GIS (Geographical Information Systems) began to make a serious impact outside academic circles in Ireland in the late-1990s, about 5-10 years after making a similar impact in the more information rich countries. However, GIS was taught in Maynooth long before then. I first began teaching GIS in 1983, although the term 'GIS' was not in widely used at that time so the course was called 'Computer Cartography'. This was a bit of a misnomer because the maps drawn by the software specially written for the course (see MUMMS) were not cartographically accurate, but the software, in retrospect, was ahead of its time in the way in which it facilitated management of the locational and attribute data used to create the map. The Computer Cartography course was taught until the mid-1990s, but due to underfunding we were unable to acquire commercial GIS software once it became available and the course began to lose credibility. Fortunately, the financial position was reversed in 1996 by funding raised by running courses funded by external sources. This allowed us to create a small teaching laboratory with 17 machines and state of the art software. This, in turn, has enabled us to run a number of GIS courses at postgraduate level. (For more details about the GIS and Computer Cartography courses, please click the courses link).
My interest in computing is not confined to Computer Cartography / GIS. It actually dates back to a short programming course I attended when working as a research assistant in Queen's University in 1971. A lot of my research activities in the 1970s and 1980s depended upon my ability to write my own programs. The need to write programs to be able to use a computer declined in the 1990s following the availability of user-friendly application programs, and I became a very occasional programmer as I could do most of what I needed using applications software. However, my interest in programming has been rekindled in recent years by a number of factors and I have been slowly teaching myself new object-orientated and web-related languages. Further details of my programming background and my programming languages are provided on separate pages.
Although the Computer Cartography course began in 1983, several of the programs I wrote during the 1970s and 1980s could be regarded as proto- Geographical Information Systems. I have also written hundreds of other programs over the years. These were mostly one-off programs for a special job, but a few were written as 'package' programs for more general use. A few of my more ambitious efforts, which come to mind, are listed on the programs page.
Apart from teaching the GIS courses, my duties also included acting as the Departmental Computer Facilities Manager. Given that we require all of the machines in our main computer room to be working at all times, but did not have a technician until 2002 to fix them if they broke down, my management strategy was by necessity geared towards prevention rather than cure. I think it proved successful. I am quite proud of the fact that we only ever lost one machine for one class over 6 years - and that was because a hard drive packed up. Some details are provided on the computer facilities management page.
Finally, the pages in this site contain personal reminiscences, but I also maintain the GIS in Maynooth site. This contains more resource-orientated material about GIS, the World Wide Web, and other issues.