I didn't finish school, never went to college, and hardly drove past a university—never the less I was employed in various hardware and software engineering capacities over a period of 20 years until I retired at the ripe old age of 45.

So I think I can lay claim to at least some skill in computing although I'm not an expert in any one field, more a generalist with interests and experience in most fields from widgets to Windows.

I've written applications and/or worked on code and/or designed hardware using the following languages and processors...

• C
• C++
• Java
• JavaScript
• Perl
• PHP
• VB6
• VB.NET
• Paradox PAL
• Z8x assembly
• 65xx assembly
• 68xx assembly
• 80x86 assembly
• HTML
• COBOL
• TCL
• 2900 bit-slice machine code

And probably a few more I can't think of right now. I've ported a large product to many diverse platforms including UNIX, IBM, and Burroughs mainframes. I worked for large multi-national businesses like PRIME computers and SPL, and also two-man bands like Torrens Industries and Nichols Research (who I'm sure you've never heard of).

All in all I loved working in the IT industry and marvel that people have paid me well over the years to do what I would almost have done for nothing. I would work long hours then come home, grab a bite to eat and a beer, then go into my lab and continue doing the same work only on my own projects. Seldom did I get to bed before 2am.

Since retiring I have kept my hand in by continuing to write software and develop hardware, there is still hardly a day goes by when I'm not developing something on a computer although these days I'm usually in bed by 1 because I live off solar power and the batteries are getting low buy then.

So, this section of robgray.com is about building stuff on and with computers, there are two main parts.

Embedded processing
About building embedded systems using the AVR range of microcontrollers.

PC software
About writing projects to run on PCs which in my case means mostly using VB6 and VB.NET.

Shameless plug

I don't really need to work and I'm not actively looking, but I am always keen to do something interesting. So if you have a hardware or software project you think I could help with get in touch.

As you may know we are permanently travelling around Australia, however with the comms available these days this is not an impediment for many types of development. And who knows, for the right project in the right town I may even be tempted to drop anchor.