Ron Hughes
IntroductionThis page is primarily about me, but first a word or two about my family. I am married to Liz, who was a science teacher. We have two children, Laura (born 27 September 1981) and Melvyn (born 15 May 1984). Laura trained as a paediatric nurse at South Bank University, and worked as a Paediatric Staff Nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. She now has two children of her own, Courtney (born 25 November 2005) and William (born 8 April 2009). Laura is an Ofsted Registered Childminder and an accredited member of the quality assured West Sussex Children Come First Childminding Network, and runs her own childminding business called Bubbles at Home. Melvyn studied business management at Kingston University, and is now studying osteopathy at the European School of Osteopathy. We had a Border Collie, called Ayla, which died in December 2009. She was named after the heroine in Jean Auel's books. Our cat Clio, which spent the last part of her life living with Laura in the UK, was named after one of the nine Muses, patron of history, in Greek mythology. We now have another cat, called Trixie, and a Labrador cross called Gitane (ie Gypsy in French) which we adopted from the SPA animal refuge in Brive-la-Gaillarde. I ran an IT business in the UK for 14 years, which provided employment for 6 people. During the first 4 years, I provided consultancy for local SMEs and ran my own PC dealership. Then I spent ten years doing IT consultancy for HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. I was contracted by them to develop, support and market a range of electronic reference products worldwide (based on Collins dictionaries) and to build an international mail-order fulfilment business. I also licensed electronic reference data, on HCP's behalf. Since 1997, I have built a number of websites for small businesses and family members. Most of the websites are now defunct. Later, I spent three years working for a Brighton-based software company called Insurecom, that developed e-commerce applications for the insurance industry. Initially, I was employed as a Project Manager, but later worked as a Development Control Manager, when I took on the role of quality assurance manager in their software development team. I helped the company gain its ISO 9001 and TickIT accreditations, and was responsible for ensuring that its software products complied with the international quality standard ISO 9000 throughout the full project lifecycle, maintaining the change control system, developing quality assurance procedures, etc. However, insurE-com downsized during 2003 making my and three other managerial positions redundant, consequently I decided to return to self-employment. I provided various IT services: consultancy, tuition, website design and development, site reviews, project management and technical writing, and was available for work on a freelance or contract basis. I trained with The National Tutor Service, so was qualified to provide online IT tuition on behalf of LearnDirect, and also worked as an accredited IT consultant for the Enterprise Centre. While working as a freelance IT consultant for The Enterprise Centre (2004-2005), my health continued to deteriorate so we relocated to France (la Corrèze) in October 2005. I gained more than 25 years experience in IT and over 20 years management experience during my career working in the electronics industry, for a leading university and in commerce, in the UK. ⇧EducationAcademic qualifications: Postgraduate Certificate in Software Engineering awarded in 2006 (The University of Brighton)
OCN
Computer Programming in Java (B0738) 2004 IT training courses:
ASP (Silicon Beach Centre) 2004
Career
⇧ Old CV (or résumé)⇧Current IT experience
⇧ Recent IT experience
⇧ Other IT experienceI first became interested in digital electronics during the late 1960s, and started using computers in my work during the early 1970s, at the University of London, which eventually developed into a lifelong interest. My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX81, which I assembled from a kit of components in the early 1980s. Later I bought a Camputers Lynx, and later still a BBC Model B. I ran adult education evening classes in computing at Rydon Community School in the early 1980s, using BBC Model B micros. I first used an IBM PC clone in 1986, set up and ran my own PC dealership [1986-1990], and have used a wide variety of programming, markup, scripting and modelling languages, including object-oriented (O-O) languages such as C++, VB and Java, plus various operating systems.
BookDuring 1986, I bought an Amstrad PCW8256 and wrote a book called Word Processing with Amstrad - The PCW8256/8512 [ISBN 0-333-42792-0], about the word processor called LocoScript. My book, which included sections on BASIC, CP/M Plus and LOGO, was published by Macmillan Education Ltd in 1986. It was subsequently translated into Spanish and distributed in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Columbia and Chile.
Websites (that I still maintain)⇧ Illness and early retirementI have suffered from severe unilateral headaches and facial pain episodically, throughout most of my adult life, but around the turn of the millennium the frequency of the attacks gradually increased, so that eventually I was in constant pain (with intensity rising and then falling to a more tolerable level between attacks). For many years the cause of the pain was misdiagnosed and went untreated. Eventually, in 2009, after various scans, I was formally diagnosed by a neurologist as suffering from the chronic form of a rare neurological disease called cluster headache syndrome, which led to me take early retirement. In French, this condition is known as algie vasculaire de la face. Neither the English nor the French name for the condition is particularly appropriate. This wretched disease has diminished the quality of my life, but I remain active between the crippling attacks of pain, and try to keep as busy as possible. ⇧Current studies
⇧ Interests and hobbiesI love books, both reading and collecting them. My idea of a dream holiday would be to tour all of the world's booktowns. If you are a bibliophile, don't miss the books section of my ecelectic links page. ⇧Weather stationI installed a Davis Vantage Vue weather station in our garden, at the beginning of 2012. Initially, I used a WeatherLink data logger and the accompanying Windows software to create a basic website. However, I now use wview to maintain my current weather website. Its Linux daemons enable a more sophisticated website to be updated virtually in real time. Currently, wview is running on my laptop, but I am working on transferring it to an a dedicated nettop computer (ie Asus EeeBox PC Model EB1007). ⇧Places where I have lived in the past
Where I live nowLatronche in the département of la Corrèze, France.Links⇧ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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