Now

Good news to open with. I've started a new job, a system operator role at Cuscal Paymark here in Auckland, working with TACL and COBOL and reading a fair bit of TAL, which is the Tandem NonStop world turning up as a day job rather than a curiosity. It's also my first full-time role in a couple of years, after a good while of putting study first, so getting back into it properly feels good.

I've also picked up a contract doing embedded fintech work. I can't say much, it's under NDA, but it's the kind of low-level work I like most and it has been genuinely fascinating so far. There are a couple of other things on that I can't discuss at all, so this is the only line they get.

On the study side, I've moved from AUT to Massey, where I'm reading mathematics. Worth being straight about why. The attention around Booth got a bit much for a while, some family health things needed my time, and something had to give. Massey's distance programme means I still get the degree without it being all-consuming, which right now is exactly the trade I wanted. Genuinely happier for the change.

The projects ticking along in the background:

• TTAS, an open assembler for Tenstorrent's Tensix engine, because assembling a single instruction should not require their entire compiler tree.
• Ernest, compiling Fortran down onto real quantum hardware to find out exactly where the quantum stops and the classical begins.
• Booth, a GPU compiler with no vendor lock-in, tested by simulating nuclear reactors.
• z390, the portable mainframe emulator, where I get to build alongside the people who first wrote it. Currently improving zVSAM and designing a zVSAM 2.
• OCaml, teaching the native backend to emit the single hardware instructions it currently turns down, things like conditional-select, popcount and bitfield-extract, across all five architectures. The atomics work landed first, the rest is a long arc. Backed by the OCaml Foundation.

Between the new job, the contract and university, these get the spare hours rather than the main ones for now. Still curiosity-first, just slower.

A few things are parked, too. ZKVS is on hold until I understand database fundamentals properly. The problem was never writing a database in IBM assembler, it was wanting to know more about databases first.

On the desk right now is An Optimized Printer Plotting System by Lois T. Dellner and Betty Jo Moore, two women at NASA's Lewis Research Center who pioneered data visualisation and printed the complete FORTRAN and IBM 1401 assembly source in the back. I make no promises, but source like that has a way of becoming a project.

Away from the terminal:

• Still learning my notes on the guitar, and butchering Wonderwall with the best of them.
• Looking at getting back into flying lessons. I was working towards my PPL before the break.
• About fifteen different teas now, bagged and loose. Currently deep in loose-leaf green, though earl grey stays the reliable one.
• Rewatching The Good Place, which holds up.
• It's winter down here, and I am thoroughly abusing a poor Warehouse heater that is doing double time.
• On repeat while I wrote this, Dani California.
• Bertha, my monstera, has put out a new leaf, and is on her way to becoming Big Bertha at last, as always intended.

I'll update this when there's something to update, and thanks for reading!