £1M a year. We built it from our bedrooms on ISDN modems and those CRTs that buzzed in the dark.

We eventually treated ourselves to LCDs, but it wasn't an overnight success.

We lived on IRC: our office, pub, and scratchpad, in one—a scrolling miasma of chat, bots, and Internet culture. We used irssi (and mIRC), nicknames (I was "K"), and /me commands and knew the sound of a CTCP PING like it was second nature. Code was often committed at 3 a.m., using vim in a terminal, against the background of Dissolved Girl by Massive Attack on WinAMP: "Shame, such a shame, think I kind of lost myself again." We ran it all without meeting in person because we didn't need to. It was "fully remote", but in 2003.

On Saturday, November 29th, 2003, we launched the "NZB" file format.

The NZB file was a simple XML structure listing Usenet message IDs needed to reconstruct files from fragments across newsgroups—similar in spirit to torrent files or magnet links. Instead of having to find the source, the files took you right there. The three-letter extension was just a contraction of the word “NewZBin.” To this day, I laugh when people say, "It's an NZB site," without knowing the origin. Suffice it to say: NZBs transformed access to Usenet.

But, like all good things, it wasn't destined to last forever.

The Matrix Has You, Neo

Success drew attention, and that brought the end. No regrets.

Given our success, we attracted attention, and eventually, the MPAA came after us, led by Disney and others. I still jokingly imagine Mickey Mouse himself leading the charge. It never went criminal, but the civil costs were more than we could fight. It was the first time I had heard of "tort law." If we’d been Google, maybe we could’ve made it legitimate; there was technology we could have put to good use. But we weren’t, and we didn't. We got shut down.

I could write a lot about this topic. All the juicy details behind the scenes would undoubtedly make for interesting television—maybe someday. The entire court case was public, though, so you can read the whole thing. Here's one juicy detail: if you're wondering if it was "us" continuing to operate after April 2010, i.e., as "Newzbin2", it wasn't. Who was it? You can find out with a search. Ultimately, we, the "real" Newzbin, got shut down and moved on.

And I’ve never been bitter about it. That experience changed my life. I’ll always be grateful for it and my two co-founders, Thomas and Chris, whom I admire deeply. They shaped more of who I am than they probably realize. In those 10 years, I probably accrued a lifetime of knowledge that was perhaps almost impossible to gain otherwise, and it gave me the thing I had wanted in life: a paying career. A real chance in life. But something was missing.

I was a professional without credentials and wasn't sure if I needed them; I had to find out.

Credentials Patch Applied

Degrees validate, but it's the passion that builds.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I decided I wanted to get a degree, not because I had to, but to prove that I could. Coming from a broken home and being without academic credentials, it was the thing I felt was missing. I wanted to go to Queen's University Belfast, which I lived close to and was aware of its renown; they turned me down. Ulster University, which I am thankful for to this day, gave me a shot after I agreed to get at least one A-level.

And so, I went for it. An A-level or two first, then an academic reboot.

Four years later, I walked out with a first-class honors degree in Software Engineering and some of the highest marks the course had ever seen. I’ve heard whispers that my name still comes up, sometimes when people want to refer to the literature of my thesis and project (it was a device driver for the Nintendo Wii). I've never confirmed if I reached the famous status, but I joke that "Queen’s turned down the best student they never had."

Maybe they'll award me an honorary degree someday, and we'll shake hands. Ha!

But, the degree wasn't necessary (who knew?). I would go on to work for the New York Stock Exchange and co-founded a fintech startup, VulcanFT, sharpening the skills that led me to become the co-founder and CTO of Cloudsmith. I got to take all that learning, turn it into "for the greater good," and now offer cloud-native artifact management that secures the software supply chain for some of the world's biggest companies. We’ve raised serious capital for a serious platform. And it started in Belfast.

Achievement Unlocked: Self-Realized Escape

Talking doesn't magically solve things, but it means you're not alone.

Did the Newzbin thing ever affect me? Of course! Mental health took a nosedive in the latter years (and I told no one: bad idea)! Years later, in one instance, I was trying to raise money for Cloudsmith. We pitched to Partners for a fund, all of whom happened to be ex-ISP and ex-NSP executives. They told me they knew exactly who I was and were the ones who had absorbed the cost of implementing draconian filters, and it was "my fault." We didn't get the money. :)

That lifelong hardship of grit, balanced with a curiosity to explore and build, was part of the (unfortunate or not) ingredients that put me on this path. It got me through extraordinarily dark and challenging times. From those moments in childhood when I bordered on the edge of life through poverty and debt to more recent moments in my life, such as the passing of friends and family (notably, my Dad in 2022; miss you, Dad), it's been quite the journey.

But, based on some of the above, the two things I come back to are:

At Cloudsmith, we don’t ask for degrees. Some of the best engineers we’ve hired never went to university. If we mention it in a job post, we always say that equivalent experience is just as valid. I keep thinking: would I have hired the younger me? I have to believe the answer is yes. Any other answer would keep me awake at night. How can I support more people like me?

And maybe the hardest bit to say out loud about all of this, but most importantly, I genuinely believe that computers saved my life. I spent the first half of my life drifting between escapism and suicidal depression. I never told anyone. I didn’t know how. I just retreated deeper into code. Maybe you sensed that while reading the above? If you did, you were right.

So, if you (or someone you know) are in a dark place, please reach out. Asking for help is brave, not weak. Could you tell them how you feel? I wish I had. I'm unsure how my life would have changed, but I know that talking to someone would mean not having to do it alone, and that is an experience I would never wish any other Human Being had to go through.

It’s not easy. It doesn’t magically get better. It requires effort on your part to push through. But I came through it. And although I never fully recovered from childhood trauma and hardship, I've now built a life I’m proud of. A business I believe in. A family I love, with my wife and two brilliant daughters. It could not be more different than what I started with. It's a better life for them, and that's OK. If I didn't "get through it," none of that would exist now. It's unthinkable.

I made right what was wrong; a quantum leap, then to now, very Sam Beckett-like.

Becoming a father myself made me realize how hard it must have been for my Dad, going through his ups and downs while still providing for me the best he could. Despite it all, he still tackled life with humor when he could, and we bonded through gaming and music; one of my fondest memories together was co-op'ing a game called The Secret of Mana on a borrowed SNES. That'll stick with me forever. He was also the world's expert on Diablo. Seriously, he beat that game hundreds of times. He was sporty, tanned, funny, and a gamer; I got two of those.

These days, I get to inherit his legacy of "so bad, it's great" Dad jokes, and I often joke to my kids that it's the price they have to pay for all their nice things. My kids have better housing, clothes, food, school, travel experience, social capital, friends, and more opportunities than I have had, almost automatically; just like I promised myself, if I ever had kids [...], they'll be happy and see the world with me. But when I see that flicker of curiosity in them, of how things work in life, the same one I had all those years ago, it reminds me of where it all started.

A wee boy from Belfast, saved by a little beige keyboard.

You can’t train yourself to be a doctor, at least not legally (ha!). But you can become a programmer. Or even a founder. With enough passion and grit.

Trust me: I know.

It might even save your life.

From typing LOAD "*",8,1 to building a global tech business, my life shows that sometimes, a curious mind and a little beige keyboard can change everything.

If you’re experiencing thoughts of suicide or deep depression, please reach out. You're not alone. Call Samaritans in the UK and Ireland at 116 123 or visit mind.org.uk. Elsewhere, please contact local mental health services.

Feel free to share if this resonates with you or if you’ve come from similar. Or say hi. I’d love to hear your story, too. You can find me on LinkedIn, GitHub or follow my work at Cloudsmith.

Also published on: LinkedIn