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Geoff's personal story; Geoff's work experience; Books 'n' stuff;

A personal story

Geoff is the titular head of the home, but only because he is the elder statesman. The rest of the family defer to him in all things, unless those actually impinge on their needs. In those cases, Dad loses out, (as usual). He has lots (too many) of interests, as will be seen when you drift through the rest of these pages. His favourite topics include Australian native gardening (but he does love azaleas), music (aymaran, north & south Indian, Jimi Hendrix, surfing instrumentals, jazz and blues), astronomy (anything from Hubble!), electronics (pottering about with bits), science fiction (anything by Clifford D Simak, Terry Pratchett or C J Cherryh, just about anything by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven), good chemistry texts (well, he is a BSc (Hons) Industrial Chemistry, UNSW 1973), bushwalking, and lounging about with a tall cool drink watching the galahs, cockatoos and honeyeaters flying about this suburban home. My Telstra job before November involved LAN Administration (358 servers, 8000 users, Novell 3.12/4.11, Win 3.10/NT 4), and from 1997-11 is totally focussed on ISO 9002 certification duties still inside Telstra.

Oh yes, genealogy is taking up a fairly large chunk of his spare time. My Mutton family originated in Cornwall, near Bodmin, around 1838 with a marriage there in 1858, while the Hart (mum's) side were from Leitrim in Ireland, arriving in Australia in 1857. From that link comes the interest in learning Irish - being tutored by email from a cousin of Kerry's in Belfast. Thanks, Bryan! One ancestral line originated in Surrey in 1770, and arrived here in 1800. She married a soldier from Honeybone, Gloucestershire, who had arrived here in 1793. Their children make me a sixth generation Aussie! Lots more on these lines will be found on my genealogy page, as soon as I work out a method to display the 6760 names and their data from my database, without blowing Terry Harvey's Linux-based server!

I have added several relations reports, for my family, at least, for all the deceased lines. Try Byrnes ()from Armagh). There are also links to other antecedent families as well.

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Geoff's work experience

Sorted latest to oldest:

1. Telstra at www.telstra.com/ : Telstra Corporation Home Page, where I was a LAN Administrator for our IT Network Delivery (now Infrastructure) group. My current role is as a manager for Process Optimisation, in our IT Network Services section. We are on our way to ISO 9002 certification - just in time for privatisation/outsourcing, perhaps?
2. TAFE NSW at www.tafensw.edu.au/ : TAFE NSW - Technical and Further Education, a government education arm.
3. TAFE Baulkham Hills NSW, where I taught a part-time course, "Internet - A First Course", for 4 semesters. The first module includes a history of the development of the Internet, networking in general, information resources on the 'Net and elsewhere (gopher, FIDONet, etc), search tools and techniques, content/control, security and other ethical issues. The second module is on information resources available, not necessarily via the 'Net. This can include CDROMs, BBS's, online library resources and so on. You get to play with modems and settings - techno-nerd country. The final module is "Writing for the WWW", and gives an introduction to HTML, design of pages, simple image editing, tricks'n'traps - a general intro...
   There are some links onto my computing page that may enable you to study outside the classroom. There are lots of sites out there for learning the relevant topics, so why not list them where they be of use?
4. ICI Australia (now Orica) at www.ici.com.au/welcome.html : ICI Australia Pty Ltd homepage, where I worked from graduation (1973) as a research chemist in the then Biologicals Division at Villawood, and later as a Production Superintendent in the Pharmaceuticals Division, making tablets - mostly ethicals based on propanolol and atenolol. I left there for Telstra, and software support, a minor career change...

   The following links are of the parent firm that used (1926 - 1997) to own ICI Australia, before selling the 70% share to fund a takeover of some US company. The local company later took up the name of Orica, as they were no longer part of the ICI world-wide corporation.

5. ICI PLC at www.ici.com/ : ICI PLC homepage: WARNING: it's an all image homepage! (213kB of GIFs). Yes, no "ALT" texts at all - naughty! C'mon, guys, get real! Not everyone has a T1/ISDN link to the net!
6. ICI PLC at www.ici.com/sitemap.html : the ICI PLC sitemap appears a better chance for those image-disabled types. Rather a large company, wot?

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Books 'n' stuff

I have been interested in Science Fiction since I spent a two-week long holiday at Auntie Ella's in Junee, NSW waaaay back in 1966, January it was. There used to be a second-hand bookshop opposite the railway station, and my brother & I used to spend hours selecting books from there. The start of the collection was with these books (in order):

1. John WYNDHAM: : The chrysalids
2. John MANTLEY : The 27th day
3. H Beam PIPER : The other human race
4. Walter MOUDY : No man on Earth
5. Judith MERRILL : Year's Best SF: 7th
6. Robert Moore WILLIAMS : Star wasps
7. Isaac ASIMOV : The stars like dust
8. Analog : 1961-April
9. Robert P MILLS : Best from F&SF 11
10. A E VAN VOGT : Destination: Universe
11. Keith LAUMER : The other side of time
12. Fred HOYLE & John ELLIOT : A for Andromeda
13. Kingsley AMIS & Robert CONQUEST : Spectrum 2
14. Robert HEINLEIN : Starman Jones
15. Kenneth BULMER : Behold the stars
16. Henry KUTTNER : Ahead of time
17. Fantastic : 1966-July

The collection has since grown to over 2600 volumes, after later discovering Arthur C CLARKE, Poul ANDERSON, Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, Brian ALDISS, Cordwainer SMITH, and my greatest joy: Clifford D SIMAK. I love his works, and I was most disappointed when I learnt he had died.

Another joy is reading anything by C J CHERRYH. She writes both hard scifi (to wit, the Chanur series and Downbelow Station), and fantasy (for example, Rusalka). Hundreds more authors/books of course: how can you miss Terry PRATCHETT and his Discworld (tm) series, Larry NIVEN, Douglas ADAMS, Piers ANTHONY (although his stories do become passé as the various series unfold), D G COMPTON, Edmund COOPER, L Sprague de CAMP, Gordon DICKSON (ah, Dorsai!), Harlan ELLISON, Philip José FARMER (the fabulous Riverboat series), Raymond FEIST, the FORWARD pair (Rocheworld), Alan Dean FOSTER and his Humanx series, (and Spellsinger as well), James GUNN, Joe HALDEMAN, Harry HARRISON, Frank HERBERT (Dune series - don't judge his works by the movie!), Robert E HOWARD (remember Conan?), Fred HOYLE (and his son Geoffrey - Black Cloud etc), D F JONES, Raymond JONES, Damon KNIGHT, Katherine KURTZ, Henry KUTTNER and his spouse C L MOORE, Ursula K Le GUIN, Tanith LEE, Fritz LEIBER (Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser!), Murray LEINSTER, C S LEWIS, Barry MALZBERG, John MANTLEY, Anne McCAFFREY (Dragonflight series, Killashandra Ree's crystal song series), Michael MOORCOCK, André NORTON, Jerry POURNELLE, Spider (& Jeanne) ROBINSON, James H SCHMITZ (Telzey - love her), Bob SHAW, Robert SILVERBERG, E E 'Doc' SMITH (wow, universe-smashing yet!), Brian STABLEFORD (Daedalus and earlier, the wonderful Hooded Swan series), Mary STEWART (Merlin), Ted STURGEON, Sheri TEPPER, James TIPTREE Jr, J R R TOLKEIN (of course. After all, I am a baby-boomer). Other authors, E C TUBB (will Earl Dumarest ever get back to Earth?), Wilson TUCKER, A E van VOGT, Jack VANCE, Joan VINGE, James WHITE (Sector General), Gene WOLFE and Roger ZELAZNY. We can't forget Ray BRADBURY, Marion Zimmer BRADLEY or Damien BRODERICK either.

Those are a non-exhaustive cross-section of authors I have books from. I also have large collections (hundreds!) of ANALOG magazine, GALAXY, ASIMOV's SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, WORLDS of IF, NEW WORLDS, and FANTASTIC. I like the journal types as I get regular feeds of various - often new - authors.

A quick request - if anyone has any Astounding/Analog issues they don't want, please contact me. I am missing quite a few issues over the years, and would like to complete the series. For example, I have none of the issues between April and November 1964, nor between 1997 November to 1998 April. The first Analog I have is 1961 April. I only have 14 issues of Astounding, all between 1955 and 1960, so a full year between the last Astounding and my first Analog.

I also like various Australian authors, including Van IKIN and A Bertram CHANDLER (remember his Rimworld series, and Captain Grimes?). there is an excellent magazine available also - AUREALIS, that is currently issued bi-annually. As of 1998-06, they are up to issue 20/21.

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Contact Geoffm at eagles.bbs.net.au (Replace the " at " with "@" to actually be able to mail me)
I made the address this way to cool the ardour of email spammers. Sorry about that.
This file's URL: http://www.eagles.bbs.net.au/~geoffm/geoffm.htm
Author: Geoff Mutton
First created 1997-11-27
Last updated 1997-07-25 - International Organisation for Standards rules OK !