Alasdair Arthur's Page

<body background="ltblue.gif"> <hr> <h1 align="center">Alasdair Arthur's Home Page</h1> <p align="center"><br> <img src="alasdair.jpg" alt="Alasdair's picture" align="bottom" width="110" height="142"> <br> </p> <hr> <p><br> <img src="speaker.jpg" alt="speaker" align="left" hspace="0" width="32" height="29"><a href="aa.wav">Greetings (16k)</a> </p> <p>My name is Alasdair Arthur and I live in <a HREF="http://www.cats.mcmail.com/AAmap.gif">Barnes</a> in <a HREF="http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/misc/uk/london.html">London</a>. Although I was born in London and have lived here most of my life, I did live for 10 years in <a HREF="http://www.wcc.govt.nz/">Wellington</a>, which is the capital of <a HREF="http://nz.com/nz/">New Zealand</a>. </p> <p align="center">The page's <a href="http://www.digits.com/web_counter/">web-counter</a> says that you are visitor number <img src="http://counter.digits.com/wc/-d/4/-rz/Alasdair" align="absmiddle"><br> since 24 November 1995. </p> <hr> <h2 align="center">Outside work</h2> <p>I enjoy travel, mountain biking, skiing, food and drink, reading, writing and most things feline. Most of those things cost money, which I raise by working in the computer industry.</p> <h3 align="center"><a href="links.htm">Click here for links to some of my favourite Web pages</a></h3> <hr> <h2 align="center">Work</h2> <p>I work as a computer systems architect. Computer industry job titles are mostly like that I'm afraid. What it means is that I help to work out what components are required to build systems and how they should be fitted together.</p> <p>I currently work at  <a href="http://www.open-here.co.uk/">Open....</a> a UK interactive digital TV company.</p> <p>My particular area of interest is systems architecture, especially distributed multi-layer and component architectures</p> <p>In my earlier life with Cable & Wireless I was heavily involved with the <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/">Open Group's</a> Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) technology.</p> <p>My colleague <a href="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/burke_peter/">Peter Burke</a> and I wrote some papers on our experiences with DCE and three-layer architectures. Two of them are here - <ul> <li><a href="web/dcecomm.htm">DCE experiences</a>. - Covers the thinking and experiences which led to our adoption of 3LA and DCE <li><a href="web/3LAexp.htm">Mercury's Experiences With Three-layer Architectures</a> - Updates the above paper, and details some actual projects</li> </ul> <p>I also have an interest in data warehousing.</p> <hr> <h2 align="center">Original Material</h2> <p>A lot of personal websites seem to be nothing much more than pointers to other sites, which in turn are nothing but pointers ad infinitum. I've got a lot of pointers here on my pages too, but I also want to contribute some original material to the Web. All of this can be reached through my "Links" pages, but here it is in isolation to make it easier to find.</p> <h3>Professional</h3> <p>I have a particular interest in the problems of integrating the variety of disparate computer systems which most large companies have. Along with my colleague Peter Burke, I wrote some papers on how we approached this when we worked at Mercury Communications, a telecommunications company in the UK.</p> <p>The papers are:</p> <p><img src="gem-blue.gif" border="0" height="13" width="13"><a href="dcecomm.htm">DCE experiences</a>. - Covers the thinking and experiences which led to our adoption of 3LA and DCE</p> <p><img src="gem-blue.gif" border="0" height="13" width="13"><a href="3LAexp.htm">Mercury's Experiences With Three-layer Architectures</a> - Updates the above paper, and details some actual projects</p> <hr width="100%"> <h3>Recreational</h3> <p>One of the things I enoy doing in my spare time is mountain biking. I've done various trips in various countries, and a couple of the trip reports are here. If you're interested in the tale of an off-road circuit of England's Lake District, click here to read the <a href="lakes.htm">Lakeland Loop</a> story. I have also done a trip to the <a href="northrim.htm">North Rim of the Grand Canyon</a>.</p> <p>Still on a cycling theme, I also maintain a list of <a href="tourops.htm">cycle tour operators</a> for those who are interested in doing an organised trip.</p> <p>On a completely different tack, I also maintain a page for the <a href="inverloc.htm">Inverlochy Art School</a> which my father is involved with in New Zealand.</p> <p>The last thing will be of no conceivable interest to anybody other than those involved, but I've also got a record of all the <a href="skitrips.htm">places I've been skiing</a> in the last few years.</p> <h3 align="center">Contact details:</h3> <pre> email <a href="mailto:100016.1255@compuserve.com">100016.1255@compuserve.com</a> </pre> <hr> <hr size="3" width="90%"> </body>