A lot of personal websites seem to be nothing much more than pointers to other sites, which in turn are nothing but pointers ad infinitum. I've got a lot of pointers here on my pages too, but I also want to contribute some original material to the Web. All of this can be reached through my "Links" pages, but here it is in isolation to make it easier to find.

Professional

My professional expertise is in computer systems architecture. I have a particular interest in the problems of integrating the variety of disparate systems which most large companies have. Along with my colleague Peter Burke, I wrote some papers on how we approached this when we worked at Mercury Communications, a telecommunications company in the UK.

The papers are:

DCE experiences. - Covers the thinking and experiences which led to our adoption of 3LA and DCE

Mercury's Experiences With Three-layer Architectures - Updates the above paper, and details some actual projects

Recreational

One of the things I enjoy doing in my spare time is mountain biking. I've done various trips in various countries, and I've got a couple of the trip reports here. If you're interested in the tale of an off-road circuit of England's Lake District, click here to read the Lakeland Loop story. I have also done a bike trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon - there are some photos from that trip here too.

Still on a cycling theme, I also maintain a list of cycle tour operators for those who are interested in doing an organised trip.

I am also attempting to teach myself Java. So far, all I've done is to modify a calculator program so that it does some unit conversions, but you have to start somewhere.

On a completely different tack, I also maintain a page for the Inverlochy Art School which my father is involved with in New Zealand.

The last thing will be of no conceivable interest to anybody other than those involved, but I've also got a record of all the places I've been skiing in the last few years.

Last updated: 28 June 2000