User:Martin Gradwell

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

My name is Martin Gradwell. I have contributed to various Internet forums, always either under my own name or using the abbreviation MTGradwell. I consider this to be important – if I'm not happy enough with something to attach my own name to it, why should anyone bother to read it?

I am British, currently residing near Blackpool, Lancashire. I have a B.Sc. Degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, and a lifelong interest in computer programming. I've programmed everything from COBOL payrolls on mainframes to dragons gliding over a 3-D landscape. I also repair computers and design websites.

Many years ago I had what I thought was a brilliant original idea – that it would be great to have a computerised repository of knowledge where names of articles would be automatically highlighted and selecting a highlighted word or phrase would take you to the corresponding article. A "back" key would return you to where you had come from, but in a better position to understand because the previously challenging concept would now be fully understood. On the other hand clicking on a further link would bring up a further article, and so on, with nesting allowed to any depth. I worked on software which would facilitate production of such a repository. The first version ran on a ZX spectrum (the first computer I owned was a ZX80 which I bought when they first came out and assembled from a kit), and if there was an Internet back then I knew nothing of it. Unfortunately, despite many incarnations over the years, my "hyper-former" program never worked well enough for my satisfaction. Besides my friends assured me there would never be any demand for such a thing.

My other interests are wide ranging. They include politics, Japanese culture (and especially Manga and anime), and cosmology, and science in general.