Brands Hatch Mainland Antartica
The photograph of me was taken on the mainland in Antarctica. The ship behind me is Explorer II which took us down to Antarctica, crossing the Drake Passage. We were taken ashore in small zodiac landing craft. Although it was summer, as you can see it is overcast and was snowing shortly before this photograph was taken. You can see more of the places around the world I have visited on my Touring website. View more of my space images on my Astronomy pages and click on the picture below to see photos and videos from my recent trip on the Hurtigruten to see the aurora.
Today I am a lady of leisure, spending my time doing photography, astronomy, motorcycling, playing golf, cycling, touring in my motorhome, volunteering for SERV Wessex and marshalling cycle events.
I was the founder of Database Evolution Ltd, a company which specialised in providing the right database solution such as relational, column store databases and database machines. For over 30 years I worked on a wide variety of computer databases, including Vertica, Greenplum, Oracle & Rdb and the Exadata database machine. At Oracle I was responsible for a number of features in the Oracle Database which were developed either at Oracle's headquarters in San Francisco, or at the New England Development Centre in New Hampshire in the USA, although I was located on the south coast of the UK. I also developed Oracle's ILM strategy which pioneered using the database as the platform for ILM rather than a storage device.
My Phd was awarded by Southampton University in the UK for research into a software tool which automated the process of creating a CODASYL database from the conceptual stage through to physical design. My first days with databases involved building the largest CODASYL database in Europe. Over the years I have been fortunate to have worked on many systems that you probably use daily and take for granted. It can be very interesting seeing what goes on behind the scenes.
Just remember that whenever somebody tells you the computer did it, it only does what a human told it to do!