User:SteveMcBill

My Background

I have been 'interested' in wildlife since I was 4 years old but my interest did not become 'serious' until I reached 30 when I joined the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society.

Work wise - I started in the lab of a hospital and then moved to chemical research. Following this I worked with the Department of Employment as a programmer for 25 years (much of it managing IT projects for the Dept.) - it was virtually all mainframe in Cobol, Plan, Fortran, Filetab and a few other languages.

Home IT interest led me into music and graphics programming for fun and thence to developing the initial website for the Cheshire Wildlife Trust during a boring Xmas period in 1996.

Since October 2000 I have managed the local biodiversity records centre for the Cheshire region - rECOrd. As at October 2006 we have 1.6 million species records available online for the public to search and map.

Who knows what will happen for/to me from here on in ??

My Major Interests

- General Entomology

 - Symphyta (Sawflies)
 - Carabidae
 - Invertebrate Survey

- Terrestrial Mollusca

 - Identification
 - Survey

- Micro-fungi

 - Identification
 - Survey

- Photography (mainly digital nowadays)

 - Natural History photography for website usage
 - Photography for sale on Micro-Stock Sites

- Ragtime and Country Blues Acoustic Guitar

 - Playing - especially steel-strung flat-tops
 - Listening to old Country Blues players (e.g. Blind Blake, etc.)

- Information Technology (IT)

 - Website design and implementation
 - Database design
 - Making use of accumualted data
 - Making use of the technology to allow simple use of the data
 - IT standards across the web and in other areas.