Contents Introduction Career Current studies Education Recent IT experience Interests and hobbies Places where I have lived Links Before you leave

The Miniature Earth

Introduction

Hello! My name is Ron Hughes. Welcome to my Web site. This page is primarily about me, but first a word or two about my family. My wife Liz was a science teacher. We have two children, Laura (dob 27 September 1981) who trained as a paediatric nurse at South Bank University and worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and Melvyn (dob 15 May 1984) who studied business management at Kingston University, plus a Border Collie called Ayla. Our dog was named after the heroine in Jean Auel's books and our cat Clio, who now lives with our daughter in the UK, was named after one of the nine Muses, patron of history, in Greek mythology.

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I provide various IT services: consultancy, tuition, Web site design and development, site reviews, project management and technical writing, and may be available for work on a freelance or contract basis.

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I moved to la Corrèze, France during 2005. I spent a year (2004-2005) working as a freelance IT consultant for The Enterprise Centre (now called the Startup Co), in the UK.

I have 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.

I trained with The National Tutor Service, so I could provide online IT tuition on behalf of LearnDirect, and with The Enterprise Centre so I could work on their behalf as an accredited IT consultant.

I spent three years working for a Brighton-based software company called insurE-com, that developed e-commerce applications for the insurance industry. Initially, I was employed as a 'Project Manager'. Later, my job title was changed to '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 job and three other managerial positions redundant, consequently I decided to return to self-employment.

Prior to that, my wife Liz and I ran a business for 14 years, which provided employment for 6 people. For the first 4 years, I provided consultancy for local SMEs and ran my own PC dealership. For the remaining 10 years, I was exclusively consultant to HarperCollins Publishers Ltd and contracted by them to build an international mail-order fulfilment business, to develop, support and market a range of electronic reference products (based on Collins English, ELT and foreign language dictionaries) worldwide. I also licensed electronic reference data, on their behalf.

I launched this Web site in July 1997 and subsequently built a number of others, in connection with my business, between 1997 and 1999, all of which apart from this one are now defunct. Since 2000, I have built a number of other sites and continue to maintain this site in my spare time.

My CV or résumé is available for download as a PDF file.     

Recent IT experience [2000-Present]

Career [1965-Present]

Current studies

• French
• Joomla

Education

Academic qualifications:

Postgraduate Certificate in Software Engineering (University of Brighton) 2006

• Postgraduate Modular Programme in Computing
  • Internet Business Strategy (SWM23)
  • Network Infrastructure (SWM24)
  • Web Applications Development (SWM33)
  • Web Interaction Design (SWM34)
  • Web Mastery (SWM35)

IT training courses:

ASP (Silicon Beach Centre) 2004
VBScript (Silicon Beach Centre) 2004

Interests and hobbies

• Books
• English
• History
• ICT
• Nature
• Photography
• Woodwork

I 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. I have built a number of other Web sites since 1997, apaert from this one, some of which are now defunct. This one has survived, as it's become my personal site and something of a hobby. Here are some of the Web sites that I have built since 2000.

My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX81, that 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.

During 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. It included sections on BASIC, CP/M Plus and LOGO. It was published by Macmillan Education Ltd in 1986, and was subsequently translated into Spanish and distributed in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Columbia and Chile.

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, and operating systems over the years, including object-oriented (O-O) languages such as C++, VB and Java.

• BASIC (Various dialects: Sinclair, BBC, Mallard, GW, Turbo and VB v3.0) [1981-1995]
• C [1986-1990]
• C++ [1991-2004]
• CGI [1997-2003]
• Fortran IV on an ICL 1900 mainframe computer at Queen Mary College, University of London [1971-1977]
• HTML [1997-present]
• Java and UML [2002-present]
• JavaScript [2001-present]
• LOGO [1986]
• Perl [2001-2003]
• PHP [2004-present]
• SIMPLE (similar to COBOL) on an ABS minicomputer while employed as a DP Manager at Control & Readout Ltd [1983-1986]
• Turbo Pascal [1986-1990]
• VBScript and ASP [2004]
• XHTML and XML [2000-present]
• XSLT and XPath [2003-2004]
• Z80 and 6502 assembly languages [1981-1988]

I 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.

Places where I have lived

Links

• Distance Learning Open University

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