www.nickhodge.com

Recently, in a meet­ing, someone stated that I had never been a pro­fes­sional pro­gram­mer. At the time I agreed, how­ever after some think­ing (aka: L’esprit_de_l’escalier) dis­agreed with that asses­ment. So, time to write some of the pro­jects I have com­pleted dur­ing many years in this industry.

To note: many of these sys­tems las­ted months through to years, and used tools at hand. The essence of Prac­tical Pro­gram­ming. All of these are writ­ten by myself, based on toolkits, SDKs and IDEs. Many no longer exist.

School sports day scor­ing sys­tem 1985. Mid 1985, writ­ten in Microsoft Basic for the Mac; this sys­tem recor­ded the win­ners and score for the annual sports day. I recall spend­ing about a week of after-school hours until 3am or so writ­ing this. I remem­ber this as the first pro­duc­tion sys­tem I wrote, that if it failed, I would look really silly. It worked on the day, and gen­er­ated the cor­rect prin­ted results.

Bespoke locked down museum dis­play sys­tem: writ­ten in late 1986, writ­ten in Microsoft Basic 2.0 on the Macin­tosh using floppy disk/text data files as source. Was locked down envir­on­ment per­mit­ting users to select a coun­try they ori­gin­ated from, and detailed the his­tory of migra­tion from that coun­try to South Aus­tralia. Was still oper­a­tional in the South Aus­tralian Migra­tion Museum 3 years later.

Bespoke, locked down com­pet­i­tion sys­tem: writ­ten in early 1987, writ­ten in C on the Macin­tosh using a B-tree engine. Was locked down envir­on­ment per­mit­ting com­pet­i­tion entrants to type in their name and phone num­ber. The data was stored to disk. Com­pet­i­tion win­ner picked randomly.

Chauf­feur: writ­ten dur­ing late 1987, using Hyper­card and C-written external func­tions for serial port access: a visual front-end to Com­puServe email and for­ums. Writ­ten for “Tricks of the Hyper­Talk Mas­ters” (Waite Group, 1988). I can­not recall the total num­ber of lines of code; it was essen­tially a clever state-based sys­tem that screen-scraped data from a serial con­nec­tion. Data was presen­ted visu­ally in Hypercard’s UI. I miss Hyper­Talk (Hypercard’s language)

Vari­ous Proof of Con­cepts: in 1990–1992, Apple pro­moted Hyper­Card as a visual front end for com­plex data. Using Apple’s DAL (Data Access Lan­guage) to Tan­dem, DEC and other SQL data sources. These PoC’s assisted Apple in win­ning enter­prise cus­tom­ers in Aus­tralia. I installed an alpha of Apple’s A/UX DAL con­nect­ing to an Ingres data­base. This base sys­tem was used to demon­strate data-querying from a data-warehouse along with Mike Sey­fang. This is the birth of the Munge Broth­ers.

Unix-based, SNMP AppleTalk mon­itor: in 1992: based on a col­lec­tion of com­plex bsh scripts, cron tasks and open source com­mand­line IETF SNMP tools. Does Any­one remem­ber ASN.1? At one stage I was sure I was the only one in South Aus­tralia who actu­ally read and used ASN.1 as SNMP was a reas­on­ably new pro­tocol. Execut­ing on a SunOS work­sta­tion, this sys­tem was used to mon­itor AppleTalk routers at a large cus­tomer, as a part of a migra­tion of their infra­struc­ture. Also mon­itored via TFTP booting/reboots for uptime man­age­ment. Email of out­ages and reports for net­work management.

Sher­lock: in late 1993: Unix-based, 3-tier, Front-end to an Oracle ERP. I was the primary per­son man­aging a single user to SunOS/Oracle/multi-user ERP. Using VICOM Pro, I cre­ated a front-end that com­mu­nic­ated via Tel­net pro­to­cols to SQL-Plus scripts on the server. Dis­played invoices, orders, pri­cing and other details. Cre­ate “alerts” on stock orders/shipments, plus per­mit­ted bar­code scan­ning of invent­ory. Cron tasks for the man­age­ment of man­age­ment report­ing. SQL-Plus Profit & Loss and Bal­ance Sheet gen­er­a­tion (the inbuilt tools sucked, so I wrote my own). Used in pro­duc­tion for at least 2 years. At the same time, Adam Stein­hardt wrote Bed­rock in File­Maker: quot­ing and con­tact man­age­ment sys­tem that was the basis for Next­Byte. Cre­ated export tools for integ­ra­tion. I miss VICOM’s lan­guage and devel­op­ment tools. Hello Brian Mor­ris and Darko Roje!

Net­work Mon­it­or­ing Tools: in 1994, vari­ous cus­tom­ers were want­ing to meas­ure end-user net­work per­form­ance of ter­minal based sys­tems. Wrote a front end in VICOM Pro to meas­ure screen-refresh times. Applic­a­tion was dis­trib­uted around the net­work and repor­ted back to a cent­ral server response times. Was used to con­tract com­pli­ance in large tenders, and to track down applic­a­tion per­form­ance bot­tle­necks. Also cre­ated front ends for login sys­tems for cus­tom­ers such as Com­care in Can­berra using VICOM Pro.

Web Pub­lish­ing Sys­tem: in 1996, for Fairfax@Atlanta web site. User­land Fron­tier based, with File­Maker backend. Run­ning on MacOS, get­ting data via FTP from Fairfax’s edit­or­ial sys­tem. Fron­tier cre­ated static pages from dynamic con­tent. Data edit­ing mul­tiple user in File­Maker. Static pages FTP’d to web server. 300,000 pages views a day in 1996.

sid­e­note: Dur­ing 1998, I trained as a WebOb­jects developer in Cuper­tino under the former NeXT train­ers. This involved form­ally learn­ing Java; and an intro­duc­tion to the Enter­prise Objects Frame­work. EOF is an early example of a relational-object map­per. Beauty before its time.

Adobe/Scripting Proof of Con­cepts: from 1999 to 2004, using a vari­ety of tools from Visual Basic, to AppleScript and Adobe InDes­ign and XMP toolkits to gen­er­ate con­tent man­age­ment and auto­ma­tion scen­arios. Used in selling “concepts” and ulti­mately selling products. Script­ing improve­ments in InDes­ign 1.5 and later from cus­tomer and my input dir­ect to product team. Still love InDes­ign. PoC’s are tough as they have to work a hand­ful of times but in a crit­ical demonstration.

A part of this bundle of code Included a data­base to SVG ren­der­ing sys­tem deployed in 2001 to demon­strate SVG. Before it was HTML5/Web cool. Adobe and the W3C really dropped the SVG ball in an attempt to out-run Macromedia’s Flash on mobile devices. What a waste of good resources and talent.

Mun­gen­eten­gine: 2000–2006: PHP, MySQL con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem; about 3000 lines of code. Written/Tested on Win­dows and deployed on Linux. Based on the Fairfax@Atlanta exper­i­ence, but using open source tools and pub­lic deploy­ment. Cre­ated vari­ous con­nec­tion points (XML-RPC and SOAP) with visual inter­faces in Python amongst oth­ers. Whilst the backend was for per­sonal use and not pub­lished, the code executed at least 3 mil­lion times whilst live. Parts of this engine still exist to redir­ect quer­ies from old search engine res­ults into Word­Press. Also cre­ated a small Word­Press plu­gin that assisted in transition.

The unerly­ing frame­work was used as the basis of 3 internal sys­tems cre­ated for Adobe. One of which was the basis of an MBA paper.

Dur­ing the family’s trip to Europe in 2004, I used a WxPy­thon — SOAP based applic­a­tion to upload text and images to the mungenetengine.

Ran­dom Neil Finn Lyric Server: 2002-now, based on PHP, MySQL and SOAP. A very early, non-stock quote SOAP ser­vice on the inter­net and there­fore used in many places. Image manip­u­la­tion, and twitter-bots feed of the under­ly­ing system

Adobe-Internal Sales Reporting/CRM: 2004–2005: dur­ing my days as a Sales Man­ager, I could not res­ist the tempta­tion to cut some code. Two sys­tems were gen­er­ated: one in Microsoft Excel, SAP Busi­ness Ware­house and Mac­ros to cre­ate a one-page KPI sheet. Used daily as man­age­ment tool for 3 years. Added to this a CRM sys­tem that detailed part­ner rev­enue, con­tacts and email list/communication. This sys­tem was writ­ten in Python; spe­cific­ally Tur­boGears frame­work con­nec­ted to File­Maker, with some later addi­tions coded in Cold­fu­sion. This lat­ter sys­tem used a web front end.

In sum­mary, this account at least 13 sys­tems that ran in pro­duc­tion coded and tested by me. Now I have doc­u­mented them, I am ready armed for the next meet­ing where exper­i­ence is called out. You have been warned.

I think it’s time for more, right?

This is page 2 of a con­tract between Charles and Robert Fall of Dun­bar, Scot­land and the fish­er­men of Crail, Fife, Scot­land.

Charles and Robert Fall held many interests in Dun­bar in the 18^th Cen­tury. They also had fam­ily con­nec­tions in Fife. In an agree­ment signed by them on the 9^th Novem­ber 1745, the fish­er­men of Crail agreed to deliver their catch of white fish to them for a period of 6 years. This shows the final part of the con­tract made between the Falls and the fish­er­men of Crail. Here, agree­ment is made for the car­riage of fish, not­ably saithe, to the Fall’s cel­lars, to be paid by them. At the end are the sig­na­tures or ‘marks’ of the fish­er­men of Crail. The most east­erly of Fife’s fish­ing ports, Crail Har­bour dates back to the 16^th cen­tury. At one time the vil­lage was an import­ant her­ring sta­tion. The few fish­er­men left today fish inshore, mainly for shellfish.

On the left hand side, just below the fold, there is the fol­low text: “George GH Hodge mark.” In this instance, George Hodge could not sign his name, and there­fore marked with a “GH”. I am related to this George Hodge.

George Hodge was born in 1717 to George Hodge (him­self born in 1686) and mother Kath­erin Mon­crief in Crail/Fife, Scot­land. He was 32 when he marked this doc­u­ment. His younger brother was a James Hodge, where my paternal line descends.

Crail Har­bour: The har­bour was ‘new foundit’ in 1610, des­troyed in 1707, and what is shown here dates from the rebuild of 1728.

The fish stocks in this area star­ted to drop in the later part of the 18^th Cen­tury, and there­fore there was not enough room in the fam­ily busi­ness. As the younger brother, James Hodge left the fam­ily busi­ness and slowly drif­ted north to St Andrews in the lat­ter half of the 18^th Cen­tury. From 1764 in Crail, 1766 in Kings­barns (3.5km north of Crail) and 1771 in Brown Hills (just south of St Andrews). This George Hodge is also the wit­ness to the birth of James Hodge’s first and second chil­dren: Andrew and Mary. The third child of James Hodge is a John Hodge; again from where my paternal line des­cends. This John’s son, Melville, emig­rated to South Aus­tralia in 1853.

In the 1841 census, Mary Hodge (daugh­ter of James Hodge, born in Kings­barns in 1766) is lis­ted as liv­ing in Thor­gate, Crail. Based on the pos­i­tion in the census, it is likey she was liv­ing with the Scotts of Crail at this time.

I sus­pect that James trav­elled north either as a farm labourer, or as a hand loom linen weaver; as was his son. Kings­barns has a noted his­tory of both. And golf­ing, but I doubt my fam­ily was of the cor­rect glass for golfing.

Note: This inform­a­tion was found using the http://scran.ac.uk sys­tem. Scran is:

Scran — part of the Royal Com­mis­sion on the Ancient and His­tor­ical Monu­ments of Scot­land — aims to provide edu­ca­tional access to digital mater­i­als rep­res­ent­ing our mater­ial cul­ture and his­tory. This is provided through the wholly owned trad­ing arm Scran Ltd. We are one of the largest edu­ca­tional online ser­vices in the UK sup­port­ing over 4,000 schools, lib­rar­ies, col­leges and universities.

On pre­vi­ous hol­i­days I have immersed myself in old TV Shows: Red Dwarf, The Office (two name but a few)

This year, it is two old TV Shows from the 1960s: 12 O’Clock High and Com­bat!

As a young’un, my par­ents kindly let me watch these shows in the 1970s. These shows left me with an endur­ing interest in WW2 history.

12 O’Clock High depicts the 918^th Bomb group in Europe dur­ing WW2 and stars Robert Lans­ing. The first epis­ode fol­lows a sim­ilar story thread of the 1949 Acadamy Ward win­ning movie of the same name star­ring Gregory Peck. Com­bat! shows US sol­diers in the European theatre of oper­a­tions, post Normandy.

A sober­ing sight in our 2004 trip to the US where these two monu­ments: (note, the pan­els shown is only a small selection)

Out­side the Amer­ican Air Museum, inside the Imper­ial War Museum, Dux­ford there are many pan­els etched with a mini pic­ture depict­ing each of the 7,032 Amer­ican air­craft lost dur­ing WW2.

In the lower levels of the museum, a series of Amer­ican build­ing is a list of over 30,000 Amer­ic­ans lost dur­ing WW2: (note, the pan­els shown is only a small part of the total panels)

The real­ity is noth­ing like the TV show. Then again, what would I know.

In the recent research of my paternal fam­ily his­tory, I found ref­er­ence to David Melville Hodge sign­ing the papers for an Angus Hodge. These papers were per­mis­sion given by David for Angus to join the Aus­tralian Infantry in 1916 for ser­vice abroad. He was only 18 years and 2 months old.

Private Angus Hodge was my Great-Grand Uncle.

Based on my recent research into a Private Albert Lock, I knew I could find Private Angus Hodge’s ser­vice records at the National Archives. A few per­sonal notes where an injured right leg from a hors­ing acci­dent in 1912, and many teeth miss­ing. He was also noted as “stocky” at only 5 and a half feet tall. His denom­in­a­tion was lis­ted as Meth­od­ist.

Private Angus Hodge became a part of the 6^th rein­force­ments for the South Aus­tralian 43^rd Bat­talion, AIF. The 43^rd Bat­talion made up the 11^th Infantry Bri­gade, 3^rd Divi­sion of the AIF. Landed in the UK dur­ing the early part of 1917. (note: This Order of Battle is extremely use­ful and the War Diar­ies of the 43^rd Bat­talion are insight­ful)

At this stage, Private Hodge star­ted to have a bout of Measles and Mumps and finally arrived in France 30^th July 1917. He joined the front line on 24^th August 1917. Just in time for the 3^rd Battle of Ypres. (also known to Aus­trali­ans as Passchendaele)

From this time, there were many times in hosip­ital lis­ted as “NYD” and “PUO” : not yet determ­ined and pyr­exia unknown ori­gin (ie: fever)

Then there is a note from 18^th August 1918 “admit­ted old wounded leg, slight” back in the UK ; frac­ture from tibia, based on the fall from a horse some 6 years earlier. Repat­ri­ated back to the UK, Private Hodge spent time get­ting bet­ter at the end of the first world war.

On the 23^rd Novem­ber 1918, exactly 90 years ago today, the Med­ical Board in the UK awar­ded Private Angus Hodge a 20% per­man­ent dis­ab­il­ity due to ser­vice; fit for home ser­vice.  He would have limped for the rest of his life.

Dis­charged from the AIF on 19^th March 1919 in Adelaide. Merely a year after return­ing to Aus­tralia, Angus was dead.

Nearly 3 years away from home, Private Hodge served his coun­try. The records fail to detail the men­tal and other injur­ies suffered whilst in France.

Angus Hodge died ages 22 and is bur­ied 23^rd March 1920. The grave­stone states “Son of DM and FJ.” Last res­id­ence is recor­ded as Gul­nare South Aus­tralia. Where David Melville Hodge was farm­ing at the time.

Lest We Forget.

As pre­vi­ously blogged, my ancest­ors hailed from the east­ern shores of Fife, Scot­land. Exactly where golf was invented.

NB: this page will be updated as more info is found. Dots will join back to here

Inspired by recent fam­ily events, I decided to revisit my June 2006 research and go fur­ther back. The pre­vi­ous searches had stopped at David Melville’s grand­father: John Hodge

Thanks to Scot­lands People, the offi­cial gov­ern­ment source of births, deaths, mar­riages, census data and other bits and pieces: search­ing is easy and rel­at­ively cheap. Cer­tainly saves trav­el­ling to Scot­land and spend­ing days in a lib­rary or archive.

My ancest­ors were not cath­olic but rather “free kirk” Pres­by­ters, they freely recor­ded their details in the Old Par­ish Records kept since 1553 in Scot­land. I am 100% of my ancest­ors to 1734; The move­ments prior to Crail in 1662 is a little more tenu­ous, although this was a time of much upheavel in Scotland.

Using Maps.live.com, I have cre­ated a visual map col­lec­tion that details the move­ments of these people in Scotland.

So, this is where we are in reverse chro­no­lo­gical order; the left hand column has the male line and birth year, with the fol­low­ing row their respect­ive father. The num­ber is the gen­er­a­tion from Liam back (ie: Liam is zero, and I am num­ber 1)

After pub­lish­ing details on my fam­ily his­tory two years ago: the con­nec­tions con­tinue to increase.

Firstly, a con­nec­tion to my Great-Great-Great Grand­mother, Mary Milne was made in Octo­ber 2007. Mary Milne is David Melville Hodge’s mother.

Now, a rel­at­ive in South Aus­tralia for­war­ded me this pic­ture of my Great– Great– Grand­father: Mr David Melville Hodge.

More inter­est­ingly, a series of bio­graph­ical stor­ies appeared. He seems quite the pion­eer­ing character.

I think if here were around today, he would prob­ably be a blog­ger. And mer­cur­ial, too.

Short Bio­graphy from the Encyc­lo­pe­dia of South Australia

Mr David Melville Hodge, Chaff and grain mer­chant, Alex­an­der Port Pirie, is a nat­ive of South Aus­tralia, hav­ing been born at Angaston in I860. He is a son of the late Mr. Melville Hodge, who settled in the Angaston dis­trict in the early days of the Province.

At the con­clu­sion of his edu­ca­tion, which was received at Sad­dle­worth, while still quite a boy he came to Laura at the open­ing up of the North­ern areas for set­tle­ment, and engaged in farm­ing pur­suits and out­door life gen­er­ally, rough­ing it in the man­ner well known to many of the young Aus­trali­ans of that peÂriod.

He vis­ited the Kim­ber­ley “rush” in the north of West­ern Aus­tralia, Mount Brown, in Queens­land, and has made him­self acquain­ted with all the gold-mining centres in the North­ern Ter­rit­ory and through­out the Commonwealth.

At a later period Mr. Hodge engaged in farm­ing and team­s­ter­ing in the north­ern parts of South Aus­tralia, and in 1901 estab­lished him­self in his pre­sent busi­ness, that of a chaff and grain mer­chant, in Port Pirie. He has since worked up a sat­is­fact­ory con­nec­tion, and enjoys his full share of the trade of the district.

Mr. Hodge is a mem­ber of the Cale­do­nian Soci­ety. In 1885 he mar­ried Julia Florence, daugh­ter of Mr. John Pil­grim of Gawler, lat­terly of Laura, and has a fam­ily of six sons and two daughters.

Golden Wed­ding Anniversary (1936) News­pa­per Clipping

Mr Hodge, Senr, of Lock, recenly cel­eb­rated the anniversary of his Golden Wed­ding. Mr Hodge was a suc­cess­ful farmer in the Gul­nare dis­trict some years ago, and at one time was shear­ing for Mr Niel McGilp, who was widely known in pas­toral areas. At Lock, Mr Hodge is one of the most inter­ested work­ers in the Meth­od­ist Church, and to attend the ser­vices he drives his car 12 miles pracically(sic) every Sunday. Mr Hodge still drives a team of bul­locks when clear­ing scrub on his farm, and this proves that he is a true son of the soil. A few years ago Mr Hodge gave up retired life, and returned to farm­ing. On his Golden Wed­ding day, Mr Hodge com­posed the fol­low­ing poem.

Aus­tralia: A Poem by Mr. D. M. Hodge

AUSTRALIA

Aus­tralia, I love thee,
The land that gave me birth,
And reared me up to man­hood,
From the products of the earth.

Thou has let me roam in free­dom,
From moun­tain top to plain,
And always gave suf­fi­cient,
To relieve my hun­ger pain.

I have seen thy sil­ver mines,
And gold and cop­per, too,
Deep down into your bowels,
All shin­ing bright and new.

Your wheat and wool I’ve car­ted,
From far inland to the sea,
To feed and clothe the hungry
In Eng­land or where’r it may be:

I’ve seen your men and women
Leave here to go and fight
And join up with dear old Eng­land
For justice, honor, and right.

I’ve seen your towns and cit­ies
Grow up about your land,
And helped the pion­eers to clear
Mal­lee and stones on every land.

And now I’m grow­ing old and grey,
On this, my Golden Wed­ding Day;
Great Mas­ter wilt Thou hear me say,
’Tis here in Aus­tralia I wish to stay.

Obit­u­ary

Mr. David Melville Hodge, 76, died at the home of his son-in-law (Inspec­tor M. M. Bishop), of Fourth street, Port Pirie West, on Septem­ber 5. His earli­est juven­ile exper­i­ences included the sight of mobs of wild nat­ives at North Rhine sur­round­ing the home of his father. The lat­ter died there when David Hodge was a small boy and he moved with his mother to Coghill’s Creek. At 11 years of age he became a farmer’s boy with a wage of 2/6 a week, but he soon after­wards obtained employ­ment with Mr. Hugh Aitken, a fam­ous colt­breaker of his day, and from him learned the art of hand­ling horses.

After a brief spell at home he left, on a horse he had pur­chased for £4 10/, find­ing his way to Kapunda and thence to Adelaide, where he obtained employ­ment with a farmer at Bal­ak­lava. At Port Wake­field later he obtained a pas­sage by ketch to Port Adelaide, but soon trekked north again.

His next job was that of woolpicker on Par­a­too Run. then jointly held by Sir Thomas Elder and Mr. Peter Waite. Later, purchas­ing a team of bul­locks, he engaged in cart­ing sleep­ers from Wir­ra­bara and took loads to the Sil­ver­ton sil­ver fields. He claimed to have car­ted the first con­sign­ment of silver-lead ore from Thack­ar­inga to Terowie to be sent from there by train to Port Adelaide.

In 1886 he and two mates, W. Duck and F. Lind­say, set off for what was repor­ted to be a rich gold find in the Kim­ber­leys. Mr. Hodge returned to South Aus­tralia and star­ted a chaff store, saw­mill, and wood­y­ard at Port Pine.

Seven years later he moved to Pirie Springs, near Laura, and from there to Gul­nare. Five years’ retire­ment in Adelaide fol­lowed, but 10 years ago he took up land at Lock, on the West Coast, return­ing from there to Port Pirie. At Laura he mar­ried Miss Florence Julia Pil­grim, who sur­vives. Mr. and Mrs. Hodge cel­eb­rated their gol­den wed­ding in 1935. Four sons and two daugh­ters are left Messrs. Frank. Hec­tor, Ken­neth (West Coast), and Wil­liam Hodge (Iron Knob). Mrs. J. N. O’Brien (West Aus­tralia), and Mrs. M. M. Bishop (Port Pirie).

From the ABC: “Rudd lays wreath for Hiroshima vic­tims”

Mr Rudd is the first Aus­tralian prime min­is­ter to visit Hiroshima’s Peace Park and Memorial.

How embar­rass­ing for Aus­tralia. Why has no other Prime Min­is­ter vis­ited Hiroshima? Incredulous.

On the other hand, I won­der if a Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter will visit the Thailand-Burma Rail­way and apo­lo­gize.

One day, maybe.

Excel­lent talk from George Dyson on the early stages of digital com­put­ing: