 Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead. |
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Personal & Professional Information
About Me :
I had my first boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads in 1953, the year I had my tenth birthday, then two holidays on the River Thames in 1957 and 1961. From the first I was hooked on boating although it was not a passion that I had very many opportunities to indulge. In 1963 as a family we took our first canal trip around the midlands on a small cruiser. These were still early days for boat hire on the English canals and on many days we saw no other pleasure boats on the move. We went on more canal holidays in 1965, 1968 and 1969. For more details of these trips see my article Canal Cruising in the Sixties.In the meantime I had started work, in 1959, and joined the Post Office in early 1960, a move that was to lead in directions I could not foresee. When I joined the Post Office was part of the Civil Service, in 1969 it became a nationalised industry and in the seventies the Postal and Telecommunications business were split. 1984 was the year of British Telecommunications privatisation and I found that, in 24 years, I had been transformed from a Civil Servant to a member of one of Britain's largest public companies without ever leaving my employer. 1968 was a pivotal point in my life for not only did I get engaged to Beryl (we married in 1969) but I also was promoted from working behind the Post Office counter to designing computer systems. I have now been using computers for over thirty years, although when I started the idea of having a powerful (or any) computer on the desktop was pure science fiction. Over the years I have lived in London, Chatham, St Albans and Cardiff while working in London, St Albans and Cardiff. I have two daughters, Angela and Rosemary.
In 1993 I had the chance to take my company pension ten years early as part of BT's efforts to reduce the number of people it employed. This enabled me to buy a boat and do some serious boating. As soon as I left BT, in November 1993, we ordered a new narrowboat to be built for us. This was delivered in June 1994, for more details see my article Launching Lorna Ann. My plan was to combine boating with another of my favourite hobbies, photography. I had bought my first camera in 1956 and have never been without one since. In the six years since retiring Beryl and I have cruised over 1,000 miles each year on the canals and rivers of England and Wales.
Photography :
For the last 38 years my work has been almost entirely on 35mm colour transparencies and I now have a collection of 10,000 pictures. In recent years I have concentrated on waterways photography and have had over 100 pictures published. At present I am using A Minolta Dynax 9xi and a Minolta Dynax 8000i and record full exposure and lens details for each shot using the data cards that are part of the Dynax system. The most recent 2,000 shots are recorded on a database and cross referenced to the place and/or waterway photographed.Writing :
My first published article was The Neath and Tennant Canals published in Waterways World in October 1992. Since then I have written a number of articles for waterways publications, mainly Waterways World (see the articles list). I am willing to undertake commissions to write books or articles on the following subjects:-Information Technology :
This is what was once called computing or even Automatic Data Processing when I first came into the profession. In my career I have been a Systems Analyst, a Senior Programmer/Analyst, a Data Administrator and an IT Manager. I have written programs in assembler language and COBOL as well as BASIC and Object PAL. At present I have two pentium processor machines (a desktop and a laptop that I take boating). My main software is MS Windows 98, MS Office and the Paradox 7 database system.When people mispronounce my name, I don't see red
For they may think that Sheed sounds more well bred
I don't upbraid them for what the've said
Or make it an issue but instead
Point out I'm just, from toe to head,
A plain old common or garden Shead.
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Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead.
