About

I am a free-lance contractor, specialising in designing and implementing C and Java systems for UNIX and Linux computers. I also design, implement and optimise relational databases.

I have been programming computers since 1967, when I used an Elliott 503 scientific computer, programmed in Algol 60, to analyse the output from a Mössbauer spectrometer. This was part of my thesis for an MSc in Chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. After graduating I worked for ICL in their Wellington bureau until I moved to the UK in 1973. This job exposed me to a huge variety of operating systems and programming languages on 1900 series machines as well as to customer-facing roles, system design and operating system support.

After arrival in the UK I continued to work on ICL mainframes before moving into the fault tolerant, AS/400 and UNIX worlds. I have done significant communications-oriented projects as well as designing, implementing and tuning several databases, ranging from complex IDMSX systems to relational data warehouses. I have owned personal computers almost from their debut in the UK. Constructing, maintaining and programming these machines has always been a significant part of my computing development, often providing experience I have not been able to gain professionally.

My main computing interests lie in UNIX-based high performance, database and communications systems. All my systems are Linux-based and run applications written in C and Java. Databases are either relational systems implemented with PostgreSQL or are written using the Sculptor 4GL, which has its own ISAM database system.