Left school at 16, did some early "new media" Web design related jobs (1998-1999), realized working for other people wasn't my bag and became a very poorly paid

Left school at 16, did some early "new media" Web design related jobs (1998-1999), realized working for other people wasn't my bag and became a very poorly paid freelance developer and designer for several years (through the dotcom boom) mostly as I had no idea what to charge. Throughout this time I kept playing with things I liked the look of, blogged a lot, generally spent a lot of time online. I picked up Ruby and Rails and a publisher who saw my blog wanted me to write a book. I did, launched a blog to promote the book, the blog became the most popular Ruby blog for several years and a business in its own right. I then branched it out into email and now run an email newsletter business with 5 employees. (Most of this last paragraph has taken 11 years - I first picked up Ruby in November 2004.)