My name is Malcolm Farnsworth.

For most of my life, I have been a secondary school teacher in Melbourne, Australia. I was best known as a teacher of Politics and English.

I taught at Norwood High School, a government secondary school in Ringwood, from 1983 until 1989.

Between 1990 and 2004, I was on the staff at Loreto Mandeville Hall, a Catholic school for girls.

Now, as I like to say to people, I no longer exist in real life, only online.

I am currently engaged in a number of online businesses. These include:

  • publishing a range of e-books
  • developing a portfolio of websites dedicated to internet marketing
  • offering an online membership site in American politics

Recently, I was asked what I miss about not teaching in a school. My response was that I would happily return if I could do HALF the job.

Put me in front of a captive audience, let me teach Politics, English or History, and I am in my element. I even like teaching about computers and the internet. Give me the endless human variety of a classroom full of students and I’m captivated, inspired and energetic. I miss it more than I am prepared to admit.

But ask me to sit alone for hours on end marking essays and assignments and I feel physically sick. Require me to attend another absurd staff meeting and I want to scream. Remind me that another batch of reports need to be written and I cringe. Send me out on yard duty and I’m bored before I’ve taken a single step. To paraphrase Sir Humphrey Appleby, I miss these things the way I miss an additional aperture in the cranial cavity.

Hence, this website, a reworking of the site I referred to in my teaching days as my “mobile filing cabinet”, is designed to chronicle my online business activities.

That’s it. As Gene Kranz said, “failure is not an option”.