My name is Lonely Joe Parker, and I am a Wikiholic.
This site is under construction. If it was the ’90s that would mean a flashing yellow american highway sign, but the authorities have outlawed those since the Great Dotcom Bubble, the second-greatest single display of their power since The Great Renaming back in 1987 (R.I.P fa.*).
Today all that means is that I’m loading content at the same time as I code this site, which is happening offline, since a) I’m a gobby, compulsive, egotist and can’t help but write/comment, but b) the coding for this site is actually going to be fairly complex, as I’m screwing with WP quite a lot including some hefty client-side stuff that I need to test.
ME ME ME ME ME
I was born in Southampton and did lots of sailing and riding bikes. Live music and hardcore bands were the only good thing about the city itself. Hanging around venues a lot eventually led to various paramusic activities such as doing monitors, running fanzines and taking live gig pix (On 35mm – I used to really like this. Here are some Joe Strummer ones I did – push-processing rocked in the days before anyone knew what a megapixel was…)
I moved to London to do a Biology degree at Imperial (then part of University of London, and always will be as far as I’m concerned) and did less sailing, some climbing, more scuba (including the White Sea and some other silly stuff) and more cycling. Oh, and we ran a biodiversity survey in Paraguay.
As well as being shit at molecular biology and going to the bar a lot, I did some print/radio student journalism and ran the production studios and OBs at ICR, and later the whole station (which somehow won an award for best factual programme, nothing to do with me but due to the excellent Gareth Mitchell and Liz Biggs.)
After uni I tried telesales and stuff and went into concrete-frame construction full-time with my stepdad when out of the blue a PhD studentship with Andrew Rambaut (later under Oli Pybus) at Oxford came along (yes, it really did happen that way). For four years I studied viral phylogenetics, specifically phylogeny-trait correlations and computational models of between- and within-host evolution of chronic pathogens (HIV / HCV), publishing some of it and some software. I got to work with some other brilliant people like Eddie Holmes, Beth Shapiro, Alexei Drummond, Aris Katzourakis, Rob Belshaw, Abi Harrison and Samir Bhatt. Sometimes I’d try and go drinking with Iain Couzin. This is not recommended.
At about the same time I got back into music and got involved with Sotones, a co-operatively owned indie label in Southampton; unofficially broke Mark Thomas’ world record for most protests in a single day (24 – sounds flippant but we were really highlighting the Kafka-esque SOCPA legislation; we got in the Torygraph, which must count for something); and qualified as a watch leader with the sail-training charity Ocean Youth Trust (South). They (along with Campaign Against Arms Trade) are one of the best-run and most effective charities I’ve ever worked for or with and you should give them some of your time or money, right now.
After my thesis I travelled the US for a few months, watching the ’08 elections and gigging up the eastern seaboard. When I came back skint, I did some more construction work, then set up Kitson Consulting with my housemate and fellow boff Pete Donnell. You can hire us for bioinformatics, networking or general IT projects; Pete and the other guys who work there are genuinely competent and diligent people, unlike me.
I also released a couple of singles and a 12″ through Sotones; the EP was a split with Jackie Paper (Thomas Tantrum), with all the profit going to Oxfam. We toured the UK on bikes to promote it which was hard on the arse but fun, and also raised money for CAAT, OYT and Stummerville. I’ve toured across the UK and Germany as well as the US, and collaborated with great acts like Moulettes, Moneytree and The Beaux Hardts.
I’m currently a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary, University of London. My research interests include phylogenetic methods to detect genotypic correlates of antibody sensitivity in HIV infection and methodologies for high-throughput genome-level alignment phylogenetic inference.
Music-wise, I’m releasing some EPs this year and touring a bit. Last year I arranged and recorded new material with some very talented people, which we tracked at the brilliant Furnace Studios (Ruse, Bulgaria), Abbey Road (London) and Valley Studios (Winchester). James Ewers produced, and Sam Miller (PJ Harvey, Biffy Clyro, Hoosiers) mixed. It’ll come out in Feb 2013. You can read more about music stuff I do here.
I still write occasional articles here and there.. I’m amazed by the work and achievements of people like Eddie Holmes, Sunetra Gupta, Motoo Kimura, Brian Cox, Fugazi, Evan Dando, Stephen Malkmus, Damon Albarn, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg and Tony Benn. I think George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks would have a lot of (funny) things to say about the way the world works today. Stewart Lee is a lumbering titan of stand-up and Ginger & Black do something a bit different.
I have no pets, or children, and don’t live in domestic bliss in a tumbledown Cornish fishing village.
