Bloggings

About

A French Englishman

+ "Spends a lot of time looking out of the window" - school reports +

+ I first arrived in France from England in 1975 with a hitchhiker's + rucksack. Barely 18, I wanted to get out of my bubble and see the world, + and France held my breath. The wide open spaces, the Massif Central, the + beaches of Corsica. I realised that I could live differently. (read summer of '75)

Many years and many lives later, I became a proud French + citizen and inhabitant of Brittany. +

Computers and stuff

+ My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, although I used a Burroughs TC500 + terminal in 1974 at Barclays.

In the 80s, I wrote a Morse code + decoder in Locomotive basic on an Amstrad CPC464 for my shortwave radio + and read clear text messages from the French Navy in Toulon. I also built + billing spreadsheets in Multiplan on an IBM PC for a laundry serving + regional hospitals.

In the early 90s, I discovered Linux with a + copy of MNIS Linux because I didn't want to pay for Windows 95. Then came + the discovery of the Internet with a modem! I cobbled together an intranet + at work using Minitels and home-made electronics, but Windows/Netware was + preferred by my employer. Later the cost of Netware led me to replace + Netware with Mars-nwe, a Netware clone for Linux with dual boot Windows + 3.1/Linux clients. I also wrote a + luxury goods label printing app + in Applixware 4.41.

I wrote my first website in 1994, and in + 1999, I became both system administrator and support technician for the + French branch of an American software company, where I encountered Unix + AIX, IRIX, Solaris and HP-UX. Two years later, I was appointed sales + manager in France, then in Europe. A highly unlikely combination of + technician and sales, but one that worked well. +

+

+ In the meantime, I opened my own computer repair shop, wrote + a licence management application, a web CRM application, a number of + websites, and a few web applications. +

+ Then I retired. +

+ I'd been working in IT for 35 years, so I + turned to woodworking for a bit of creativity. I also built my own tools + such as a lathe and bandsaw. The advantage of woodworking over IT is that + you obtain a finished object that isn't obsolete after 5 minutes, and can + last for... well, longer than me. +

+ Birch bowl with pyrograving +

+ See my page at L'Air du Bois +