For just over 20 years I was employed by the University of St Andrews as a lecturer/reader in Physics and Electronics. This involved teaching these subjects as well as running a research group. While employed by the University I started producing a large website on electronics called the “Scots Guide to Electronics” This already has over 200 webpages. It is designed as a general introduction to electronics. It also provides detailed explanations of some related areas of Physics, Information Theory, etc. It contains material at all sorts of levels from complete beginner to final-year undergrad, plus some technical papers on audio. I took early retirement in the summer of 2004, but I am still adding to the Scots Guide, as well as producing various other websites. I also occasionally write articles for various science and technology magazines.
The icons below are quick links to some of the websites I have been writing.
My main hobby interests are in the music and Hi-Fi areas. Many years ago I used to work as a designer of audio equipment for a UK manufacturer called Armstrong Audio. I have therefore recently added some pages about them.
I have also produced a public domain package, called DrawGen which can be used to make the process
of creating DrawFiles on a RiscOS machine relatively easy.(Note that DrawGen will not work on Windows machines or Macs.)
More info on the websites I'm creating...
My Compo Clues pages. !Composition is a superb graphics creation and manipulation package that has been developed by Rob Davison and marketed by Clares Micro. For creating web graphics Compo is really brilliant. It also has a number of surprising features which make it useful for creating animations, and even acting as a full-screen presentation package! If you are a Compo user, have a look at these pages as they provide a lot of reference info, and some example 'CompoScripts' which you can download and use. If you are not (yet) a Compo user, check out what it can do. I suspect you won't have realised how powerful, flexible, and easy to use it is.
My Electronics pages at the university of St. Andrews. These provide a general introduction to the whole subject of 'electronics as she is spoke'. Although not finished yet the site already has hundreds of pages and these should be of interest to anyone who wants discover something about electronics. The pages include a complete practical electronics labcourse with some ‘Java’ virtual experiments.
Armstrong Audio were a UK manufacturer of Hi-Fi equipment. During the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's they were one of the largest specialist manufacturers of high-quality amplifiers and tuners. Throughout their life their equipment was highly regarded in terms of both audio quality and appearance. Their designs often had novel technical features, and were styled to be attractive and convenient to use in a domestic environment. Their customer support and service was also outstanding. Curiously, despite being well known at the time there seem to be few websites on ‘classic’ audio equipment that mention them. Hence I have produced some pages of information about the company and some of the items they produced.
Audio Miscellany. This is a collection of some other pages on audio related topics. This website includes copies of some of the articles on audio I have had printed in various magazines. It also has webpages that deal with some aspects of physics, technology, etc, that often seem to be misunderstood in hi-fi magazines and elsewhere!
One of the useful features of RiscOS is the 'DrawFile'. This is a form of
object-based graphic file that can be used with many RiscOS applications.
Creating DrawFiles 'from scratch' is quite complex. So to make creating
DrawFiles much easier I have developed a 'helper' application called
!DrawGen. You are free to download this and use it. It makes creating
DrawFiles from 'C' programs particularly easy, but also works from most
other languages like BASIC and FORTRAN.
Content and pages maintained by: Jim Lesurf
using HTMLEdit and TechWriter on a RISCOS machine.
