Work History

I used to work on projects related to the WebSphere Application Server, most recently the Liberty profile and before that on supporting IBM workload deployer and on the OSGi applications support. Even earlier (but still as part of WebSphere) I worked on the System Integration Bus support of the application server. I used to work on the Compensation component of WebSphere, on the Business Process Beans project, and on Component Broker as well as the Internet Interaction Manager. Before that I worked on LANDP, MQSeries, AConnS and GDDM. All of this was while I worked for IBM at Hursley in the UK.

Domain of the Ancients

Back in the mid 1990s I ran a play by mail game called Domain of the Ancients 2. During 2022 I copied my write up of that campaign onto this website and created a web browser single player version of the game.

Romsey Signal Box Simulation

The main project I did during 2020 was a simulation of the Signal Box at the Romsey Signal Box Project. The simulation has been written as one of my wordpress plugins and was an enjoyable journey into the higher capabilities of CSS in particular (though there is plenty of JavaScript too!).

Erdős Number

I can claim an Erdős Number of 5, though I do have to use the IBM Systems Journal to do so:

1. Saharon Shelah co-authored with Paul Erdős on Separability properties of almost-disjoint families of sets.
2. Daniel J. Lehmann co-authored with Saharon Shelah on Reasoning with time and chance.
3. C. A. R. Tony Hoare co-authored with Daniel J. Lehmann on Semantics of nondeterminism, concurrency, and communication.
4. Carla Ferreira co-authored with C. A. R. Tony Hoare on Comparing two approaches to compensable flow composition.
5. I co-authored with Carla Ferreira on Extending the concept of transaction compensation.

Operating Systems

I mainly use Windows 10, but have used Windows 7 and XP. I've also used Windows Vista (only because it came preloaded with the drivers for that laptop - but that one is now running Ubuntu (actually to be fair all my running laptops are now running Ubuntu!)), IBM VM and Linux (using Ubuntu in the main, but puppy Linux can be very useful).

Library Systems

A library system is critical when developing software. I have used Rational Team Concert which I recommend when you want a full enterprise level library system. For my own use, I now use fossil which is a nice simple distributed version control system that also provides a wiki and ticket management system. For backup purposes I use Oops! backup.

Web Site Programming

I now code in JavaScript and PHP and use WordPress as my content management system (even if the internet facing version of the site is actually a statically generated version of the WordPress site). I have coded several WordPress plugins which are available from this very site.

Enterprise Programming

I used to code in Java. There are several Java Idioms that are useful, as is the Junit framework for unit testing Java code. There is good advice on how to evolve Java-based APIs. Before Java my code was in C and even earlier PL/X.

I try to make my code usable and not too unreadable and try to avoid obfuscated code whenever possible! (I did, however, once have to write some self-modifying code - though I did try both to avoid doing so and to attempt to explain what and why in the relevant code. Pragmatic programming is a collection of useful tips for program development.

Hobby Programming

Although most of my current programming is for this website, I do sometimes write some code for the Arduino. In addition my early programming days were (going backwards in time) for the Acorn Archimedes, BBC Micro and the Commodore Pet. I still have a couple of cassette tapes (and 5 inch floppies) with my Commodore Pet programs on them - however since it's around forty-five years since those programs were written (and only slightly shorter since that media were last read), the odds of those programs even being recoverable must be close to zero. One program I have been able to recover though is Snazzy Snake.

Eclipse

I regularly use Eclipse (not to be confused with Eclipse who I use as my ISP!)

HTML

I've done some work with HTML and hence in CSS as well. The W3C consortium has more info on HTML, HTTP etc. When writing HTML (or indeed anything else!), a thesaurus and an anagram server is handy.

Finance

I had an interest in the IBM Stock price, both now and in the recent past. I also keep an eye on UK shares, including the Top 350 Stocks and other FTSE indices both now and in the past. I also keep an eye on the UK Consumer Price Index.

Game playing

In my spare time, I'll play role playing games, often with Zyg, Rhodri, Bob, Chris, Chris, Tina and John in the Linrodeth universe (I've created a view of the night sky there). I've an backburner intent to create a martian game probably using a hex map of mars. I also play board and computer games. That means I have an interest in Game Programming.

Other people

I keep in contact from my (now) ex-colleagues and friends from work, including tracking Sue & Matthew's Sailing Voyages and those of Brian too.

Television

I will admit to watching TV, mainly cult show or documentaries (or news).

Internet

I use Eclipse as my Internet service provider. They also provide a Web page to access e-mail across the web. I sometimes act on spam and scam emails, reporting email that references gmail to google.

Other Interests

I read plenty of books and, in particular, I'm looking forward to Rosemary Kirstein's next book, whenever that turns out to be finished! As that might imply I've a big interest in science fiction and fantasy. though my non-fiction collection is quite large too. I've attended the 1990, 2005, 2014 and 2019 Worldcons and had planned to attend the 2020 one as well (the Covid-19 pandemic put paid to those plans). Glasgow won its 2024 Worldcon bid and so I plan to go that one.

I am interested in Artifical Life as well. I am interested in space, in particular JPL's Deep Space Network and the Shuttle. This assumes that I'm not watching Babylon 5 or drinking coffee. I use GPS receivers. I have a passing interest in elections, more particularly in election predictions. Another (literally in this case) passing interest in Steam trains which, very occasionally, pass on the railway line near my home. Finally, I must admit to keeping an eye on Airplane accidents in the UK, together with rail and marine accidents.

Interesting authors and other sites

James Gleick is the author of books on chaos theory. Long bets has a set of predictions and arguments for and against those predictions.

Weather, Tides and Time

BBC Weather forecasts can be of interest, as can Tide tables. Another source is Metcheck.com with Rain today? looking very good. I often get time and timezones wrong, but I like to see how long since retirement! You can convert between UNIX epoch and dates.