This is my home web site. My name is Stephen Usher and I live in my little house on the outskirts of Oxford, UK, generally minding my own business and watching the world go by. I have a degree in Geology and another in Computer Science. I'm still a person of moderate intellect who would rather help others fly high and push the envelope than do it myself. I'm a facilitator.
So, why did I choose the name lingula for this site? Well, firstly, the name was available as a domain on the net. That's as good a reason as any. Secondly, the Lingula family of brachiopod sea creatures is the oldest known family of multi-cellular creatures which has hardly changed throughout its time on this planet. You can find fossils of this creature in rocks 550 million years old, where most of the other creatures are strange and weird, yet today you can find living specimens in the waters around Japan which are almost identical. And the reason they've survived? Well, they're not specialists in any way. They haven't made the mistake of changing to fit their environment and then found that the environment has changed and they're stuck up the creek without an evolutionary paddle. Having done a geology degree, I admire such stamina. It also reminds us that just because something has been around a long time it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work anymore and should be discarded.
Anyway, as time goes on I'll develop this site into something or other. But, at the moment I've little to put on it so I'll leave it quite spartan. There's no real point in embellishing something which has little or no content. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few links to some things I've done in the past and some of my friends' pages...
You can e-mail me at steve@lingula.org.uk if you wish.
For those looking for pictures of John and Katie's Wedding and John's Stag Day, look no further than here:-