About my work

About my work

“Can I help you?”

The following text is an informal career description, but there is also
a formal Curriculum Vitæ (MS WinWord 8/9 document).

From 1988 until 1995 I worked in technical support, firstly in the Isle
of Man for CSL Delta and DigiCom Systems, both VARs, then in London for
Micro Anvika. After this, I moved over to contract end-user support for
Newton Investment Management before being "headhunted" by Alfred Berg -
then part of Volvo - accepting a position as their IT Manager.

With my tech-support hat on, I mainly work with PCs - operating systems
and platforms include:

Windows 3.x
Windows 95/98/ME
Windows NT 3/4
Windows 2000
Apple Macintosh
UNIX including Linux, SCO, Solaris and AIX
Compaq OpenVMS
and many more, including lots that are now obsolete

Given the increasingly forgiving and idiot-proof nature of modern PCs I
tend to focus more on communications and networking these days.

In early 1995, I started a move into journalism when I accepted the job
of Labs Manager at PC Pro magazine, then on only its 8th issue. After a
period of some nine months running Pro's small in-house testing labs, I
became full-time Technical Writer on the magazine's staff. I worked for
the most part on the Labs section of the magazine (the large group-test
run every month), writing reviews of PCs, monitors, scanners, printers,
and whatever else that month's Labs covered. Some of these reviews have
been reproduced in the contents section of this site. I also wrote some
other pieces for PC Pro during this time, including standalone software
and hardware reviews, news items, and features work, including box-outs
and main copy, both for PC Pro and its occasional networking supplement
NetworkPro. Non-writing work included proofreading, features layout and
editing, and extracting the code listings from columns for inclusion on
the magazine's cover CD. A further non-journalistic rôle was running PC
Pro's own LANs, comprising the Labs one - a changing population of test
PCs, running Novell Netware 4.1 - and the Editorial LAN, comprising PCs
and Macs linked to two servers, an Apple with AppleShare and a 486 with
Windows NT Server. However, as Dennis Publishing is integrating all its
magazines' LANs into a single, company-wide network, this job was being
eroded out of existence.

I presented a seminar for PC Pro (entitled Networks & Operating Systems
- The Business Decision) at the 1996 Windows Show, presented help work-
shops for PC Pro on the Microsoft Network and appeared several times on
the Adrian Love show on BBC Radio South-Eastern.

I left PC Pro at the end of October 1996. I now work freelance, both as
a journalist and computer consultant. I have had work published in most
of the UK's leading computer magazines, including, respectively:

PC Pro
The Mac
MacUser
Network News
PC Magazine
PC Advisor
Personal Computer World
PC Network Advisor
IT Support Advisor
PC Gear

I also contribute to Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association.

Although I enjoy programming, it's not a particular forté of mine - but
I have experience in BASIC, FORTRAN and Pascal, as well DCL and the DOS
batch language. I enjoy playing with fractals, artificial life etc. and
under the byline of Heathercliffe Software, I wrote and sold a suite of
fractal image generators for the PC, PCW, Mac and Spectrum. I killed it
off when FractInt came out, but I'm currently developing a Visual Basic
version as a Windows screensaver.

I am available at short notice for any work that the above suggests. My
main email address is the CIX one, but you should try the others if you
get no response from there - I may be unable to check it. Those who are
more traditionalist can telephone 020-8675-2135. As well as journalism,
I'm available for consultancy, support, training, and advice, both on a
freelance pro rata basis and on contract. Please ask for pricing or any
further information. A note for commissioning editors: reviews, news or
features work is always welcome, and I can work to very short deadlines
if necessary!