Roger's Personal Info Page

Last Updated 2/4/2006

Me

Born in 1961 - you can work it out.

Used to have hobbies like Motor Bikes (Kawasaki Z200 then Yamaha XJ600), Amateur Radio (G6CNY then G4UFZ), Hi-Fi, Cameras, Skiing (Best holiday you can get) and computers.

Now married with 4 kids.
Favourite music at the moment :- Jess Klein

Location/House

We live in Netherthong, near Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, UK.
Holmfirth is also known as Summer Wine City as it is the base for a TV series ("Last of the Summer Wine").

The nearest large town is Huddersfield (5 miles away).

School

Brockholes Junier Skool, followed by Holmfirth High School. Nuff said.

College

Attended Huddersfield Technical College and then Bolton Institute of technology, both part time, doing Instrumentation, Measurement and Control - from 1977 to 1982.

Went back to Calderdale College in 1995 to do an HNC in Computer Studies, again part time, partly out of interest and partly to come up to date on modern computers and systems. Studied a lot of classic RDBMS things but lots of spin-offs using PC's etc. Enjoyed it a lot even though it was hard work at the time.

Employment

Did a 4 year apprenticeship 1977 to 1981 as an Instrument Artificer in a chemical works(was ICI at the time). Made redundant. Worked for a small system/panel builder (Sertrol Controls). Made redundant. Worked for another system/panel builder but part of a large group company (David Brown Group). Left in 1990 before I could be made redundant to work for Rolla (www.rolla.co.uk)

I have worked overseas in South Africa (Paarl near Cape Town - Du-Toitskloof Tunnel project), Algeria (mostly Algiers), Egypt (Cairo - Tunnelling project), Jordan (Amman and Zarqa), Abu Dhabi (Liwa Oasis), but only for short visits of a few months at most.

Computers I have known

I have played with computers of one sort or another for a long time now, but mostly small ones or using odd-ball industrial languages e.g. :-

Texas Intruments 5Ti (with PROM memory - 1978/79)

Apple IIe (early 1980's)

Square D Symax 20 (1980's)

Allen Bradley (various)

Saab Automation (yes computers as well as cars and aeroplanes)

Negretti MPC80 (Proper process computer)

Mitsubishi (various)

Cutler Hammer D100

etc.

My first home computer was a BBC micro model B with a huge, 32K RAM (yes that was 32K- this was in 1981!) which was vastly superior to the Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum available around the same time. Me and a friend (But mostly Martin) designed and built our own Eprom programmer so we could have software load and run instantly instead of waiting for a tape or disc drive. My contribution to this was small, I have to say, but we did write the code in assembler (6502), and program it in machine code, and it did work. This computer was sadly binned in October 1999 when the PSU went up in smoke. Martin's is still working somwhere in Orkney/Bracknell.

I also used to use this computer to talk to my Bank - they were running a home banking experiment in the mid 80's which worked great but I had to call long distance at the huge speed of 1200/75 (anybody remember Prestel comms?).

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