Hello; my name is David Watson and currently, I work as a university lecturer, teaching web design on both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the University of Greenwich. I’ve been working in digital design since I first sat in front of a Pr1me mini-computer terminal in 1985.

After graduating in Geography from Aberystwyth University in 1984, I moved to London and discovered Landscape Architecture, qualifying as a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute in 1993. Along the way, I fell in love with computer aided design and became a specialist in the use of AutoCAD software.

In 1995 I took a half-time teaching position at the University of Greenwich with responsibility for developing and delivering digital design teaching to students on the BA and MA Landscape Architecture programmes. A year later, I built my first web page and quickly realised the potential for publishing online teaching/learning materials.

My ideas resolved into a side project, which evolved to become the CADTutor website. Launched in 2000, the site now receives over half a million unique visitors per month.

I continue to practice as a Landscape Architect and I specialise in the development of high-accuracy photomontages, massing studies and ZTV (zone of theoretical visibility) analyses for visual impact assessment.

At the University of Greenwich, I am the programme leader for the MA Web Design & Content Planning programme, which Tom Turner and I launched in 2003, the first programme of study in web design in the UK. I also organise the Talk Web Design student conference.

I’m a baby boomer (just) who remembers watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the Moon and, 10 years later, watching Joy Division at the first Futurama festival in Leeds. I now live in North Hampshire, UK with my wife. Our two kids are now grown up and have left home.

I love creating photographic images and this journal is a combination of some of those images accompanied by occasional thoughts, hence thought.photos. I spend much of my working life talking about SEO and web marketing but this site is just a journal; I don’t care if no one else sees it. When I am old and infirm, I’ll read this journal to remind myself of my adventures when walking in the hills.

As you may have noticed, I began the challenge of walking all 214 Wainwrights in the Lake District in June 2015, hoping to complete the set before my 60th birthday and this journal includes a record of my walks.

Update: I completed the round of 214 Wainwright fells on 8th July 2019, well short of my 60th birthday and taking just 4 years and 21 days to do so. I also completed the Fellranger fells on 14th August 2020 in a wonderful week between pandemic lock downs. I am now on my second round of the Wainwright and Fellranger fells. Secretly, I think I may be able to complete three rounds before my 70th birthday.

The photo at the top of this page is the Telus World of Science building in Vancouver, Canada, taken in summer 2013 during a family tour of the west coast of North America.