 Me with my Gold Star
100HF #780234
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HI! I'm Derek and I'm an ex fed-up Senior Lecturer in Chemistry. Life
was getting hard - anyone who has read Scott Adams' The Dilbert
Principle (ISBN 0-88730-787-6) will know what I mean - but I managed
to get early retirement in February 1994 at age 57.
I'm fortunate to have been involved in a variety of interests, hobbies
and pastimes, including Scouting (Wood Badge from Gilwell Park), Amateur
Radio (G4UXD), Blasting, Pot-holing (spelunking) (one time member of
the Northern Pennine Club and Yorkshire Ramblers Club) which
produced major original explorations (including the
Discovery
of Link Pot,
Link
Pot Exploration-1,
exploration-2
and Tatham Wife Hole), a
bit
of filming, Blasting (for cave exploration), Computing, Programming,
Caravanning, French Cuisine and tasting wine in the French vineyards. (The
latter, together with the steady decline in caving and increased sitting
in front of rigs and computers has done nothing for my figure - in my serious
caving days I could get through 8", but 12" would be nearer the mark
now!)
In the early 60's I became interested in Folk Music, playing 5-string
banjo to accompany my wife Jean. Bluegrass became an interest from the very
early Edale Bluegrass
Festival days but it was more recently that I started playing bluegrass,
after many years not playing at all. I've resigned myself to the fact that
I'll never be much good at it because I have too many other interests, but
that doesn't stop Jean and I running a
Bluegrass Club in
Chester, nor my being on the Committee (board) of the British Bluegrass
Music Association, onetime Webmaster for the BBMA, and running the
North West Bluegrass News
magazine.
An unlikely interest is in being the President (1997-2007) of
The Association
for The Centre of The Universe. If nothing else, the ACU has a nice
Home Page! And nosey visitors might like some of our private
photo
albums... There's a lot of interesting pix there - including us
operating from the Radio Room of a famous WWII submarine in San Francisco
Bay, and Jean chatting up Edward Teller (member of the Manhatten atom
bomb project and father of the hydrogen or 'super' bomb).
My Morse tutor started out as a simple program on a BBC computer to help
my XYL Jean, G4WXL, to learn Morse for her test.
It just developed and expanded until it became quite powerful and
well-acclaimed. Of course, what was
possible was limited by the capacity of a BBC, but the arrival of PC computers
removed that restriction. I learned to program in Pascal and developed the
Morse 'Supa-Tuta' over the years into the powerful, sophisticated program
that it now is - the one that others are measured by.
And why the banjo photo? Well, you've all got better rigs that me...
<g>
Updated 13th November 2007
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