This was writtin in 2002 when Scott was thinking about becoming involved in Ecademy .
Profile
My current hometown is Bath UK but my life started in the United States of America.
I’m a Taurus with a favourite colour of turquoise blue-green. Maybe that’s is why I like the sea. I studied for the US Coast Guard captain’s licenses and passed my test on my 18 birthday, becoming the youngest licensed captain in the US at the time. There started a life-long passion for the sea. I started operating boats in the north pacific out by my hometown of Seattle USA. As I have always been a information hound, I bought my first micro-computer in 1977, I wrote some software to track and map all my fishing spots. As I developed the tracking system many people told me that the military might like to see it. I showed the system to some military personnel and they loved it. From then on the new computer invention brought me into the lime-light. Everyone was calling for demonstrations from around the world. After 11 years of my fishing business I closed it down and started a computer company. So now I had a leading-edge high-tech computer company, what do I do now?.
This first of a kind computer system, processes data from military and oil & gas survey ships at sea. The computer takes all the data from sonars and other sensors dragged behind the ships along with all sensors on the ship itself. This will be processed in real-time, that is, as it happens. The user would see sunken ships, bombs, underwater mines, oil pipelines, reefs, rocks and anything else that might be on the ocean seabed. In 1986 no one had this technology except my company. I was the first in the world to display sonar digital data on a ship in real-time. I was the first to automate an all-digital mosaic (patch work) from sonar data. This let the clients use their ships to cover large areas and piece the sonar bits together and see the big picture.
My first client needed to do just that. They were looking for a ship that had sunk in 1857 with 23 tons of gold onboard. With the history behind the sinking and the rarity of the items onboard, it is estimated to be worth $1.2 billion dollars, yes that’s billions. The search area of 40 miles by 50 miles, was in the middle of the Bermuda triangle. The survey ship went back and forth for 44 days. All the data was collected on my computers and patched together (mosaiced) with my system. We did find the shipwreck and it took two years to get all the gold up, as it was in 11000 feet of water, that is 2 miles deep.
I continued to enhance my system both in software and hardware. Many other jobs came in. Oil and gas companies are using it to survey before they build new pipelines and oil and gas platforms. They also used it to check for damage to any underwater structures. My biggest client was the Royal Australian Navy. Where in 1988 they had me design and build their whole underwater mine countermeasure systems and command centre. I designed, build, installed and maintained systems on 14 warships. I trained the personnel and trained the training team for the future. The Australian Ministry of Defense liked the way I did that job they asked me to design their Mine Warfare Command Centre. It is a highly secure building with a room that looks like a “Star Trek” command movie set. Overall the Ministry of Defense spent 4.5 million dollars for my technologies. Most of which I plowed back into research and development for the future.
Most all major oil companies have their world headquarters around the north sea rim. This is what brought me to the United Kingdom. I liked it and stayed. As I like large challenges, I started three years ago on a Stock Market tracking system. The goal is to monitor all stocks, options, futures, currencies of the world, over 400000 symbols in all. While working on the Stock Market project. I came up with a new way doing Artificial-Intelligence computer thinking, and Machine Learning techniques. With applications in the Stock Market of course, but I see a bigger picture in areas of land mine and bomb detection, food quality control, medical research and diagnose of diseases and infections, chemical detection and classification. At current designs, I see the Stock Market system running on 16 of the fastest 64bit computer machines out there, operating as one big cluster computer.
So much for my business history a little about me as a person.
I like all sorts of music but acid-rock and opera. I like anything outdoors, hiking, fishing, bicycling, long walks, exploring old villages. I get all excited when I see wild game in their own habitat. When it comes to food, I like the old style healthy slow-cooked foods, Indian, Spanish, Mexican, Turkish, non-fried Chinese, rice, chili jacket-potato, stews, thick soups, beans and chili dishes, but I will always try anything new. I eat as much fish as I can and like lamb and pork for meat. When I travel, I always eat where the locals queue to eat, no matter how dirty it might look, and I always choose local dishes, even if I can’t pronounce the words.
Speaking of food, I do cook for myself and the variety is getting better. As a kid, most food came from the family’s own hands. My father would take us kids (myself, brother and sister) out every weekend. One weekend it might be in the woods and fields picking wild berries (blackberry, raspberry, boysenberry, huckleberry, strawberry) at different times of year when they’re ripe and juicy. The next might find us in a remote high mountains lake, stream or river fishing for rainbow trout. Or walking the ocean beaches digging for fresh clams and oysters. Or stomping through the woods finding three to four varieties of mushrooms (legal ones that is). Ocean fishing for wild salmon, seabass and lingcod. Picking apples, pears, plums from old abandoned farm orchards. At home we all would start cleaning, fixing, canning, cooking and freezing all the food we had gathered. Our garage had four very large chest freezers that were always full. We always had three to four hundred cans of salmon, fruit, berries, clams and the lot. We would smoke and dry the wild game, and boy was it good. Giving extra food to friends and neighbours. I was raised to survive and do things myself, the hard way if need be. I think my upbringing has given me an edge in business and the projects I do.
I am a man of history and the UK is full of rich history. Driving around the country and seeing castles, old canals, Victorian steam engine technology, Stonehenge, Robin Hood, Kings, Queens, ancient cities and much more. I really like roaming around the country reliving history. My favourite TV program is Time Team which does archaeological digs of historic sites around the UK and reviving history. I bought a metal-detector and plan on looking for lost treasure. Finding a roman coin would make-my-day as one would say.
Hobbies:
Fishing, photography, bicycling, country walks, hill walking, swimming, history and computer programming.
Ecademy:
What I want to get out of Ecademy is still a big question, so far I just like helping people out. As I have worked in many countries of the world, for large and small companies, worked directly with governments, having developed products from start to finish, done marketing plans, my experience should help start-ups and new comers to the world markets. I have a lot to give, and enjoy doing so. I enjoy watching the faces of people seeing new ways of using my experience for their own advancement. That’s what networking is all about.
Note from Steve: This profile is essentially true, though Scott does tend to leave out a lot of the people who shared in the effort.