I have always worked and lived in Bristol (UK). My current job is in Airbus UK as a manufacturing engineer,
I am one of the team responsible for NC programming the prismatic parts that go into our current fleet of aircraft. We use a CAD/CAM system called NCL which is based on an old system called APT and uses a vague relative of a language called Basic.
In the not-so-distant future we will be migrating to a system called CATIA with inputs from a KBE system called ICAD. Only time will tell how successful this technological jump will be. Whatever programming software we use we always verify and check our output on a sort of virtual reality machine, which enables us to check for errors, collosions and also to check the dimensional accuracy of the cut components. The software we use for this is called Vericut and is supplied by a company called CGTech. It's a pretty good job really, as I get to play with UNIX Sun Ultra 60's all day as well as the normal playing on the NT workstation!
I enjoy having a good time especially if it involves lager !! My spare time (if I can make any) is spent in various ways, one of my favorite pastimes is walking, I never used to do any but since we bought our Seefeld Boxer Dog (Henry) I've gradually got into it over the last three years, I find it very relaxing after a hard day in the office ! I'm also lucky enough to live right next to the river so a few years ago I bought a couple of canoes and I've spent many a sunny Friday afternoon paddling up to one of my local pubs (it always seems a bit harder coming back, perhaps it's uphill !!). A lot of my weekends are spent mountain biking all over the South West - I bought an OS book of rides - what a great investment that was. My brother-in-law and I have had hours of fun (and pain) following these routes. Our aim was to ride all through the winter to try and keep us fit so we could perhaps start the season with a couple of endurance races. Well a great idea BUT the dreaded foot and mouth disease broke out and that was the end of our master plan. I still manage to get some evening riding in as they have re-opened the woods in Conham River Park which is about 2 minutes on bike from my house.
I recently completed an HNC in Computing at the University of the West of England, where they taught me all they could about computing - !!!??? I'm do enjoy learning but unfortunately it's not by sitting down and reading the manual! - you know what I mean - that would probably explain why I have become so quick at re-installing operating systems and am very critical about backing up my data !!!!!!!!!!!
Oh just a quick note: If you're out there Steve "HI" .......