Dr. Mark Alexander Bain hasn't always been the leading authority on open‑source software that you know him as now. Back in the late seventies he started work as a woodsman at Bowood Estates in Wiltshire. After that he spent a number of years working at Lowther Wildlife Park in Cumbria—it's not clear if his character made him suitable for looking after packs of wolves, or whether the experience made him the way he is now.

In the mid eighties there was a general downturn in the popularity of animal parks in the UK, and Mark found himself out of work with two young sons (Simon and Michael) but with a growing interest in programming. His wife had recently bought him the state-of-the-art Sinclair ZX 81, and it was she who suggested that he went to college to study computing.

Mark left college in 1989 and joined Vodafone—then a very small company—where he started writing programs using VAX/VMS. It was shortly after that, that he became addicted to something that was to drastically affect the rest of his life—Unix. His demise was further compounded when he was introduced to Oracle. After that there was no saving him. Over the next few years, Vodafone became the multinational company that it is now, and Mark progressed from Technician to Engineer, and from Engineer to Senior Engineer, and finally to Principal Engineer.

At the turn of the century, general ill health made Mark reconsider his career; and his wife again came to his rescue when she saw a job advert for a lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. It was also she who suggested that he should think about writing.

Today Mark writes regularly for Linux Format, Newsforge.com, and Linux Journal. He's still teaching. And (apparently) he writes books as well.