South Wirral Local Community. About Graham


	I'm Graham Drake. I've been happily married for the last 20 odd years to Sylvia, who has looked after me and our two youngsters, Sarah and Michael, so unselfishly. Sarah works for the Next retail chain and is married to Gordon, with their own home, while Michael is still looking forward to a career within the computing industry. Our dog, a Jack Russell, and the parrot, a Cockatoo get on well, and both have taken over the bedroom vacated by Sarah.
We don't get out very often, what with Sylvia working a fair few nights a week, looking after the elderly, whilst I develop the business and try to keep up with the phenomenal change that the Internet offers to the home as well as business, but there's a Masonic Club across the road and a busy pub a few minutes away for those rare evenings out.

Health wise, I've been trying all sorts of remedies for a Psoriasis cure/relief and am coping with the results so far. The Author of 'The Trial', Franz Kafka, suffered from the irritation and wrote a book called 'Metamorphosis' which sums up my feelings well. Whilst mentioning books, I'd like to list a few other titles that I've enjoyed reading: "Steppenwolf" by Herman Hess, "Catch22" by Joseph Heller and a smashing collection of short stories, "Political Science Fiction" by Greenberg & Warrick especially "The Short Ones" by Raymond E. Banks

As I saw the benefit of my early experimenting with PC's on Michael's education, moving him up from two years of dyslectic remedial stream to confidently looking forward to going on to college, has helped me develop the studio / front room into a pretty advanced PC research centre and I now run a networked system based around an Apple 20", Taxan 17" and a few 14/15" monitors, powered by Windows'98, 95 and 3.11 machines.

I am aware as I look around the room at how much has changed since I was a child and the valves warmed up our two channel TV, still sitting beside me, a 12" Bakelite Bush... OK, I now use a 20" model to view this missive but none of my PC's have a volume knob on the front...yet, and I do enjoy the ability to type this Web Page whilst a Neil Young or Leonard Cohen CD is playing, or maybe watch the Pink Floyd Video CD-ROM, through the Dolby Pro-Logic hi-fi system.


A lot of TV choice. The three WinTV cards, from Hauppauge, provide the Fireside Channel, amongst other terrestrial and satellite TV Channels and after experiencing

	a documented UFO sighting in 1977, I enjoy the opportunity of watching the 'Roswell Incident' on CD-ROM along with the opportunity for recording the Lookout "Front Door" security Channel.

Having promoted the benefits of Passive Home Entertainment via the Television Aerial for thirty odd years and the home computer for the last fifteen, I completed my technological trinity, and overcame my distrust of modems, following the chance opportunity to experience Cix conferencing and the Ameol communications software back in 1994. Thanks to Frank Thornley and Steve Palmer for pointing me in such a fascinating direction. I now enjoy receiving a wide range of daily postings from the disparate range of conferences that I download.

Overall, I suppose that my general background has been based on experiences of getting new technologies into the home, Green tranny to Sansui AV/Hi-fi, 405 TV aerials to Motorised Satellite dishes, Two channel Black and White TV's to Digital Widescreen TV systems, Tandy TRS80 computer to MMX Internet PC's, and have enjoyed overcoming the problems associated with getting such technologies understood by the populous at large.