Developing Inner/Emotional strength on top of character.

You start off in life with Inner Strength - aka Character. Then if, you are lucky, you develop one or two out of Emotional Strength or Intellectual Strength which in turn wrap themselves around Inner Strength – like vines around a pole. The inner strength is drawn from childhood experiences (nurture) and sheer luck (nature). Different people have different iKnowledgenner strengths. One everyday experience for one person, might be an epiphany for someone else.

I was temporarily introduced to the theatre and history by my paternal Grandmother. This showed me there was a lot about the world that was beyond my then current set of experiences. And it created a kernel of intellectual activity.

My parents encouraged me to learn stuff. When I was about 7 or 8 they bought “Tree of Knowledge” magazines. While I didn't understand it, it told me that there is a very big world out of there. This was helped by reading various comics – 2000AD, Commando etc. Later on, in MH the boarding school, I read someone else's copy of Look and Learn. Mainly for the cartoons.

When I was about 8 or so, my Dad started working abroad. He told me I was the man of the house and that I had to look after everyone else. I tried to do so.

In Oman (the Middle East) I used to climb mountains near my home. Nothing but camel-thorn, the bones of long dead goats and baked rocks. A bit like Wordsworth in the Lake District. I also had interests in archaeology and geology but they weren't developed. At one school I tried to attend voluntary geology classes but was asked to leave because my handwriting wasn't fast enough.

At boarding school I was showing a certain level of enterprise – for example setting up a school newspaper in N.I. But still being quite naive in my trust of other people.

Boarding School instilled the strength to carry on with normal life even when my life was falling apart. Strength comes from frequent exercise. In my case, the emotional highs and lows of holidays with my parents (leaving boarding school for the holidays – a high, returning to boarding school at the end of the holiday – a low). This was probably encouraging emotional strength by fire. For years I relied on emotional strength, later on, while working, I developed some intellectual strength.

University – buried myself in course work and running and playing Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). When things got too much for me in the real world, I referred to it as “reality poisoning”, something I avoided by reading sci-fi books or playing AD&D.

Working after University - About £60 left to me in the 1990s by my Aunt E was spent by me in a postal book club (TSP, I think) while I was living in Berwick. I bought various books – philosophy plus Edwin de Bono's “Book of Wisdom”. This was the first time I'd been introduced to thinking about thinking (call it meta-thinking). Meta-thinking has given me the tools to realise that my thoughts have been disrupted by psychotic episodes – this is called insight. Insight can't stop the psychosis but it makes you easier to treat.

First post-graduate job – LiBRiS Computing, Berwick Upon Tweed. I used to be a bit of a Software Engineering fire brand. Simply must use source code control systems (so I wrote one myself – SCHOLAR – Source Code Held On-line Archival and Retrieval). Simply must not reinvent the wheel – so introduced the use of SCHOLAR and shared modules. And was not particularly tolerant of people who didn't share this vision. The main project I worked on was the LiBRiS (public) libaries search engine, delivering a family of search engine products, supported by a makefile and a source code control system. Other programmers worked on these systems as well so I acknowledge their work here but don't name them for privacy's sake. I left an Easter Egg in the last version of the LiBRiS search engine. Go to enter the password on the main menu and type in credits – it lists the programmers – from 1993-1999 who worked on that software.

Later on, in 2001, I came to the attention of the local NHS trust and I've been with them ever since then. I am much calmer these days and instead of writing search engines I help Contact, a local mental heath charity ( http://www.contactmorpeth.org.uk/ ) in the day to day use of its computers, the use of its internet suite. and work in the workshop where we refurbish old PCs and give them away to Contact's members. In particular we are a heavy uses of FLOSS – Free / Libre Open Source Software. See http://contactmorpeth.wikispaces.com/SoftwareToolkit Contact is given stuff that other people don't want any more. Some of the donated PCs come with obsolete versions of Windows so we've a few options 1) buy a Windows XP license – can't do that 2) scrap the PC for parts or 3) if acceptable to the end-user, install a long term version of Ubuntu Linux.

Different end-users have different needs. Regardless of whether or not we use Windows or Linux, the Software Toolkit page listed above shows we can provide the software at no cost to the end-user.