About

This is the personal site of Preston L. Bannister.

In school, I majored in Physics, with minors in Artificial Intelligence, Art and Psychology.
(Those minors were in fact one topic.)

Spent my working life writing software. Near all that time was surfing along the bleeding edge.

Retired now. (Ageism is a real thing.) Old guys are meant to be fixed in their ways, and I am no exception. Constant, unrelenting curiousity, and play is my "way".

Doing my best to transform my house into a mad-scientist's lair. :)

Spent my working life on one bleeding edge or another.

• (circa 1980) Thought small computers were going to make a difference. They did.
• (early 1980s) Thought graphical users interfaces were going to make a difference. Built a GUI toolkit.
• (1984) Went to a Microsoft Windows developer's conference. Did not send resume when Gates asked. :/
• (mid-1980s) Thought through the concerns of network security. Did the ITARs rituals. Got a surprise visit from the NSA. (This is now labeled "cybersecurity".)
• (early-1990s) Learned how to cut down my error rate. Learning curve took years, but worked!
• (1990s) Learned and taught the same lessons for efficient client-server applications.
• (late 1990s) Thought web-based applications would displace client-server. Did simple web-applications.
• (mid/late-2000s) When browsers converged/stabilised, wrote a web application to replace a complex Windows app (AJAX).
• (early 2010s) Figured out how to do cloud-scale efficient instance backup in OpenStack. Caused some trouble with the storage vendors. Got fired for succeeding.
• (to 2025) Chanced into a nest of old Cold-War radar scientists. Made one remarkable radar reliable. Designed the back-end for the next.

In present, playing with more physical things. Learned a bit of CAD for design of bits to make on 3D printers. There is a massive shift to Raspberry Pi-based systems for interface to the real world. Want to expand my vocabulary in this space. My past work was much apart from the physical world, so this is interesting.

Tooling up to start a business:

• Claimed the domain spaceage3d.com (year ago).
• Registered a business SpaceAge3D.
• Aim is to offer design services and original 3D-printed designs.
• TODO: Setup the spaceage3d.com website.
• TODO: (?) Setup an Etsy store.
• TODO: (?) Setup with Slant3D to use their print and ship services.
• TODO: Build a couple of Voron 3D printers with Bondtech INDX (for multi-color/material prints).
• (Likely other bits...)

You can also find me on:

• Github ... for public work/examples.
• Flickr ... since 2004 - when an early and important social site.
• LinkedIn ... deleted.
• Facebook ... early on but became nasty, and dropped off years ago.
• Twitter ... never liked the short-nasty exchange, joined for a time, but dropped off.
• Mastodon ... somewhere. Maybe.
• Bluesky ... somewhere. Also maybe.
• Quora — Preston L. Bannister ... at times, less lately.
• Quora — Preston Bannister ... duplicate account.

... and others that do not come to mind, at once.