Now feeling my age at 61, I was fortunate to come to the London College of Printing (now the LCP), over 16 years ago, after a varied career in education and pure research. Indeed, my wife claims that I have never really 'worked' for a living, as I have tended to do things, which I have enjoyed, and indeed in many cases would have actually paid to do, rather than receiving a salary! I would include, at least in part, my previous position, from which I have now retired, Senior Lecturer in Computer Technology, in this category, as it let me 'play' with a lot of expensive network equipment, including the web server, http://twinpentium.lcp.linst.ac.uk/colhome/, which used to hold these pages! I have transferred some of these pages, which are now of historic interest, to this site here!
I had a very stimulating childhood, which resulted in a wide range of teenage interests, covering electronics, photography, geology and archaeology, all of which have continued to develop. When it came to a University course, there wasn't a lot of choice in 1966, as most electronics then came in the form of pretty heavy electrical engineering, whilst I did not think I could make a living at photography or archaeology (who could foresee the vast growth in Urban Archaeology units), thus I ended up studying Geology, with British Roman and pre-Roman Archaeology as a subsidiary subject. I continued with the latter interests when I returned to London in 1980 to do the ILEA's Science Induction Course (We were short of science teachers even then; I was retrained as a Chemistry teacher, although I never taught it, as my interest in Physics meant I helped fill that even bigger shortage!), when I completed the University of London's Extra Mural Certificate in Field Archaeology, in the Prehistory and Romano-British archaeology of Southern England. However, by then I had regained a deeper interest in electronics, thanks to the revolution brought about by Sir Clive Sinclair. The machines he produced created the British market for personal computers and as a result spawned a generation of software and micro-electronics engineers, who still dominate the world computer games market.
I own, and indeed have mainly assembled, the full range of Sinclair computers including, a Mk. 14, a ZX80 (built on my Mother-in-law's kitchen table!), two ZX81s, two Spectrums, three QLs (one of which was built from a bare, unpopulated mother-board acquired from Greenweld Electronics "R.I.P./ Reborn 11/99!"), a Z88, a SAM Coupe (a spectrum clone) and a Newbury Newbrain (another Sinclair offshoot), again built from an incomplete main board from Greenweld! I still regularly use the Z88 and one of the QLs, which has 'migrated' to a Tower case with a 40Mb hard-disc and AT key-board! However, my true loyalties now lie with my PC, which is the sixth in a line of home made models (A twin processored beast running Windows XP Prof.)! The house is indeed full of computers (more than thirty, including a home built Win 2000 file server, a Toshiba Libretto 30 & 100CT, an Acorn Risc PC 700), a Hewlett Packard Jornada 545 and the latest acquisitions, an Apple Quadra 850av, an SGI 02 and an SGI Cobalt Cube. I hope this helps to explain the variety of pages and links branching from here, introduced to encourage a wider range of readership!
