About

Why GingerNinja.net?

GingerNinja was the nickname given to me by a fellow Bluecoat at Pontin’s Camber Sands during the summer of 1996. Despite being used as a slight wind-up, I adopted it as my online alter ego around 1998-1999 (in place of Johno) and continued using it when I finally ventured online to play Counter-Strike in August 2000 (then in Beta 7.0!). I purchased this domain name a few years later and got the .net version as .com was already taken.
I was able to continue playing under the name of GingerNinja for quite some time until I started playing Battlefield 2 in 2005 and discovered that my name had already been taken, so I signed up with my domain name, GingerNinja.net. I later discovered that the GingerNinja GameSpy ID used by Battlefield 2 was one I had registered years ago, but by this point my new name was being actively used in BF2 and CS:Source amongst others so I was pretty much stuck with GingerNinja.net as my new online identity.

Who are you really?

My name is John and I am a 37 year old Market Data Consultant from Essex. I am married with three children and I work for top tier investment banks in London. I am also a qualified karate instructor with Go-Kan-Ryu karate-do and run a dojo for the club in Essex on Sunday mornings as well as assist at other classes during the week.  I love playing games, drinking tea, eating custard creams, reading Raymond E. Feist books, watching good films, going to expensive restaurants, playing in Photoshop and (more importantly) spending time with my lovely family.

And what about the header image?

That, my friend, is a photo I took of my various superhero (and villain / henchman) costume t-shirts after a conversation with my mate Pedro who asked how many I had.  There are more themes shirts such as the Joker, various Batman, Marvel’s Silver Surfer and even Danger Mouse but these are “costume” or “symbol” shirts.  From left to right:

  • Batman Symbol II (from the Silver Age)
  • Batman Symbol IV (from the Modern Age – before the September 2011 reboot back to Symbol I)
  • Superman
  • Green Lantern
  • The Flash
  • The Riddler (based on Frank Gorshin’s costume from the ‘60s TV series)
  • Arkham Asylum Inmate

In order to complete my classic Justice League line-up I would need Wonder Woman and Aquaman.  Neither of those particularly appeal to me as a shirt I would wear. Especially Aquaman.