Geoff Himself

More about Geoff...........

So your not bored with me and want to know more eh ? Well here's.......

A Short History

I was born in 1960 in the county of Cheshire, England. I lived most of my early life in a small village called Lawton Heath End, near Alsager, South Cheshire. I first attended Rode Heath Primary school then went on to Alsager Comprehensive School.
I now live in Stoke on Trent, which is famous for it's pottery factories including great names like Wedgwood and Royal Doulton.
After gaining my electronics qualifications and many companies later I have a senior position in an electronics and electromechanical servicing company. I am mainly involved with test and development work (software and hardware design) concerning motion control (servo) systems on industrial robotics applications.

Horses

I have been horse riding now since around 1975 when as a teenager I decided to go on a pony trekking trip. Before then I always wanted to to get involved with horses ( I always liked them, and they seemed to like me too) but thought that it might be regarded as "sissy" by my friends. I enjoyed myself on that first trip so much that I phoned my local riding school and started taking riding lessons. I've been having fun ever since. I particularly enjoy jumping and cross country riding. I've met many memorable equine friends over the years too 8-)

My particular love of the Arabian breed began many years ago after riding and helping to look after one at a local stables. It was not only the stunning beauty of the Arabian I fell in love with but that amazing gaiety of life and spirit together with that unique "floating" movement that they seem to possess above all other breeds. I spend many hours at Arabian shows around the UK taking photographs. Many of these are on my horse pages including photographs from some of our major shows.

I had a TB horse on loan a few years ago called Lady, unfortunately in September 1996 she died suddenly whilst I was riding her. It's taken a long time to get over it and 'feel' like wanting another horse again. At some point I will get another, maybe soon now.
I still ride when I can at local stables or when on holiday both in the UK and abroad ! One of my favourite places is the excellently run Cannock Chase trekking centre.

Photography

I've been taking photographs of wildlife and especially photographs of horses for over 20 years now. It's something I do for fun, but I still try to emulate the standards of great photographers I admire such as Rik Van Lent, Gigi Grasso and Gabrielle Boiselle. Most of what I do is influenced by professional equine artists, some of whom are friends of mine. I try to create photographs that have the look of a painting and try to portray something of the personality of the subject. You can view my equine photography work on the Equine Photography Pages and my other wildlife photos on the Wildlife Photography Pages.

Unicorns

My fascination for unicorns (and dragons too) started from early childhood. It's something that never left me, probably because of my over-active imagination and my interest in fantasy stories and art which I still have. When I made my first journey's on the internet, I only found a few (five I think) unicorn sites in existence. I then decided to write my own, hopefully so others could also share in my fascination for them too. From that the unicorn section of my webpage grew, and grew and is now larger than I ever intended and has attracted a surprising amount of interest ! It attracts a lot of web traffic too, far more in fact than the horse or other sections of my webpage !

Amateur Radio.

Having been involved with electronics for most of my life, I finally decided to study for my amateur radio license a few years ago. I worked my way up all the licence grades and now hold a 'full' grade licence. I now have a complete page dedicated to Amateur Radio, which can be found here.

A Second Life ?

I've recently become involved with an online virtual world called Second Life. Its an astounding place, populated by other users in their own Avatar forms which you can interact with. The possibilities of what you can be or do are really just the limits of your own imagination ! The Second Life world is a large collection of individual "sims" and because of this it's really huge (and getting bigger each day). I've taken to "exploring" it on horseback recently, if you want to see some screenshots from various places there then click on my Second Life Photo's link

Electronics and Old Audio Equipment Restoration.

I've been involved in electronics for most of my life, both at work and as a home interest. At work I'm mainly involved in the industrial control, motion control and industrial robotics fields. At home I have an active interest in audio work and restore old valve (tube) amplifiers and even design my own !

I have repaired a lot of Leak audio equipment over the years. I restored a Leak "Stereo 20" valve (tube) amplifier some years ago, and it's still in daily use here with it's "Varislope Stereo" pre-amp. I have also worked on Leak "Troughline" tuners, as well as the transistorised "Stereo 30" and "Stereo 70" series amplifiers too.

I also have also restored a number of reel-reel tape decks, including a Revox A77 and various Tandberg machines.

My latest "projects" are restoring a Leak "Delta 70", designing an anti-thump and speaker protection board for Leak transistor amplifiers and re-aligning a Leak "Troughline" tuner. I am also planning my own valve (tube) pre-amp design too.

If you want any further information about these topics, then please e-mail me.

Family life

Some years ago my marriage ended, my ex wife and I decided to part after 14 years.
I have two children from my marriage, both boys, the youngest of whom (in the picture above) suffers from the condition called Autism. Both are fantastic sons and I'm proud of them both.

Friends

Thanks to the internet, there are many people all over the world who have become good friends of mine over the last few years. I've have visited many of them too, both in the UK and in the USA.
Many of them have been of great help and inspiration for my writing and creative work, for which I thank them.

Computers

As a result of my electronics interests I've always been around computers. I started with very early machines like the RCA Cosmac, Acorn, Tangerine and Commadore PET's. My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX81 built from a kit, then a Sinclair Spectrum. I made my first journeys into cyberspace with the Spectrum using a 75/1200 baud modem through the Prestel and what used to be the Micronet network. After that I spent a lot of time on various bulletin boards (BBS's). I also acquired a Motorola Exorset 33 machine which I upgraded to a 100 series model (anyone else out there remember them ?). I used to write my own 6809 machine code software for that Motorola machine including a Prestel / Micronet access program and a database for Arabian horse pedigree's ! Those were the fun days when you couldn't buy the software off the shelf, so you had to write it yourself !

My first PC was an 8bit XT machine running at 8Mhz with a 30MB hard drive and 640KB of RAM. It was built on my kitchen table out of scrap bits and pieces from friends and from ham radio rallies. Many many builds later it's a multimedia 2.4 GHZ (overclocked to 2.85 GHZ) Intel Quad Core machine with 1.5TB of hard drive space, fibre optic networking, a number of external drives and 8GB of RAM. Things have certainly changed fast !!!!!

Artwork and Other Things

Music I like :- Jethro Tull, T Rex, Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Midnight Oil, Penguin Cafe Orchestra and many, many other bands, and classical music too..

Books :- Fantasy and Sci-Fi (particularly Jose Farmer, Katherine Kerr, Terry Brooks, Peter Beagle, Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony and Duranna Durgin), Terry Pratchett, any thrillers by Dick Francis, any book at all really !

Art :- Equine art, Fantasy art, particularly of Unicorns and "Furry" (Anthropomorphic) artwork.