Welcome to the new POttSoft Home Page

I’m trying to restore POttSoft from the zombie state it has been in for a few years, so do bear with me.

I first got into computer programming in the 1970s, writing programs in BASIC and assembler for a Sinclair ZX80 and the BBC Micro. By the 1980s I was writing experimental control, and data analysis software for my Ph.D. in High Energy Particle Physics, working on the WA69 Omega Photon Experiment at CERN.

I was a physics researcher University of Manchester for a couple of years,
working at CERN, DESY and visiting Rutherford Lab from time to time.
My first software job was at a small Stockport-based company, Yezerski-Roper, which created vehicle breakdown recovery services using VAX and Alpha VMS systems. My wife and I moved from England to United States at the end of the last century, and I was a developer and then Dev Lead at Microsoft, working on the Visual Studio IDE, car navigation systems and IOT devices, amongst many other things. At the turn of the century, we  moved from Microsoft to Amazon, and have two children, and a dog, in the Seattle area.

For the last few years I have been an attendee at the Lesbians Who Tech & Allies,
San Francisco conferences, and a panelist and speaker for the LWT Seattle chapter, the Women In Technology WiT Regattas in Seattle, Out In Tech, and am active in various human rights, women’s and LGBTQ+ causes.

At home I have a VAXstation 4000 Model 90, a 4000 Model 60, a VLC and an
Alpha 600au running VMS, with the MadGoat MX SMTP Server, plus DEC software running under the VMS Hobbyist License. Following a remodel, my VAX and Alpha are currently mothballed, but I hope to revive them when I get more time, or retire! I also have several Windows machines, and when I get time, I develop public domain software for Windows 10, and VMS, using C, C#, C++ & STL, Visual Studio, .Net Framework, Motif, TCP/IP and even Fortran, and I play with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

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