Greetings, welcome to my web page.
Once I wanted to be a fire engine driver. Then I accidentally did
well at some things at school, and wanted to go to
university. You canʼt get a degree in fire engine driving, so I
decided to go in for subnuclear quantum physics. I found myself
spending most of my time making the big calculators work better,
so after I graduated I looked to do something computational and
ended up spending the next four decades banging keyboards.
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At the University of Newcastle upon Tyne: radar rainfall
modelling (it got me a Ph.D.!)
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Developing software implementing e-commerce (shopping carts and
payment processing) based at the Amsterdam outpost of a
Massachusetts company, spun out from MIT. Then the dot-com bubble
burst and the company turned its toes up.
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At the Underpinning Technologies Group of the Section for Earth
Observation at the Monks Wood site of the
Centre for Ecology and
Hydrology, a research arm of
the Natural Environment Research
Council: analyzing aeroplane- and satellite-derived images of
the ground, and implementing field computing infrastructure for
the 2007 Land Cover Survey. They closed that place down in 2008
to make 200 scientists redundant :-(
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At Surrey Satellite Technology
Limited: software to point antennae and track satellites
across the sky, autonomously operate ground-stations, and to
negotiate the error-free downloading of Earth observation images.
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At the Jodrell
Bank Centre for Astrophysics of
the University of
Manchester" working on weak lensing detection of the
distribution of dark energy in the cosmos as part of the global
Dark Energy Survey
(DES), and iPad-based public engagement software at the
BlueDot festival.
If I find spare time and spare energy, I hack. I hack my
house, cars, computer, web server, mathematical models,
science fiction... if itʼs hackable, Iʼll have a go. If it
doesnʼt look like it belongs to me, it soon will. This page
is a summary of my hacking activities, for your amusement.
If you feel compelled to comment or just to say hi, Iʼm at https://rdmp.org/dale-mellor/contact.
Enjoy!
Programming
FOSS: Free, open-source software
Since the pandemic,
re-focussed on Rust and Guix.
Before that, 30 years a
professional C++ developer.
As well as on the local server (links below), most of this
software is also published
on Github, which
I hate.
- GNU mcron
All the power of Guile to schedule unattended jobs on a
computer.
- iBash
A modified bash shell which calls out
to Guile procedures to intelligently re-work
the command-line inputs on the fly.
- Micro HTTP Server C++
Library
Give your C++ application an embedded web server so that it
can interact with users through a web browser.
- Trader Desk
Yet another stock price charting application; this one
holds historical data locally and is extremely responsive
allowing interactive exploration of the markets.
- Market Data Service
Not actually open source, but a freely provided simple
service which supports the above trader-desk
application by providing market meta-data.
- C++ library for interfacing
to the above Market Data Service
Get live market meta-data into your C++
application.
- Kraken (cryptocurrency exchange)
API C++ Client Library
Get market data, live order books, and create trading
orders on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange using their
REST API.
Attic - decrepit old projects
>>>
Attic - decrepit old projects
^^
- GNU
“The coolest operating system on the planet. Sat astride a
2.6.X Linux kernel, and draped in a flowing Gnome2 ballgown, it
howls in the face of Windʼs 200X inches/hr. Such is the system
Iʼve built from scratch and now maintain exclusively on all my
PCs.” — Big words around the year 2000, but at least Linux is
still going strong! I currently use Debian Squeeze for
servers, and the latest Ubuntu for laptop/desktop work, although
Iʼm seriously starting to go off that.... I currently run
Debian stable everywhere: it is the universal engineerʼs
operating system!
- GNUbik
| I must have wasted half my youth on
these silly cubes, now Iʼm wasting... just wasting!
This isnʼt exactly my program, but I did add the
Script-fu subsystem and the AI to solve the blasted
thing. The project is hosted
on Savannah.
|
- Charity web sites
-
Guildford HOH Support Group
Fully commissioned web site
with the remit to make it as cheap as possible; managed to bring it
in at a total cost under £200 for five years (the charity
wanted to pay for all the time up-front as their funds are very
variable). It was also required to be ultra-simple for the charity
to use.
The web site is at www.guildfordhoh.org.uk,
though the current incarnation is nothing to do with me.
- The Keep (Guildford HoH/deaf Social Group)
Doing a favour for a good friend and her cohorts, this was a
Joomla-powered managed web-site which is used to pass on
news and information about this social group.
A simple, static page currently stands in place
at https://tribalvillages.org/deaf/social.
- BookBlog
One day I decided to catalogue my collection of books
(as I was starting to lose track of all the storylines),
so I wrote this software which allows me to write my
thoughts down after reading each new book, and then just
for free they become available to anyone else who might
be interested.
- Robots
These are notes I made as I was
building and designing software for my experimental robot
manipulator arm. It is still a work in progress, and I only wish I
had more time for this fascinating hobby.
- Rainfall Data Modelling Portal
Fallout from my Ph.D. days. Seems a shame to let the
accumulated intellect go to waste... This system was
based on the Internet superserver which I once owned,
but nowadays itʼs just another cloud machine, perfectly
adequate for the job.
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- The RDMP system itself is at
https://rdmp.org/rdmp (now bit-rotted to
ruins, but may some day return)
- The RDMP
development hub.
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- The meadow
This is my little pet project to develop an
interactive photo-realistic picture of a meadow. The
project has no defined structure - I will simply add a
little something to it every now and then, and weʼll
see what it grows into!
The last snapshot is shown here. Remember that with
the real thing you can move around the scene.
This hasnʼt been touched now for eight years. Looking
at the water that has passed under the bridge in that
time, Iʼm sure that if I were to pick this up again
Iʼd be using one of the graphics libraries that can
take advantage of the dedicated hardware now
available. Probably would use the current GDK which
is based on Cairo, backed by OpenGL.
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- The Village
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Having gotten involved with the online UK deaf
community through various forums, I felt that the
community would do better with a more immersive kind
of online environment, in which the members would
feel more like part of a village community. In the
end the participants decided that they wanted a
basic forum, and the software finished up being
nothing special.
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- CEH Phenology Observatory of Great Britain
This was my main development for CEH, a project to
monitor the dynamic state of vegetation growth on the
ground, for the whole of the British mainland.
The raw satellite data were furnished from the Dundee
Satellite Receiving Station, and downloaded to the site
every day; the processing line in the observatory is fully
automatic, so that images appear very soon after the
satellite makes its pass over the country (usually shortly
before midday).
I left instructions for its maintenance, but, alas, it no
longer exists.
Writing
Window on Winsfordʼs Councils, deep
dives into current and recent proceedings in the councils which
control the town of Winsford.
Some notes I wrote about the time I
built a card Star Trek
Enterprise.
Right-Angled Triangles, a book
which provides an alternative approach to learning and
understanding the maths of right-angled triangles.
Theory
of GCSE Numbers, a Youtube channel which comprehensively
reviews all aspects of numbers a GCSE student should know.
Understanding Deaf Culture, a critical review of a book
written by one Paddy Ladd.
The
Bubble, a poem about deafness.
((There are some other minor warblings about deafness
here.))
Mcron white paper, version 1.0, June
2003
Non-parametric MTB rainfall forecasting
system, version 2.0, February 2003 (unfinished)
Bridges, C. P., Kenyon, S., Shaw, P., Simons, E., Visagie, L., Theodorou, T., Yeomans, B., Parsons, J., Lappas, V., Underwood, C., Jason, S., Mellor, D., Wellstead, P., Schofield, A., Linehan, R., Barrera-Ars, J., Dyer, B., Liddle, D., Sweeting, M. N. (2013) |
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A Baptism of Fire: The STRaND-1 Nanosatellite. |
| Proceedings of the SmallSat conference, Utah. |
Kenyon, S., Bridges, C. P., Liddle, D., Dyer, R., Parsons, J., Feltham, D., Taylor, R., Mellor, D., Schofield, A. and Linehan, R. (2011) |
|
STRaND-1: Use of a $500 Smartphone as the Central Avionics of a Nanosatellite. |
| Proceedings of the 62nd International Astronautical Congress |
Mellor, D., Sheffield, J., OʼConnell, P. E. and Metcalfe, A. V. (2000) |
|
A stochastic space-time rainfall forecasting system for real time flow forecasting. I. Development of MTB conditional rainfall scenario generator. |
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Hydrol. Earth System Sci., 4, 603-615. |
Mellor, D., Sheffield, J., OʼConnell, P. E. and Metcalfe, A. V. (2000) |
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A stochastic space-time rainfall forecasting system for real time flow forecasting. II. Application of SHETRAN and ARNO rainfall runoff models to the Brue catchment. |
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Hydrol. Earth System Sci., 4, 617-626. |
Mellor, D. and Metcalfe, A. V. (1996) |
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The Modified Turning Bands (MTB) model for space-time rainfall. I. Model definition and properties. |
|
J. Hydrol., 175, 113-127. |
Mellor, D. and Metcalfe, A. V. (1996) |
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The Modified Turning Bands (MTB) model for space-time rainfall. II. Estimation of raincell parameters. |
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J. Hydrol., 175, 129-159. |
Mellor, D. and Metcalfe, A. V. (1996) |
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The Modified Turning Bands (MTB) model for space-time rainfall. III. Estimation of the storm/rainband profile and discussion of the future model prospects. |
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J. Hydrol., 175, 161-180. |
Mellor, D. (1993) |
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The Modified Turning Bands (MTB) Model for space-time rainfall. |
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Ph. D. Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK |
Painting
Crafting codeʼs one way to relax, and get a high when it all
works. However, sometimes you just have to get away from the
shackles of syntax and do something freeform. Below are some
of the less constrained hacks Iʼve done...
As practice before attacking the car, I did this circa January
1991. It is airbrushed thinned emulsion (the stuff you DIY put on
walls) on very thin, wide (36") printer paper.
Sometime Mellormobile, the Golden Eagle |
|
,
long since deceased but not forgotten...
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Pictures of a former living room. Painting this had been a
great way to pass three years of dark winter Sundays...
A couple of other things from former occupations.
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(4 MB) |
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(45 kB) |
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Other sundries
You can read my BookBlog here.
My contact page
is here.
Here is my GPG key, used both to sign
and encrypt e-mail, and to sign key GIT commits (the associated
e-mail address, dale-at-rdmp.org, is a black-hole and messages
sent there will NOT reach me).