[committee] Fwd: UCC where are they now ...
John Hodge
tpg at ucc.asn.au
Wed Oct 28 11:10:36 AWST 2015
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: UCC where are they now ...
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 21:17:27 -0400
From: Ian N. Evans <ian_evans at icloud.com>
To: webmasters at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
> If you are former member and like to update us with regards your
> whereabouts email webmasters at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
> <mailto:webmasters at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>
Well well well ...
It’s been a long time indeed. I was a member starting back in the early
years when Edsel was our prime machine and we raised the money to
purchase ACC Murphy. Dual 8 inch floppies, and I wrote the drivers to
turn a Baudot machine that we acquired (how, I forget) into a printer,
amongst many other things lost in the mists of time. Back then we all
went by monikers such as Passionfingers (Dean Elsner), Reptile (Paul
Repacholi; also Viper for his initials VPR), Major (Michael Dodemaide -
who subsequently legally changed his name to "Major”), and many others.
I was "The Angel" - allegedly because I somehow always (well, almost
always) managed to make it to my lectures on time, despite all the
goings on at the UCC. Back then, over the years I held several of the
UCC offices (except for President, as I recall), and was President of
the UCCC for a couple of years (say no more!) Then there were the USS
(and it’s counterpart the USSS) for a few years, and also the Babbage
Society which was the first (?) public computer interest club in Perth.
And a bunch of spinoffs like Alphasoft and Betasoft, Rent-A-Mind,
Rent-A-Judge, Micro-Age, Grip Holdings ... mostly put together by PF.
Since them I’ve been respectable (Okay Okay :-). I got my Ph.D. in
Astrophysics in the mid-80’s, moved to the US in late ’86, helped build
one of the first generation instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Since the mid-90’s I’ve been an Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), helped
calibrate the X-ray mirrors on the Chandra X-ray Observatory (launched
on the shuttle Columbia in 1999) and have been the End-to-End Scientist
responsible for the Chandra Data System ever since. Last couple of
years I’ve also been working on the first light instrument for the Giant
Magellan Telescope which will be the biggest telescope in the world for
a few years starting in 2021.
A long way from the UCC ...
Cheers,
—Ian
(ian_evans at icloud.com <mailto:ian_evans at icloud.com>)
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