About John T Barton
Here is a little bit of information about me, nothing special
Computer History
 The other day, I was reminiscing about the computers
I once used. It all started at school where we build a zx80 from a kit, and also
had a couple of Apple I's and Apple II's.
I then progressed on to purchasing my own computers, first off was an Acorn Atom
and then a BBC micro computer. It was on these machines that I leant to program
in BASIC and Assembly.
When I was able to afford a 'real computer' it was a 286 with a speed of 12Mhz with
a 20MB hard disk drive, and 5 1/4" floppy drive, that was super fast back in 1987.
It was on this computer that I learnt C from reading the bible as it was known "The
C Programming Language, 2nd edition by Kernighan & Ritchie". This book
is still available (Amazon) and is definitely still worth a read.
Over the years, I've had numerous computers, my current main machine is a 2.8Ghz,
with a 300GB, hard disk drive, no floppy drive, running Vista Business edition,
networked via both wired and wireless access to many other slightly
older computers within the house that I tend to use for compatibility testing and running the web
cameras that you can access
(Click here to see web cameras).
There are always improvements I'd like to make to my computers and network but for
now it seems stable.
Personal History
As you can probably guess from reading the information above my first love was
and is computing (apart from my wife of course). My other passion as a youth
was Judo
where I achieved my 2nd Dan, but due to an arm injury I am no longer able to compete.
I was brought up in the south east corner of England in a town call Ashford, Kent,
where I spent the first 30 years of my life before moving to Queensbury, West Yorkshire
where I am now employed by FabTrol
Systems UK
Ltd.
It was in Queensbury where I met my wife and best friend Lorraine, who is currently
training to be a Mental Health Nurse. Many would say this a great profession
for anyone who spends any time with or around me.
A joint passion for both my Lorraine and myself is travel, and we were fortunate
enough to be able to get married in Sri Lanka at the end of December 2000.
Living relatively close to 3 different airports who all offer cheap flights we have
been able to take weekend breaks to Paris, Prague, Venice, but our first choice
for an extended holiday is always Turkey where we have many friends that are kind
enough to interpret our attempts at speaking their language.
Career History
I initially gain office experience and started work as a junior for Kent Paper Company
where I designed and developed pre printed computer stationary.
Having got my foot on the employment ladder I moved into my first development role
creating a stock tracking and time management system written in GWBasic for Piper Products who manufacture wood products.
 After
a period of time I joined
Nusteel Structures as the IT Systems Manager and a Software Developer Engineer
and went on to develop an award winning Time Management software solution for the
steel fabrication industry written in 'C' called TIMEscope. I was with Nusteel
for over 11 years, implementing numerous computer systems, ranging from CAD &
estimating solutions, machine control software to full blown accounting and MRP
systems, but predominately my time was spend developing, selling and supporting
the Time Management software.
I now work for FabTrol Systems UK
Ltd
who develop a MRP fabrication control solution which is resold in the
UK by a company called CSC UK Ltd. This solution is written in a database management
computer language called
FoxPro from Microsoft.
The current development work is being carried out in Visual C#.Net, which I have now been using for the past
few years, and I am currently extending this knowledge into developing Web Forms
using ASP.net, hence the development of this web site.
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