Home Page - Welcome to markgulliver.com
Welcome to the the web site of Mark Gulliver (duh), an ex-forensic
scientist from the FSS. As I note elsewhere,
this site is
mainly for my own amusement and as a method of learning web site
coding. After some thought I eventually decided to register it under my
own name, rather than some smart site name, mostly because all the
alternatives I wanted based on my usual on-line identity were already
taken. That's the price of picking a common word as your internet alter
ego. It does mean though, that I'll need to be careful what I put here;
or at least more so than usual. I'm not an idiot: I know nothing is
genuinely secret on t'web. It means that I probably won't move my stuff
about my car from the "anonymous" site because it will attract the
wrong sort of attention. I'll also be fairly careful what I say about
forensic science in the UK.
Anyway,
however you found this site, welcome. If you wish to respond to any of
this stuff, contact details are the bottom, in the form of a puzzle to
make things harder for spiders.
Note: as should be fairly obvious, this site is under heavy (if
slow)
construction. You will find many things that are obviously meant to be
links, but aren't, and links which are there but take you to blank, or
nearly blank, pages. This is because I tend to put in structure first,
and pages second, so that I can test links, formatting etc. I should
point out that in general, links to other parts of this site open in
the same window, but links to external sites open in a new window.
Don't blame me if you end up with ten open windows (this is a near
certainty if you end up on TV Tropes)
07 August 2021
Well, it's been a long time, and a conplicated story, but I'm back. First, I'd like to say hello to both of my readers. Second, a small fill-in on what's happened since I last updated this.First, I finally found a job. It took seven months and two hundred job applications, but I got there. I should point out that those were two hundred properly targetted applications, not just spamming out applications as the dole office wanted me to do. Just six of those led to interviews. The reason for that is the reason I originally said that I might not find a job: my age. (That comment has not been removed.) At that time I was just over fifty, and looking for middle-rung lab work. But the skills you learn from forensic science are so specialist that they are of little use in a lab. And most importantly, no-one is looking for a fifty-something mid-level lab person. For that level they are looking for recent graduates. Now obviously my CV didn'y give my age, but since my most recent job went back eighteen years, it was obvious I was at least forty. Yes, I know age discrimination is illegal, but only if someone can prove that's what they are doing. I went to one interview where there were three candidates: me, a man slightly older, and a man just out of uni. Guess who got the job. Obviously he was the best candidate, but...
Anyway, on interview six I got a job, with a two small catches: 1) it started in less than two weeks, and 2) it involved moving to Manchester. So for four weeks I ended up driving back to my home in Huntingdon (Cambridgeshire) on Friday after work, staying there until Sunday, then driving back to Manchester on Sunday afternoon. Then five nights in a hotel. That went on for four weeks, until I found a rental in Blackley. Yes, I know. But actually I didn't get burgled until about a week before I was due to move out. (Small rant: actually the burglary was far less traumatic than dealing with the swindling claims company.)
I had finally sold my old Huntingdon place (it took nine months, despite accepting the offer within two weeks of listing) and bought a place in Bury. Four months after that the company I was working for folded. I was then recruited for another company where I worked for nearly three years, which was nearly three years too long. The only only good thing to say about them was that, whenever someone tells me how awful the firm they work for is, I can honestly say: "I've worked for worse". This company liked to try to claw back training costs when the law clearly states that they can't, and sent me two threatening letters about my non-compete clause after I handed in my notice. And after I agreed to work an extra two weeks to help the handover. That's another thing that is more or less unenforcable.These are just minor examples of their style.
I went back to forensic work, this time toxicology, for about eighteen months, then left again. Then I moved into environmental testing, but that company division got shut down as a cost saving exercise. So for nearly two years now I've been analysing e-liquids.
3 November 2012
I've not been updating the site for a while, so I've just noticed yet more mistakes in links, mostly down to not enough ../s in the code. And I still don't have a job. At least I can fix the code. I've not been back for a while because I'm stuck on styling. I'm fine at looking at something and telling you whether the style is good, but I really can't design. That is, get an idea in my head and put it on the screen (or paper). Which is why anything I design (like the decor of my house) tends to be dull and minimalist. Although I do actually like minimalist.20 July 2012
I've been looking back at the site, noticing the odd typo, and also thinking how hard Ariel font can be to read. So as an experiment, I've changed over to Georgia font for all the main body text. The various heading types will stay as Ariel for the moment. I used to be a big fan of Times New Roman, but it's just a bit too formal. I've always heard that serif fonts are easier to read, and since this site is going to end up mostly text, it seems more sensible to go in that style direction. The only down side is that the italic version of Georgia, which I use for the "paragraph" bits in CSS, looks a bit pretentious.10 July 2012
Well, the job hunting isn't going particularly well. So far I've applied for forty jobs in the last three months, and had precisely three interviews out of it. Two then rejected me, and the third was supposed to get back to me by the end of last week, but hasn't yet. I've had a couple of rejections at application stage, and a few are too new to have got anywhere, but most applications have just disappeared intot he ether. Welcome to the joyless world of job hunting.Still, it does give me a chance to do some more pages, starting with the Gaming area, as threatened earlier.
29 June 2012
I finally finished copying all my Lake District Stuff from my old web site to this one. Next up I will probably tackle Gaming again.1st June 2012
The next task I have is moving all my Lake District stuff from my other site. This is a lot more complicated than it sounds, and the full saga is here.22nd May 2012
A large part of making this site is to try to get the hang of making websites. Not just constructing them, but doing so in a way which is relatively easy to maintain. It's a struggle. The problem is, like any project, things keep changing.11th April 2012
I'm now actually getting a little bored of Skyrim, so I've come back to playing with this site. All I've really done is start creating some of the structure and couple of page templates.30th March 2012
Welcome to the home site of Mark Gulliver. The site is very empty at the moment, so I have a lot of writing ahead of me. Sadly, in order to find time to write such material, I need to drag myself away from playing Skyrim. As anyone who has played the game will testify, that's harder than it sounds. At some point though, I'll be taking an extensive look at this game, plus others.I should point out that this website is not a blog. I will have things to say about a lot of subjects, but few will be particularly current. Similarly, I will have little to say about myself. Mostly it will be random musings on things which interest me, but probably not many others.
General
Obviously
this site is copyright me etc. It has been constructed using KompoZer.
Currently at least, there is no
javascript anywhere in it, so if your browser claims to be blocking
something then the site has been hacked. I'd be grateful if you could
please tell me if that is the case.
If anyone does want to contact me, for that or any other reason, I can be e-mailed via the site. Just my given name is fine, at the web address. If you are a human, that should be easy to work out, but I'm hoping spiders have a little more difficulty.