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  |   | Now I'm not the kind of person who likes to use their homepage as a "Find out all about James" information centre, so here's the briefest outline as to who I am and what I'm up to. First of all, I was born in England, and at the age of 9, moved to South Africa where I did some of my schooling. I moved to Chicago in America for a year and then returned to England where I've been ever since. I went to Imperial College and obtained a degree in Materials Science, and then, oddly enough, moved off into Chartered Accountancy. Geez ... was that dull or what?! I returned to Imperial after a year and gained a Ph.D. in Materials Science, followed by 2 years post-doctoral research. Then I headed off to study Dentistry at Guy's Hospital (no .. that's not Kings thankyou very much!) in London, and now hopefully, I've sat the last ever exam in my life! Recently, I fell totally in love with Kay, a friend of mine who I'd known through my Dentistry course, and yet had hardly spoken to her whilst we were on the course. We went away to go to a friend's wedding, fell madly in love, and what more can I say? A romantic dream come true! What else can I tell you at this point? Maybe you'd like to see a picture of Bandit and Roscoe, the two wonderful dogs I grew up with?Well, that's enough of an introduction: let's get onto hobbies, links and the generally more interesting!   |   |   |
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..and finally For all you really keen flight sim fans, there's nothing better than the real thing, so here are some links to various military aircraft sites and image libraries. As I find more good ones, I'll add their links to the list.   |
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First and foremost, this is the home of Fox Two Pro and Fox Two, applications I have developed to help Thrustmaster owners program their hardware. Latest news: Fox Two Pro is now shipping !!!!! Fox Two - that's rather an odd name isn't it James? Now look here, it's better than what I originally came up with: ATE '98, an abbreviation of Another Thrustmaster Editor. I got my inspiration, if you can call it that, from watching too many films with fighter jets firing missiles away and shouting "Fox Two". Fox Two came about not only because I've always wanted a text editor dedicated to Thrustmaster programming, but also from my experience in developing PilotADE, an application for helping programmers develop apps for the brilliant US Robotics PalmPilot. And as a dental student, I have to say my PalmPilot is totally indispensable. Take a look at one next time you're out shopping. If you're interested in taking a look at Fox Two Pro, then head off to my Fox Two Pro page and see what it's all about. If you'd rather stand up, put your head between your legs, waggle your ears and shout "wibble" continuously, then apart from gaining my total admiration for reading this gibberish the wrong way up, might I suggest that you seek medical help sooner rather than later? Wibble ... errr .... Dive city Another hobby of mine is scuba diving (did you know that scuba stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus?), and my first dive after I qualified was a diver's dream come true. Read all about it on my diving page. Note that it's a complete myth that scuba stands for Sinking 'Cause Underwent BSAC Acreditation. If you didn't understand that joke and you're a diver, congratulations on being trained the thinking man's way! Astronomy This is no place for hangups, but with this fascinating subject, size is everything. I've got a 10 inch f4.3 reflecting telescope, and no matter how disinterested you are in astronomy, when you point a beast like that at the stars, you can't help but be amazed at the Universe we live in. Head on over to my Astronomy page for more on such matters. South Africa The most beautiful country in the world, I miss not being there a hell of a lot. It's a stunning place, and Cape Town is unbelievable. See what I have to say about SA here. Chickens So why did that chicken cross the road? Doesn't it depend on the chicken? Search me ... There's a lot of information on the net. Finding it of course is another matter! If you're searching the net, then I suggest you start your hunting by asking Jeeves. Or why not grab yourself a copy of WebFerret from these guys. If you're looking for software, then I always start at Tucows or Stroud's site. For drivers, I tend to look at Win95.com, and if it's files in general you're after, then find them using Filez.com or FTPsearch.   |
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Visual Basic
Now I'm old enough to remember the days of the Sinclair ZX80, Tandy TRS 80, Commodore PET and the BBC computers, and to have witnessed the technology explosion, from these humble machines to today's powerhouses is nothing short of breath taking. But funnily enough, I'm still glad to see my favourite language BASIC is hanging in there. I spend a lot of my time programming, using Microsoft Visual Basic 5 Professional, and it's gorgeous. It may not produce the smallest or fastest apps, (I remember the 1Kb limit on the PET very well!) but it certainly is the fastest development language. You can create a beefy app much quicker than it would take you in something like C. And of course, the reality is that unless you're programming games or heavily intensive graphics apps, most of the time the program sits idle waiting for the user to do something, and not the other way round. Anyway, here are my VB links I use a lot - if you're a VB programmer, I thoroughly recommend you explore these sites as they contain code and controls that will enhance your programming ability greatly.
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'Friends, Romans, Countrymen ...err...'
If you're expecting a long list of links to my friends' homepages, forget it. Don't get me wrong - they're very intelligent people. It's just that their knowledge of setting up homepages is actually less than their knowledge of the lesser spotted, artichoke eating, rabbit's mating call. Still, a few of them do know what they're doing, so let me introduce them ...
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On my travels ...
I've come across some interesting sites, so in no particular order ....
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If you feel a compelling urge to send me some e-mail, or if you just feel that you need someone to listen to your ideas about trying to cross breed carrots and brussel sprouts, then here's my e-mail address: nutty@flyfoxy.com If for any reason this address keeps bouncing, you can mail me using my secondary e-mail address: jameshallows@blueyonder.co.uk If you enjoy sending e-mails full of text but you find that all you can manage to write is usually only one line, then why not just encrypt them with PGP? Yes, now you too can enjoy generating e-mails full of wonderful garbage that'll give your spell checker hours of fun. If you're going to send me encrypted mail, here's my Diffie-Hellman Public Key for PGP 5.0. (Thanks Diffie - see you next week sometime.) If you don't have PGP and can't get hold of it, begin an e-mail with "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----" and then dance around on your keyboard for an hour. It'll look just the same!
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If you've noticed a certain similarity between my pages and those belonging to Chris Carter, then speculate no longer I tell you. I can assure you that this is most certainly a blatant example of copying someone else's hard work because I was so damned impressed with their layout and I couldn't for the life of me work out how they'd done it. However, this is in no way any reason to feel that Chris has been hard done by and ought to be held in any esteem whatsoever. Why? Well, this git just landed a job in Hawaii working on some of the sexiest telescopes on this planet, which in my book, makes him a justifiable target for any abuse that comes his way. And believe me, if you'd seen his haircut recently ...... (if anyone knows a site which covers the history of mop design, please send me that link for inclusion here) ....But seriously, I jest - if you want to see one of the most impressive sites by an individual whose pages dedicated to Disney's Beauty and the Beast are nothing short of inspirational, go and visit his site. It really is that good. Just don't forget the abuse!! :) |
Did you know that you're not the first buddy to drop by and laugh at my HTML inadequacies? No? Well in fact, you're joining a growing number of other lost souls - to be precise, since May 8th 1996 according to Web Counter. And they're still laughing. But that's the beauty of the net. I know they're out there, but I can't hear them. I hope your life is now more complete. And do stop laughing, I'm developing a complex ... err ..... This page is best viewed at 1024 by 768 or higher, 24bit colour, and with your eyes open. |