Please allow me to introduce myself - my name is John and I live near Plymouth in Devon.
I'm writing this web site to experiment with various web programming and at the same time trying to make it interesting
to anyone who manages to find me here
- if you don't either see much experimental stuff or find it interesting then please accept my apologies - my
feeble excuse is that I'm still more or less getting the foundations in place, but come back in a few weeks (years)
and who knows what you may find?
- ideas on the back of a postcard please!
Anyway, for the quickest resume ever, I have a career history which is basically a blend of Software, Electronics, more Software, Robotics and wait for it - the Internet!!
My academic achievements are a BSc in Physics that I obtained in 1980 and an MSc in Computer Science that I obtained in 1993, both from Exeter University.
In between times I worked briefly as an Electronics Engineer then changed to Software Engineering in 1982 working for a software house in Cambridge which specialised mainly in CAD systems. Over the course of the next 8 or 9 years I became involved in steering our software through the continually upgrading environment, with customers' interface requirements advancing faster than the technology itself!
After a very enjoyable decade, I left Cambridge in 1991 and returned to Exeter University to study for a Masters Degree in Computer Science. My chosen speciality was Neural Networks, and I did write a rather interesting thesis on the subject (a purely subjective evaluation if you forgive me) entitled "An Exploration in Connectionist Robotics" which I am in the process of preparing for here, but for now the title must suffice.
To try to sum it up in a few lines, it involved allowing a neural network to watch the way a mobile robot reacted to its sensors to navigate itself around, and after it had learnt enough it was allowed to take control. The results rather surprised me, and considering that I had written every line of the software I could never have predicted what would have happened, which was a strange blend of very clever and also not so clever behaviour - I certainly realised where the term Artificial Intelligence came from!
In building the Robot Controllers and so forth I certainly learnt a lot of invaluable knowledge and gained tremendous experience in a highly technical sense, and coupled with my earlier experience of pure software engineering this led rather neatly onto my subsequent occupation in Robotic Control Systems. I started this in 1993 working in Robotics Research first at Exeter and then at Sheffield University for two years, at which point I returned to industry back here in Devon.
I then worked for several years in the Semiconductor Industry, designing and testing software control
systems for silicon wafer handling equipment. This was a great combination of robotics and engineering, testing my software
skills in a very real world environment, as silicon wafers are extremely fragile beasts and so any software blips
could easily result in catastrophe!
This culminated in building a fantastic machine which I describe fully in a link from back on my home page.
Okay I'm being lazy - you can use this one instead! - but don't go jumping around too soon
or you might miss out on the rest of this page and all the exciting free offers, handouts, cream cakes etc ??!!??
More recently I have been working on embedded multimedia projects, most specifically on set-top box systems for Digital TV recording, which has been once again a new challenge - I am currently working on a full description of this project for the site.
Unfortunately however, since leaving the University environment I have never had the opportunity to use Neural Networks in any of the projects that I have worked on, so this will probably remain more like a hobby for me.
Talking of hobbies . . .
Up until recently I would have said that my only real hobby was Astronomy, which is something that I have been interested in since I first learnt to read - or even before! There is so much to say about this subject that I won't even try, apart from leaving you a link to some fascinating pictures from: the Hubble Space Telescope
However, following my holiday last year to Turkey where a moment of madness overtook me and I allowed myself to be thrown off the top of a mountain dangling from something loosely descibed as a large tent, and a subsequent Christmas present from my wife involving the same treatment here in Devon, I have now developed a total fascination for - yes you guessed it - Paragliding!
I bet you didn't expect to find that mentioned here, any more than I had ever expected to do it!
If you're interested in reading about it then here are a couple of links for home and abroad
Well that's about it for now, If you would like to contact me about anything I've mentioned here, or indeed if you would like help in setting up your own website, then send me an email, I would be delighted to hear from you.
