Welcome

I am Andy and this is a small site I created showing some of the small projects I have carried out in various systems.

The first language I used was basic on what I believe was a DEC Prime system at college when studying Applied Biology. After completing that course I bought a Sinclair Spectrum (shows my age) and wrote programs on that as well as playing games. I then took up 'Computer Studies' at night school where I was introduced to Pascal and Borlands version of it called Turbo Pascal. We also touched on Modula 2 (based on Pascal) and some simple use of assembler on a BBC computer.

I was then supported to go to complete a HNC, HND and then Degree. During this course we studied some more assembler and also 'C', as well as other non-exciting subjects. Some of these lectures were definitely snooze-fest time, e.g. database design "this is my book and I will read from it" style of lecturing.

At work, we started to develop a patient management system using dbase and the clipper programming language. We later changed this to use Microsoft Visual Basic version 1, which had no inbuilt database support. We also implemented a Netware v3 network, including getting the cabling layed and terminating it ourselves. This continued until the Trust I was in was merged with another one and my IT manager was kicked out to be replaced by a paper-pushing 'yes' man. I was then moved into systems support and network management. With the usual management re-jiggles my post was removed but a lower one was made available to me. Hence I moved out into the public sector in London. My first task was editing code which had been written by my previous IT manager (small world).

I am an IT professional, in so far as I get paid to carry out IT Support (and almost anything else) for my current company [e.g. he does 'it' ☺ ]. I do not do as much development as I used to so this is sort of my release.