Published Articles

Gregory loves reading general science and learning about how our world works. He also enjoys teaching and explaining things to people in a way that is accessible and simple to understand. This combination of qualities comes together nicely in the form of freelance writing. Gregory took the opportunity to have his ideas put to paper with articles published in two issues of the international Esperanto youth magazine, Kontako, under the general science rubric.

The first explains the difficulty facing modern computer architecture in producing human–level artificial intelligence. There is a long history of people comparing the mechanical foundation of the mind with whatever is the most modern technology of the day. From cogs and wheels, to tubes and transistors, to fast CPUs and plentiful RAM. We should not fall victim to this trend. Brains and computers function very differently.

The second article, Energy and Star Stuff, explains in easy to understand language the logic behind Einstein's discovery that trapped within the nucleous of heavy atoms is an enormous quantity of energy. How much energy? Only the massive energy output of an exploding star provided enough oomph to crush the subatomic parts down into these tiny stable units as we know them today.

~1400 words each. Written in Esperanto.

Blogs and Online Content

The internet provides an open canvas upon which the modern writer can share his or her thoughts and expertise. Gregory has contributed articles to several blogs over the past ten years. Ranging from software development tutorials and discussions of hobby electronics and classic computer hardware, to book reviews, philosophical treatises, and articles deep diving on language and grammar.

The first sample, is a ~3300 word essay arguing against the grain that the most correct way to interpret the English infinitive verb form is without the word "to." In order to build the case an extensive set of examples is explored. Comparisons are drawn by examining similar grammatical structures in four languages. Because the terminology of grammar is not standardized across languages, nor even across all grammarians within the English language, the conclusion drawn could, in theory, impact how English is taught and how it is mentally conceptualized.

The second sample, is a ~7000 word review of World of Commodore in 2017. It was his second year back, after returning to the Commodore scene in 2016. The review is a personal story of his trip there, his encounter with old friends and the loss of those no longer with us. It's a technical description of some new technologies that were demonstrated and on display, and a philosophical exposition of what has changed over the decades that has transformed the platform from technologically cutting edge, to fierce competition, to decline, to destitution and loss, and finally to rebirth as the active and engaged retro community.

Business and Technical Writing

In his professional role as lead software developer and technical lead, Gregory has written extensive documentation to support their products. He has also written government claims and helped to write business plans and investment proposals.

The first sample is the technical component of a claim submission for the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit, offered by the Government of Canada. Dates and names have been obscured for privacy reasons. The submission is for one business year, and is ~2800 words covering two areas of research and experimental software development. It answers questions that describe unique technical uncertainties, work that was performed to overcome the difficulties, and technical advancements that were achieved as a result.

The second sample is the support center website for Quetzal POS. The website is publicly accessible as well as accessible through the iPad app. The majority of content was written by Gregory. The material is technical, describing how to use the features available in the product, as well as how to install point–of–sale hardware and configure the app to access it. The writing is a careful balance of clarity, ease of comprehension for a non–technical audience, and complete technical thoroughness. The site is comprised of a growing number of cross–referenced articles of both how–to tutorials and general overviews of major systems. Each article begins with an abstract and a philosophy section that explains our thinking and our approach to how the system works.

Philosophical Writing

Gregory is a freethinker.

“A person who forms his or her own opinions about important subjects (such as religion and politics) instead of accepting what other people say.”
—http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freethinker

This cannot be more clearly seen than in his philosophical writings. He is not afraid to touch on the big topics in life: morality, religion and politics.

This article is a ~2200 word opinion piece about the moral and legal status of abortion. It is a follow–up to an earlier piece, and represents a change of mind after a number of personal experiences that come with age.

The second article is a ~2300 word chapter review of a popular religious book. The book is What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza, published in hardcover by Regnery Publishing Inc. in 2007. While Gregory disagrees with the author's general thesis he argues against it with a reasoned and dispassionate voice.

He is willing to agree with points that make sense and offers alternative explanations to arguments in which D'Souza makes unfounded and philosophically dubious claims. Reviewing popular books with chapter–by–chapter analysis is a hobby for Gregory. It is an exercise in critical thinking and encourages a deeper and more engaged interaction with the material. Reading material by authors who disagree with his personal worldview is an important part of establishing what it is that he really believes.

Professional Development

Quetzal POS is a retail point–of–sale and business management solution for the iPad and the web. It is a complete end–to–end small business tool, allowing the merchant to configure and privilege clerks and managers, input their stock and inventory and tag their products. Clerks PIN into the terminal to scan and sell products. Quetzal calculates taxes, processes returns, issues refunds with support for store credit, tracks customer accounts and manages customer loyalty. Transactions can be processed offline, and supports integrated credit and debit card payment processing, sales and gift receipt printing, barcode label printing and scanning. Quetzal includes a complete reporting suite for sales and customer activity. All of this functionality is available in an elegant and easy–to–use user interface.

Gregory is the main software architect of Quetzal and wrote over 90% of its code. It is a hybrid HTML5/Objective–c app, with a PHP/NodeJS backend hosted on Amazon Web Services and IBM Cloudant.

BeXPHP, version 6, is a modular webapplication platform. It has a windowed user interface, a model–view–controller based widget toolkit, and offers an advanced user and group permissioning system. The system has a customizable tray for quick access to accessory apps, a main menubar for managing windows and opening applications. BeXPHP is a privately owned technology that was not open sourced. It was used to create massively multi–user, realtime business management applications for a variety of industries, including restaurant POS, retail POS, consignment bookstore and enterprise menu management.

BeXPHP is an HTML5/Javascript development environment with a PHP/MySQL/Oracle backend. Gregory was the chief architect who led a team of talented developers and designers who contributed to its success.

The Queen's Equity Appointments Process is designed for Queen's University to track the equity process for all staff and faculty appointments. The application shows the employment equity representative the equity profile of their unit, allows them to assemble a committee who are appropriately trained and specify all of their advertising details. The tool is integrated with the equity training databases for statistics and training records. After approval by Equity Office staff, the application allows them to import all applicants, and then rank, shortlist and make appointments.

The Queen's Equity Training Manager is a complete training management system for Queen's University. The system tracks trainees, and all of the online and in-person training they have completed at the unversity. Courses and sessions can be configured and added to collections. Collections can be used to generate dynamic registration pages. Registrations enforcing course dependencies, and management waiting lists. Session presenters can use an iPad to allow the participants to self-sign-in when they arrive. Feedback request emails are sent automatically. The Training Manager provides a full set of reporting, importing and exporting tools.

Gregory designed the QEAP and Training Manager's workflow and user interface and wrote 100% of the code. It is an HTML5 application with a PHP/MySQL backend. Both are hosted by Queen's IT Services.

Personal Projects

C64 OS is an operating system project for the stock Commodore 64 (No SuperCPU or REU required.) Its goals are to bring together a modern and snappy event driven user interface with a full TCP/IP stack over ethernet.

There have been ethernet cartridges available for the C64 for over a decade, but there are still precious few programs that make use of them. One reason for this lack of software support is that writing a TCP/IP stack is not easy. It is mostly beyond the commitment level of the casual C64 programmer. C64 OS aims to provide a minimalist operating system extension to make it easier to write apps that use the internet and provide a consistent user experience.

C64 OS is written in 100% 6510 assembly. Gregory is blogging as he goes, about his learning experience and design decisions. You can follow his progress and leave comments and suggestions at www.c64os.com.

SpiffyPaint is an image editor for the C64, expanded with a SuperCPU running the WiNGs operating system. It features multiple layers which are composited in realtime, and an unlimited undo/redo history.

The drawing tools will be very familiar to users of GeoPaint or MacPaint. The canvas is arbitrarily sized, and the drawing area can be scrolled with cell precision both horizontally and vertically. Each drawing tool features a floating palette of customizable options for fills, blends, opacity and symmetry constraints.

SpiffyPaint was written in C.

Ever since he was a child, Gregory has wanted to be able to play movies on his C64. With the SuperCPU and WiNGs operating system he had the opportunity to make that dream a reality.

The WiNGs movie player loads and plays movie files on the C64. The movie file format is of his custom design. It features delta compression with keyframes, and a header that can specify arbitrary properties of the movie file including frame size, frame rate, audio sample rate, audio frequency, stereo or mono. The Version2 file format also allows for embedding a loading animation sequence. This consists of a few frames and a custom framerate that are loaded first and played in a loop while the main movie is loaded into memory.

Maximum framerate is approximately 25 frames per second. The pre-emptive multitasking abilities of WiNGs allow multiple movies to be played simultaneously for a stunning display of the SuperCPU's potential.

The WiNGs movie player was written in C, and includes conversion and build tools that can produce a movie file from a set of frames and a PCM Wave audio file which can be exported by PC or Mac movie players, such as QuickTime.