That tricky first post

Who am I? What am I here for? What's that big round thing in the picture?

The important thing seems to be to get started, so I'll begin with a short introduction that might provide some answers

For the last, er, 30 years, I've worked for a manufacturer of flight simulators; the big-box-with-a-wrap-round-visual-system-on-a-motion-system type of flight simulators. And for pretty much all of that time I've been writing software. In the beginning the systems were written in assembler, lovingly hand optimised, and they ran on what we then thought of as advanced systems. Over time I've written code in languages from assembler via FORTRAN through C and Java and on to Perl and PHP. I've also used a variety of operating systems, written parts of operating systems, and now I'm sure that "those who do not understand Unix are condemned to re-implement it, poorly."[1]

When I'm not working I cook, I go walking in the hills - often in Yorkshire or the Lake District, I go to the pub, I go and listen to live music, work in the garden, support Amnesty International, usual kind of stuff.

I've visited Centre for Alternative Technology several times, most recently in November 2007 for a week's course, and every time I've come away inspired. Now it's time to actually do something about it. I've enrolled on the Renewable Energy in the Built Environment MSc and I started in September, juggling my time between work and the MSc.

I'll be posting about how I get on with the juggling, how the course goes, and about anything else that takes my interest.

Right, first post done. More to come on CAT modules, and anything else I feel like rambling on about.

Oh, the big round thing? That's an erratic boulder - see what I did there?



[1]Quote attributable to Henry Spencer