Mike Forsyth lives and works in the Scottish Borders – he has a company in Scotland, at the foot of the Cheviot Hills which he flies around in a microlight. For a squint into his mind check out his photos or read deeper into this site.
What lies within?
This site tells you more than you would ever really want to know about Mike Forsyth, it is split into a number of areas including information on Mike’s live and dead stock, his short and uninteresting history, out of focus photographs, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants log, star and crystal ball gazing and his innocence abroad.
What is it in it for you?
There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, you might discover things through serendipity which is prolly how you found this site – take a walk on the mike side or at least visit the sponsors – and remember it is better to give (see previous links to my wish lists).
What is in it for him?
You get a chance to peek at his .co.uk and .com wishlists for that special birthday or Xmas gift or frankly for that day you want to either ‘Pay it Forward’ or just realise that Mike is a reasonable charity to support; and he gets the chance to occasionally amuse people and test out the software he arrogantly thinks is good enough for his website.
Where did he come from?
Michael Forsyth was born in Arbroath Infirmary on 20th January 1958, and contrary to accepted wisdom his parents, Murial and Stuart, were married.
Primary Educated at Abbey, LadyLoan, Parkhouse and Wardykes Schools
Secondary Educated at Arbroath High School, Willink School (Burghfield Common, Berkshire), Maiden Earlegh School (Earley, near Reading, Berkshire) and back to Arbroath High School for O levels, Highers and SYS.
Tertiary Educated at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh – graduated with Computer Science Honours (2i) and started a part-time MSc in Computer Engineering which migrated to a part-time PhD on free text retrieval under the late Professor Heath.
In addition to a swimming certificate he holds a Pilot Licence, Radio Telephony Licence and Radio Operators Certificate, various RYA tickets including Day Skipper Theory and Yachtmaster Ocean Theory.
Started work in the Computer Centre, initially at Grassmarket and then at Riccarton, at Heriot Watt University writing Pascal software and even made a short video series on Programming in Pascal, which partially explains the drop in interest in the language . My part-time MSc was becoming more interesting (developing a contiguous filesystem for the UNIX kernel for real time searches and programming in the new up and coming language called C) working with the kernel of V7 and developing device drivers for specialised new hardware. This resulted in Professor Heath taking the two people working on this project out as employees in a new company – Memex Information Engines based in Edinburgh and named after a Vannevar Bush article in Atlantic Monthly (1945).
Memex search systems, linear searching a modified Huffman coded data set using hardware, were put into the Scottish Development Agency, the Christian Science Monitor in Boston and the Bodleian Library in Oxford before being picked up by the US military and used for information gathering in the capture of General Noriega – they are now being used in the UK police forces.
My wife and I started Calligrafix after leaving the Memex research unit to move to the Scottish Borders for what was assumed would be a quiet rural research life.
I developed a financial reporting system for a London based client – the software highlighted that the fund turned out to be fraudulent (to the tune of 10 million pounds) – this resulted in the arrest of a highly placed person (this was made into the TV movie ‘All or Nothing At All’ starring Hugh Laurie as the fraudster who gambled the money away – Pierce Brosnan was not available to play me so my role was written out).
From computerised swingometers for the local elections to being whirled around Europe working on the ENCATA Pan European Telematics project – my quiet rural existence faded fast – the Internet now makes our rural location irrelevant (apart from the ridiculous price of telecommunications in the Borders). I developed the Internet Propertyfinder system for the Leeming Brothers and the company was successfully sold (and recently bought by Rupert Murdoch for 14.3 million).
After escaping from my sentence as post-graduate researcher at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, I have worked in the computer industry for close on 25 years – which partially explains some of the chaos in the computer world over the last couple of decades – however, have at no point contributed to the Y2K problem.
My projects have included free text retrieval systems for the military, UNIX kernel development and device drivers, internet ISP setup and web related software development using Smalltalk, PERL, C#, C++ and Java with POET, ObjectStore and Excelon XML object databases, and the Postgres relational/object database.
I have suffered most brands of PC, Macintosh and UNIX workstations and have no lust whatsoever to seek out mainframes, COBOL and Visual Basic.
I have also worked with Maya Animation software and Cosmo-Worlds to create 3D worlds and interfaces and developed CD-ROMs with Macromedia Director. This was a desperate attempt to find my creative side which still remains firmly hidden – particularly since the last logo I designed turned out to be identical to the one on the gas containers at Auschwitz when we visited (I haven’t the heart to point this out to them).
Here is the company photo of me – capturing the moment when I was burdened down with the responsibility of family life, building a growing business in the highly competitive and technically challenging global Internet world, maintaining a comprehensive personal development plan and Lebanese wine cellar, whilst looking after our highland cattle.
Where is he now?
Currently married to Kim with our two fast growing sons – Stuart, at Aberdeen Uni reading Petroleum Geology, and Alasdair who declared himself homeless for a few months until he was evicted, broke his leg at the start of his Highers year and contracted glandular fever just before his final exams.
We started Calligrafix over 20 years ago – it started off in Desktop Publishing and Software development/Consultancy and migrated through multimedia to Internet Services and ASP.NET and Java Development. We are a team of ten people working from the Scottish Borders in three locations (a converted Monastery, a converted police station and converted farm cottages) – Kim and I are partners.
The network and systems development of the Calligrafix servers fall under my responsibility as I desperately try and find someone else to delegate this to – along with new software developments for Information Management (deployed in the NHS). I host our clients’ sites and run the network and servers they run on.
What is he up to now?
Mike is focused on XML and dynamic Internet solutions at present and is currently looking at working with partners in the Seychelles and South Pacific islands where his tablet PC and portable satellite unit can provide his beach side workplace.
I am a partner in Calligrafix where we develop Internet solutions for a variety of public sector agencies and corporates. Clients include The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh University, Scottish Enterprise, councils, the NHS and a wide range of criminal sites from vandalism to the Airborne Initiative (which was shut down following a fly on the wall TV series)
I develop software in C#/ASP.NET and Java/J2EE on a variety of servers including my Alienware AMD Opteron development machine, Sun Solaris, Linux, Windows 2003 and Mac OS/X. Calligrafix have a close working team skilled in most technologies and can be seen as a research and development organisation with a novel focus on creating working solutions.
We don’t have an awful lot of time for search engine placement companies – who make the snake oil quacks of western lore look respectable, although the lower rings of Dante’s Hell are reserved for recruitment and survey telephone demons. We are well experienced with the Google mini search box and integrate it into our information management system.
Our database experience includes SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and some Object Databases including Excelon and Objectstore and a Smalltalk persistent store.
Calligrafix have a focus on accessibility, usability, scalability and security – and I am sure that if any other -itys come along we will be one of the first to look at it.
