Of all the web sites on all the hosts in all the world, you browse onto mine ...With apologies to Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca
"Et tu, Ronan?" I'm afraid so -- yet another home page. Nobody forced you
to come here, though: you might like to go to
the generic home page
instead... Or if you're looking for some info that might be vaguely useful,
try my Barbara Hambly page.
Help for the lost:
If you were looking for Ronan Keating, try the
B_o_y_z_o_n_e site.
If you came here searching for Tracy Lord, you probably want
T_r_a_c_i__L_o_r_d_s ...
<rant>
No.6: What do you want?
No.2: Information.
This page is not "enhanced" for any particular browser; this attitude that
"if you haven't upgraded your software in the last six weeks, you're out
of the game" really annoys me! So, it doesn't have: blinking text, tables,
frames, clickable maps, animated GIFs, or, especially, JavaScript scrolling
messages (I hate those); or anything else that's this month's newest
"hot" thing. There aren't even any in-line images on it.
</rant>
Phew -- that feels better! (We'll draw a discreet veil over the fact that my knowing nothing about web design could also be significant :-)
And now :-
Oh, we're going to talk about me.
Oh goody ...Katharine Hepburn (with heavy sarcasm) as Tracy Lord
in The Philadelphia Story
I worked for eight years in systems support in the Computer Services of Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University), latterly as Systems Manager.
I left there to return to student life at University College London, from which I hold an MSc in Data Communications, Networks, and Distributed Systems (DCNDS), somewhat to my own surprise, if no-one else's.
[My footnote in history: as a result of something I was doing at UCL, I get a name-check in RFC 2032]
Here's a nice bit of sysadmin poignancy, captured (second-hand) from a posting by Peter Gutmann to alt.sysadmin.recovery:
I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week.
Time to die...
[Warning: hyperbole alert!] Sound familiar? See
this quote page
for the original, from one of the most brilliant works of cinema ever created:
Blade Runner.
Hard, cold, dark, glittering, flawed, and made under intense pressure: an
industrial diamond of a film.
I like to watch films, at a cinema of course -- I am a member of the British Film Institute (BFI), and I regularly visit the National Film Theatre (NFT). I'm also a member of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). [Check out The Internet Movie Database, which I link to in various places; maximum excellence.]
At home, I'll relax listening to BBC radio. After years of the Today programme on Radio 4, Tue-Sat mornings between about 7am and 9am now find me listening to a tape of the previous day's afternoon show on Radio 1 with Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley, also known as Scrawn & Lard, who were so brilliant in the days when they did the Graveyard Shift, from 10pm to midnight, that they even have their own Usenet newsgroup, created by their adoring fans. If you have RealAudio facilities, you can listen to the Radio 1 audio stream.
In the evenings, I'll be listening to the radio again, or some music, and perhaps doing a crossword or reading a good book. I like SF and Fantasy, (or try here), favourite authors being Barbara Hambly, Lois McMaster Bujold, Tim Powers, Terry Pratchett, and lots of others. I also enjoy comics by writers such as Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Grant Morrison, and so on.
Recently, I've discovered the joys of clubbing, so at the weekends I might be found shuffling around a dancefloor at Submaniac, Trade, Undertow, or wherever else I like the look of at the time: hardhouse/NRG and uplifting trance are my usual styles, with occasional forays into old skool, techno, happy hardcore, etc. I also hang out in the newsgroup uk.music.rave.
For several years I have attended the annual British National Science Fiction
Convention, the EasterCon. The 1998 Con was
Intuition,
the 1999 Con was Reconvene, in 2000 it was
2Kon,
and in 2001 it will be
Paragon.
[Susan Stepney's
SF page points at her
list of interesting convention reports, amongst other SF-related things]
Incidentally, if you've ever wondered what the Endless Stair in Moria is like, (the one Gandalf uses in Lord of the Rings), try going up the spiral staircase at Russell Square underground station... (see this 19kbyte GIF map of the area around ULCC).
WARNING: Unsolicited commercial e-mail is NOT WELCOME!
E-mail: R.Flood@noc.ulcc.ac.uk (preferred)
Post: ULCC, 20 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1DZ, UK
Final filmic thing, from the stunning
Romeo + Juliet:
ANCHORWOMAN (to camera)Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
BLACK SCREEN.
HOLD A BEAT.
END CREDITS (over Exit Music by Radiohead -- searing).
Link to the ULCC home page, and to the wendy home page.