A bit about me
Updated Summer 2007 (and slightly in November 2009).
Recently I learned I was very almost rejected for a job I applied for because this site was deemed a bit risque or odd. Further proof that what you say online (in cyberspace) affects your offline (in meatspace) REAL life, alas! So if you are an employer present or future, please resist the inclination to draw conclusions, in particular please do not over-extrapolate the contents of this site with who I am in person (at least when sober :). If anything, this site represents my alter ego. The eccentric side of my nature has been amplified and presented here. Also, most of the content of this site has been created years ago and so represents my alter ego as it was, not necessarily as it is right now. Likewise my opinions evolve faster than I update this site too. In sum, at work I am professional, and in private too I am quintessentially sane. Or at least that's what the voices tell me... I am joking of course. The voices are too.
This site combines my indulgences for writing, flippant philosophy,
art (loosely speaking), web tech and, most of all,
reaching out to you and the planet. The ego dictates that it would be nice to change the world through this site, even
if in subtle ways. But the site does not really represent me, if you see what I mean, as a play does not necessarily represent the playwright. If it did, then would Shakespeare be so enigmatic a fellow? Notice how I subtly compare myself to Shakespeare - the ego knows no shame ;)
Anyway, about me, with some personal info omitted for reasons of privacy...
Hello again, Jim Eadon, English, b. '68
I am the inventor of
www.culica.com games.
If you are involved in a case in family law in the UK, avoid using socicitors, they will make things worse, not better, they do not act in your, nor the children's best interest. See the
Fathers 4 Justice website - read their publication first. The family law system in the UK is seriously broken and dysfunctional, believe me, I'm finding this out most saliently.
My career: Currently I'm a "Technical Architect"
in a powerful computer technology called Java/JEE.
By now
I expect you have gathered that I have merrily
squandered much of my precious time here on Planet Earth
in front of computer screens.
Currently I'm living in Hucknal, UK, but for the last fifteen years I resided in
Newport
Shropshire, an enchanting little county in England (apart, that is, from the prairie-fields farmed areas, and Telford).
Ironbridge, "the birthplace of industry" is only
a few leagues away (although the heavy industry
moved to Manchester and Birmingham, fortuitously preserving the ancient industryscape). Work took
me to various places and countries, often central London. One of these London projects
coincided with the 7/7 London Terror bombings: my
strange experience of the wrath of mighty Allah against the infidel
(and as an English (Anglo-Saxon) atheist, I'm 110% infidel)
is related
here.
In the deepening past I graduated from Sheffield University with a
BSc degree in Physics and an MSc from Newcastle
Upon Tyne University in solid state physics/computer
science, but unfortunately the real world had
to be confronted eventually. I landed a job
at a splendid company called
Bailey
Automation and wrote computer algorithms
to automate factories and power stations etc.
Loosely speaking, control systems are robots,
as I explain
here.
At this very moment those machines I worked on are possibly still busy
churning out cigarettes (to add to my sins, although I am
anti-tobacco,
I spent three weeks
working
at a cigarette factory), oil, electricity,
fish oil, and food additives derived from
seaweed.
(No kidding! Seaweed is the source of the alginate
they use to make ice cream, sauces, jellies,
cakes, pies and virtually all mass-manufactured
food with a soft filling. Nothing wrong with
sea weed though. The chemicals they use
to process it are the true villains. And
the
crap they put in food is a hazard).
After a few years I acquired a job in London
at an intriguing company then called Scheduling Technology
Group (STG: they've since been swallowed by
Manugistics). At STG I joined
a team that had invented novel industrial scheduling software,
so that both robots and humans would know when
to make what where and, surprisingly importantly, when NOT to work.
This was great fun but
for personal reasons I had to quit after a couple of years.
I still have my base in green and pleasant Shropshire.
Prior to my life as a self-employed contractor,
I was employed by an American mega-corp,
EDS.
I spend my spare time: writing (I've put
my prototype novel online, though I am radically altering it at the mo)
listening to (and composing, or at least I used to) music; drawing;
art; photography; badminton, squash and world domination.
I see a movie now and then and perhaps bitch
about it pointlessly on this very site - (see
Movies).
Worse, I play
chess,
from time to time. For a very short time I was addicted to a multiplayer computer game called Counterstrike. Just say no, kids. Computer games do not appeal to me any more, but it was mind-blowing to be a kid in the 80's when they were still being invented and written by single authors, often kids in bedrooms.
I am enjoying my computer again. Switched permanently over to Linux after the evil reign of Microsoft got tiresome circa 1999. Praise the gods for the wonderful rise of
Open
Source, I have never looked back.
To bust the stress of existence,
I indulge in a spot of
yoga, circuit training, aerobics and other group classes at a gym or club. I attend dance lessons now and again too. My first foray was to learn to salsa but I couldn't quite love it, perhaps because the music, whilst great at first, gets monotonous after a while. So I switched to "ceroc", which is more fun and versatile. I might take up ballroom one day.
This website site chiefly exists in the hope of entertaining
people such as your good self. The dreaded ego might have a hand in it too, we all take a little guilty pleasure from vanity occasionally, and show off a little :) Another beguiling aspect to creating this site is that it's fun to be a part
of this holistic consciousness, this monstrous
Internet. Such a participation is far from a novelty nowadays, as the technological barrier to having an online presence is much lower. This site was forged back in 1998, eons before the age of blogs and MySpace. Ironically, the rise of blog and social networking sites might make homebrewed personal websites like this beast you're reading relatively rare and hence more appreciated. After all, why go through the seriously hard work of designing and coding a site from scratch if you don't have to? For a high quality blog or Social network presence is but a few clicks away. My Facebook presence took about half an hour to create. It doesn't contain much more content than a pic and an invitation to see my real website, but even so sites like Facebook are a powerful temptation if what you want to do is broadcast to the world.
Remember
TV? Who in their right mind watches that crap anymore?
We were mindless, passive consumer-zombies with
no control. Everything we do on the web, however,
has an effect. We
interact with the Web;
we
change the Web; we are
part
of the Web... we
are the Web! Strange
that, because the web is chocker with pornography,
how-to-be-a-terrorist-and-build-a-nuke guides,
and nut cases galore. Where this site fits in
on the scale of immorality, I will leave it
to you to judge.
Mind you I can't help feeling that our ancestors lives were more fulfilled, before the invention of TV, the web and computer games that keep us from socialising.
Although I have a pot-pourri of interests and derive pleasure
from life, much modern life and immorality
repulses me, namely: the self-interested deeds
of shallow, spin-crazed (Blairite)
politicians;
claims/lawsuit culture;
political
correctness; genetically modified food
(unless it is blue, talks has lots of funny
tentacles); Hollywood crassness and its world
stranglehold on movie distribution;
the
nefarious RIAA and the music Biz; fundamentalist religions;
scientology, creationism etc; the apparent
failure of medicine to cure death/senility/colds/hay fever;
and supermarkets. And lo! I do suffer in the dark, damp British winters.
On the one hand, I'm contented with my lot in
life. On the other, I intend to do more with
my life, see more plays, live music gigs, classical
concerts, travel to ever-more exotic countries
and try my hand at novel pursuits, maybe
learn massage, etc. It's always good to shake things up a bit, do you agree?
Hearty wishes,
Jim
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