Malcolm's background

A little about me

The United Kingdom, (Great Britain) is where I am from originally but I now live in the United States of America. I was born in a small industrial town, Oldham, in the north of England, just seven miles from Manchester a noted inland port, 30 miles from the ocean.

Where I started life

Oldham Parish Church
(in the foreground is my sister Anita)

Oldham experienced tremendous growth during the industrial revolution. In the heyday of the cotton industry there were around 400 cotton mills. The mill chimneys, seen on the skyline, were 200 feet or more tall, and spewed thick, black smoke.

This led to some of the worst smogs in the industrial world during the middle part of the 20th century. It took many deaths before the Clean Air Act of 1956 was passed. Air quality improvements were enforced by the Public Health Department.

Oldham still has a thriving daily newspaper - visit its web site to get a sense of life in the "little city".

My education was at the local technical high school, where I did well in subjects such as chemisrty, technical drawing, English language and mathematics. I went on to train as an Environmental Health Officer, completing the four-year course of study on schedule.

The knowledge gained during those four years has proved invaluable since then. Even during the years as a desktop publisher. That career began to take shape in 1980, when I decided to leave England to TRAVEL (more about my travels) and broaden my horizons. After a year of travelling the globe I returned to England Briefly. California, was the first stop during my year of travel and since I missed it I returned to the USA and eventually made my home in the San Francisco Bay Area. The first year I lived in San Francisco but since then I've lived in Oakland which seems to suit me very well.

In the Bay Area, my strong interest in computers was furthered by attending a San Francisco computer user group where I became a “guru”. I seem to learn very quickly when something interests me. One of the tasks I helped with was the production of the group's newsletter, which gave me many of the traditional typesetting skills including paste-up (putting pages together on a board by cutting out preprinted text and images, and pasting it in the appropriate places). Using programming skills learned in England and polished in Japan (and the assistance of another user group member) a program was written that partially automated the process so that only the images needed to be placed.

Already my interest in graphics was being stimulated, along with a love of language, to carry this former hobby into the business world. YourTypeToo (logo to left), my own small business, was founded in 1986 and has continued to thrive.

My skills extended further into page layout and graphics, design of pages for the World Wide Web, computer-based prepress and building and setting up computers.

Along the way I learned other skills including how to build new systems, troubleshoot system hardware and software problems and teach others how to use computers (including programs).

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