| Born | Living - Suppressed |
ca. July/97 |
|---|---|---|
| Birthplace | New York City, NY, USA | |
| Baptized | Living - Suppressed | |
| Baptized at... | No Entry | |
| Baptized by... | No Entry | |
| Baptized in... | No Entry | |
| Occupation(s) | Electronic design engineer, software engineer, musician, entrepreneur, master instructor martial arts, author (martial arts, engineering, copywriter), genealogist | |
| Died | Living - Suppressed | |
| Died at... | No Entry | |
| Cause of Death | No Entry | |
| Burial Place | No Entry | |
| Disposition | No Entry |
Parents
| Father | [1380I] | James Benjamin Blish, B.Sc., Ed. (***) 10 | 
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| Mother | [1380I_sa] | Mildred "VK" Virginia (Kidd) Blish 10 | 
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Spouses, Mates & Children
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Wife #1 [1402B_sa] - Bessie Magdeline (Haldezous) Blish 11 Married by: No Entry Married at: Milford, county of Pike, PA, USA Children by this spouse: | 
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Wife #2 [1402B_sb] - Carol Ann (Rolff) Blish 11 Married by: No Entry Married at: Port Jervis, county of Orange, NY, USA Children by this spouse: | 
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Wife #3 [1402B_sc] - Dr. Anne Michelle Williams, M.D., F.A.C.S., BaSc (Chemistry) 11 Married by: No Entry Married at: Glasgow, county of Valley, MT, USA Children by this spouse: | 
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Companion #1 [1402B_sd] - Deborah Louise (Kirkpatrick) Gregory 11 Unofficial union Children by this mate: | 
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Immediate Family Tree
Personalized History Timeline
Insufficient record precision for timeline
Additional Information
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I was born in New York City, and spent my first year or so there, though I recall nothing of
it. As an infant, I was brought to Milford, Pennsylvania by my parents. My parents divorced
when I was eight years old. I lived in Milford until the sixth grade, when I went off to school
in New York City for a year, living with my half-sister (on the maternal side), Karen Anne Emden. I returned to Milford and continued school there in several
steps, including some home schooling with Walt and Leigh Richmond, friends of the family, until
leaving high school in the 10th grade and obtaining a GED (General Equivalency Diploma) in lieu
of spending further time in the local school system, which wasn't working out for me in any
case.
An inquisitive nature made itself known early on. I was reading science fiction aimed at teenagers (Tom Swift, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, E.E. Smith's "Skylark" series, etc.) comfortably by the third grade, and a direct side effect of this was a sense of isolation from my peers, most of whom were still struggling with reading in general. As a child, my room was characterized by control panels made of switches and lights obtained from the local hardware store, a light-alarm on the door, and numbers of de- constructed clocks, radios and other devices strewn about the floor. At one point, when experimenting with chemistry, I visited a hobby store in Port Jervis, New York with my mother. I wanted her to buy me a large Gilbert chemistry set. She noted that the smaller set said it was "safe for children" and indicated that this was what I could have. I contended that no set was safe, and if I could prove that the small set could be quite dangerous, could I have the large set? She agreed, and the next day, I stood in front of her as a diabolical concoction from that "safe" chemistry set blew every window out of the basement of the house in a single thunderous explosion. It set the dust from between the floorboards in my mother's room to dancing several feet in the air in the beams of sunlight coming through her window. My mother, an honorable woman, after calming down somewhat, went directly out and purchased the large chemistry set for me. I was made to mow lawns for a whole summer to pay for the windows, a lesson I never forgot. A crater in the yard would have done as well, and cost me a lot less of my time making up for the demonstration. Home-made rockets and explosives, poisons and acids, very deep holes in the yard, continuous model building, extensive reading to the point of obsession, forts in the woods and exploring everything I could get to filled my formative years. It would not be unfair to characterize my late childhood and early teenage years as deeply rebellious. A constant pushing against the limits of society and family life repeatedly got me into scrapes and trouble with the authorities. If I pursued an interest, it was only the luck of the draw that said if it was legal or not. For instance, I designed, built, and maintained a pirate radio station, upon which I gleefully broadcast rock music - on top of the local "musak" station out of Port Jervis, New York, an activity that was illegal, inconsiderate and antisocial (except to a small circle of my friends, who thought it was marvelous fun, and not antisocial at all!) Later, I did move the station to an empty frequency. My rebellious period began to end at about age 15, after some particularly harrowing experiences with drugs, and friends using drugs. After taking stock of my life, I set personal and educational goals and pursued them with a somewhat manic single-mindedness which continues to this day. The first "official" sign of this change of heart was the passing of my G.E.D. examination. Although I remain highly individualistic as I write this in 2003, I do view society with considerably more tolerance than I did as a teenager. Still, I think society would benefit from many significant social and legal changes. As a teenager, until age fifteen, I was willingly involved in the drug culture. One unpleasant consequence of this was being sentenced to spend a year in the reform school at Loysville, Pennsylvania by a Draconian local judge. Just prior to my incarceration, I discontinued drug use and became an ardent opponent of the use of drugs, although a supporter of the right to choose for oneself whether to actually use or not, an attitude I maintain to this day. After leaving high school, I studied electronics, receiving a diploma with honors from the National Radio Institute. I also completed courses on arc welding and combustion engine maintenance and repair. I took technical drawing, mathematics and physics courses from Orange County Community College, in Middletown, New York. I also pursued additional studies in various disciplines on my own, including chemistry, mineralogy. and computer science. My usual employment during these years was working as an electronics repair technician. I worked at Lafayette Electronics, Radio Shack, and for various industrial concerns in somewhat of the same role, maintaining and designing electronic test and manufacturing equipment. I played guitar in various bands and studios in the evenings and on weekends, culminating in professional work in New York City, where I performed as a sit-in musician in several small studios. I left the studio musician end of the business when an employer informed me that I was to be paid in cocaine, which while financially might have been quite advantageous, was anathema to me after my previous drug experiences and subsequent decisions — and also, of course, highly illegal. Disillusioned with the industry per se, I eventually built my own studio and now create my own works, singing, playing guitar, bass, drums and keyboards and using multi- tracking techniques to meld the various parts into cohesive musical works. I generally prefer blues, rock and hard rock, though I dip into classical guitar styles from time to time. Writing definitely pervades my immediate family, and I caught the bug. My father was a writer, my mother a literary agent, and my sister Beth a translator and technical writer. I sold my first magazine article in 1976 for a computer periodical "Kilobaud" on running a small microcomputer (a National Semiconductor SC/MP) as a translator/controller for a baudot coded printer at age 21. It was printed shortly thereafter. I have written almost nonstop since then, on subjects that range from religion to drugs to martial arts to electronics and programming. I moved from Milford to Florida at about age 23, and began to work at jobs in the electronics engineering field in a calculated manner. The intent was to learn as much as possible, and to do as many different jobs as possible. in order to build a foundation for an independent career. My parents had worked at home, and after a few years in the nine to five job market, I decided that was definitely what I wanted for myself as well. During that period, I worked for Can-American Electronics, Electro-Sender Industries, Academy Design, MCI (now a subsidiary of Sony) IBM, Datamedix, Analam, Centuri, Bally-Midway, Techstar, Arcade Engineering, Magnum and Logical Devices before finally setting out on my own designing computer hardware and writing software, an occupation I still follow. In addition to my engineering career, I have trained extensively in the Korean martial art of Tae Kwon Do. My studies began at age 9 in Milford, Pennsylvania where I had a few months opportunity to learn just the beginnings of Judo from Scot Richmond. This caught my interest, and years later, I began training in Tae Kwon Do in North Lauderdale, Florida, under Master Sang Woong Lim of the Korean Tae Kwon Do Ji Do Kwan. In the course of my training I won martial arts tournaments at the local and state levels before being soundly trounced at the regionals. I received my master ranking nineteen years after my start in the art, on August 20th, 1995 at Pompano Beach, Florida. I teach Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Hapkido and Chin Na in an integrated curriculum. I have written a large reference work on Tae Kwon Do, as well as a tutorial work on basic reading and writing skills in the native Korean script, "han gul". I take considerable satisfaction in the dan (black belt) ranked martial artists I have trained over the years. I operate a software company, Black Belt Systems, the principal business of which is to sell image, video and film processing software; a martial arts school; a photography studio; and an audio recording studio. For some years, I also operated a bookstore that specialized in the martial arts; I do some consulting work, primarily on e-commerce system design and implementation. I maintain a number of domains on the Internet: classic-audio.com, which is a special interest site for audio enthusiasts, ourtimelines.com, which is a site that generates timelines like those in this genealogy, blish.org, to serve my family, ideaspike.com for my own musings and fiddling about, and finally, blackbeltsystems.com and crystalpixels.com, both of which serve my computer software company, Black Belt Systems. My personal interests include mineral collecting, housecats, model railroading, ship model building, aerobics, 1970's-era microcomputer collecting, amateur radio, artificial intelligence, photography, data compression, writing HTML, boating, cars, Chinese characters, coin collecting, guitar, bass, drums, studio recording, pinup art, reading, learning to read and speak the Chinese, Korean and Spanish languages, spelunking, stuffed animals, collecting audio gear from approximately 1980 and earlier, writing technical works in engineering and the martial arts, the Blish family genealogy, and inventing new devices, software methods & technologies. Politically, my views range from the extremely liberal to very conservative, depending on the issue. It is at least fair to say that I am rarely undecided. As to religion, I am atheist, although I view religious activity with interest, and readily acknowledge the useful social and psychological roles that religion serves for some segments of the population.
Design summaryHardware:
Software:
Other engineering career accomplishments include:
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