This is the personal site of Preston L. Bannister.
I wrote software for a living. Seems my age drops me out of the hiring-filter, so retired - at least for now.
Using the time to turn 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 in my resume, when Bill Gates asked. :/
- (mid-1980s) Thought through the concerns of network security. Got a surprise visit from the NSA. (This is now labeled "cybersecurity".)
- (early-1990s) Learned how to cut down my error rate. Learning curve tooks 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.
You can also find me on:
- Github ... for public work/examples.
- LinkedIn ... when needed.
- Flickr ... since 2004 - when an early and important social site.
- 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 ... at times, less lately.
- Quora ... yeh. Easy to end up with duplicate accounts. No way to merge.
... and others that do not come to mind, at once.