Colin
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Electronics Engineer, 3D graphics creator, reggae and ska lover
Male
50 years old
London
United Kingdom
Last Login: 4/5/2009
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Colin's Interests
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| General | Electronic Engineering, Software (e.g. C, C++, embedded programming, XHTML, CSS, Javascript), 3D graphic rendering (e.g. POV-RAY) etc. | | Music | Classic rock and pop music from the sixties and seventies, such as David Bowie, Marc Bolan; Reggae by people like Prince Far I, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Dennis Brown, Black Slate, Misty in Roots, Bob Marley (My favourites: Exodus, Could You Be Loved, Waiting In Vain, Is This Love. It bothers me that of all the Bob Marley tracks there are, popular radio stations always play a very limited selection... of course this happens with many artists.) and many other artists, punk and ska from 1977 to the eighties, e.g. the Sex Pistols, the Stranglers, the Special, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and classic ska and reggae e.g. Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, the Skatalites, Dave and Ansel Collins, Jimmy Cliff, etc. etc... and what about new music, I hear you say? Well, as a long time fan of John Peel, who never stopped listening to new music, I'm not going to stop listening to new music any time soon even if there's stuff I don't like (you know, there has always been a lot of crap mixed with the good). In the last year or so two that come to mind are Damien Marley's "Welcome to Jamrock" and Lily Allen's LDN and Smile. I also loved how Finnish Death Metal band Lordi shook up the Eurovision Song Contest! Bring on the Rockalypse! Hahaha! | | Movies | Stanley Kubrick: Barry Lyndon, 2001, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange. Friday the Thirteenth. Dirty Harry. The Terminator. Total Recall. The Da Vinci Code. Horror movies with Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee. Dracula, Van Helsing. The Producers (with Zero Mostel). Went to see "Tokyo Drift", with my son, for his birthday, in 2006! | | Television | Take Your Pick [do I really remember that?], Monty Python, The Prisoner, The Avengers, Up Pompeii!, Mission Impossible (the original TV series, not the film), Please, Sir!, Harry Worth, The Benny Hill Show, The Dick Emery Show, Tommy Cooper, The Goodies, Tales of the Unexpected, The Golden Shot, Dad's Army, On The Buses, Dave Allen, The Morecambe And Wise Show, The Two Ronnies, The Kenny Everett Video Show, Q8 [and any other Spike Milligan work], Whoops Apocalypse, Not the Nine O' Clock News, Mr Bean, Absolutely Fabulous, The Young Ones, Spitting Image, Porridge, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Father Ted, Little Britain, Dr Who, Celebrity Big Brother, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes [and similar] | | Books | Science Fiction by authors: H. G. Wells, George Orwell, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Peter F. Hamilton, Larry Niven, Jack Vance, Vernor Vinge, Brian W. Aldiss, Iain M. Banks, Ben Bova, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Jerry Pournelle, Gregory Benford, E. E. "Doc" Smith; Fantasy: Piers Anthony. Also occasional horror and detective stories including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. | | Heroes | Nikolai Tesla; Thomas Alva Edison; Lee de Forest; Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain; John von Neumann; Alan Turing; Niklaus Wirth; Vinton Cerf.
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| Groups:
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ham radio opperators unite, Shortwave Radio Listening (SWLing), Amateur radio, i love my maine coon, Amateur Radio, Reggae Connect
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Colin's Details
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| Status: | Married | | Here for: | Networking, Friends | | Orientation: | Straight | | Hometown: | London | | Body type: | Average | | Ethnicity: | White / Caucasian | | Zodiac Sign: | Gemini | | Smoke / Drink: | No / Yes | | Children: | Proud parent | | Education: | College graduate | | Occupation: | Engineer |
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Colin's Latest Blog Entry
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The British International Motor Show 2006
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Audio Amplifiers using the 833A/GU-48 valve [tube]
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The magic of whinging... Computer Voodoo
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Going Downtown in a bus in Kingston Jamaica
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Morse Code and Text Messaging
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Colin's Blurbs |
About me:
I've been interested in science, particularly electronics and software, since I was a kid in primary school. That goes back to around 1970 or so. I began by collecting scrap radios and television parts from the alleys around my grandparents' and other relations houses, and people soon started giving me bits and pieces. At first I collected parts such as valves (known as tubes to Americans) and later I started learning how to make things work. I got a Class B amateur radio licence in 1974 and upgraded to Class A when I was at University, by taking lessons in Morse Code from a retired gent.
I started my dabbling in practical electronics by building things like amplifiers, RF PAs and oscillators using valves. I read old valve textbooks from cover to cover before learning about semiconductor technology. I've been thinking about building a valve audio amplifier to replace my own one which is on its last legs. If anyone is interested then maybe I'll make them for sale. It would be designed for domestic and portable use, with an output stage switchable between different modes (i.e. tetrode/triode/linearised), the usual selection of inputs and some built-in test facilities.
After graduation I spend a couple of decades working for the laboratories where the X-Ray body scanner was invented, and the guy who recommended me for hiring was himself recommended by the inventor of the body scanner. Sadly those laboratories are now defunct.
One of my prized possessions acquired around 1973 is an Army radio, the "Reception Set R107", made around 1941, which still works.
My earliest musical taste was strongly influenced by the Beatles, i.e. "Twist and Shout", "I wanna hold your hand", "She loves you", and an assortment of other 60s pop records, but I began getting really interested in music in the 1970s with bands such as Slade, Wizzard, T Rex, David Bowie, Queen etc. and I developed a particular liking for reggae music, including the now largely forgotten Judge Dread (the late Alexander Hughes) most of whose records were banned on the BBC... usually a sure fire guarantee of chart success... because of their risque lyrics. But I also liked Jamaican-style reggae from Jamaican, UK, and US based artists including Prince Far I, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Dennis Brown, and a great many more. When punk music came along, I went to see the Sex Pistols and the Stranglers. I've always had some kind of interest in new music, new at the time that is, and still like to hear what's coming up from the latest batch of new artists. Ska had a revival when I was at University and I enjoyed artists like The Special AKA (they dropped the "AKA"), The Selecter and Madness, and discovered lots of old ska tunes that had influenced those bands, which were re-released at the time on LPs such as "Club Ska 67". In the 80s I often listened to reggae music on Radio London (Tony Williams, Reggae Rockers) and also liked the "Lovers Rock" genre that turned up then. I also was a regular listener to John Peel whose musical tastes are of course legendary and he always had a spot for some hard-core reggae music. I like some R&B and hip-hop tracks but most drum-and-bass, house, garage etc. dance type tracks go over my head (not being my generation on the dance floor).
When at Hull University, I did a bit of DJ work for the Student's Union Technical Committee, and mystified a lot of students by playing a lot of reggae dub plates (I once DJd to the audience before a Slade gig).
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My website:
http://www.cjseymour.plus.com/
If anyone's interested in some 3D rendered graphics, electronic or software engineering, click on the "ad" there, at the top right. That's another of my sites.
I'm planning to offer website design/repair/update services for around £99 for a design with a general styling and a reasonable number of pages that follow the same styling. If you're interested let me know what sort of requirements you have. I've been coding my own webpages since 1995 and I am very familiar with HTML, XHTML, Javascript and CSS technologies and can apply that to create whatever style and format you require. Here is a blurb on my coding philosophy:
"High Quality doesn't just mean looking good. It also means conforming to web standards. All our work is written and tested to meet XHTML/XML, Javascript, and CSS standards. We always work to XHTML 1.0 Transitional or later standards, unless HTML is required for legacy support or customer requirements. To ensure that your webpage is compatible with the widest range of browsers, and remains compatible with new software releases, it is important to comply to web standards, and avoid browser-specific mark-ups that may break with the latest browser release."
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Who I'd like to meet:
Anybody with a sufficiently common interest, anyone interested in what I do, anyone who does stuff that I relate to in some small way.
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Typical Example of Favrit Music:
This is a clipping from Sounds Magazine's Rock'n'Roll Zoo strip, from around 1980, a strip by Savage Pencil (Edwin Poucey) who started it while at the Royal College Of Art. I had this on a wall somewhere to illustrate my favourite music!
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Rock 'N' Roll History:
The gig at Brunel University, Middlesex, which was one of the Sex Pistols' last shows in the UK, was apparently "marred by crowd violence and eventually cut short", but I don't remember any of that... I do remember that there
was a pretty heavy crowd pressing against the doors before the concert, and the doors may have been damaged... none of my doing though, I am a peace loving person! This was one of the most awesome concerts I ever went to. All the tickets were ripped up into small pieces at the door, but I was able to grab a handful of the pieces from a bucket behind the door guys, and eventually managed to reassemble a couple of them. I sold one for £166.16 in October 2006, but I still have one and a few fragments.
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