If you have data points scattered over an area, you might want to structure them into triangles. Trust me. Judy had solved this problem after a fashion several years before. The antiques dealer from Derby had thought of a super-fast solution. He had talked to a mathematician friend who had written a basic program to implement the idea, and asked Judy if she would be interested in doing it properly. He left her a diskette with some data sets from land surveys, and a teleprinter listing of a program, and then disappeared into the mists, never to be seen again. Judy never found out who he was, or who his friend was. Within a year she had learnt another computer language, fully implemented his idea, tested it on huge data sets, extended it, and written up substantial documentation. She tried to contact him. She did not have his name or phone number, and they never spoke to each other again. If he reads this, he must get in touch.
Documentation for the new triangulation module was written carefully, new example programs were developed, and it was integrated into Simpleplot. New customers used it.
Using this new triangulation software she was offered a contract to solve a problem posed by British Gas in response to a Parliamentary Enquiry – how to locate clusters of houses in the UK which were not served by gas pipe-lines. The problem was finding a way to define a cluster, and the new triangulation software let you do just that.
And then the end of BUSS. It had been a wonderful company to work for in its glory days. We enjoyed going in to work. 20 years later the annual BUSS trip still convenes in Bridlington. Old men and women come together each August to meet up again and to renew old friendships. At the heart of the Company was a recognition that what Judy had designed was good. Very good. She worked tirelessly at what she thoroughly enjoyed, and it was a pleasure to be part of that. There were Episodes. Not every smallest part of Judy’s method of working was faultless, but everyone felt that they were able to contribute to the best of their abilities. She always looked back at the people who worked at BUSS with affection – and she wasn’t a sentimentalist.
Was that the end, then? Hey, no. Money was still coming in from old maintenance contracts, and people were still ordering what was now outdated software as they moved their programs that had worked for the last 20 years on to new systems. Judy’s career, however, took another turn. She was asked whether she would tale over the development of an internet based interface to control a robotic telescope now housed on Oxenhope Moor. She moved into Web design. Another computer language, another set of design criteria, another set of concepts structuring databases. What the designers of the project had not appreciated was that the number of cloudless nights on Oxenhope Moor was limited. University people may be smart, but they are not that smart. The non-viability of the project did not trouble Judy one bit. She enjoyed the challenge of designing the interface so that if you did get several cloudless nights in a row, and if the telescope was up and working, people would get the most well-designed software-driven response.
But out of the blue an entirely different career opened …
jbrip 