{"id":391,"date":"2005-03-15T15:48:43","date_gmt":"2005-03-15T22:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balafon.net\/?page_id=391"},"modified":"2025-11-17T15:48:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:48:46","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My name is Gordon Tisher; I live in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.  <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/balafon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gordon_work-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1723\" srcset=\"https:\/\/balafon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gordon_work-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/balafon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gordon_work-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/balafon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gordon_work-144x144.jpg 144w, https:\/\/balafon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gordon_work.jpg 460w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I am a software developer by trade and I enjoy studying languages and linguistics on the side.<\/p>\n<p>I am married to an excellent woman by the name of <a href=\"https:\/\/andreatisher.com\">Andrea<\/a>, and we have two children.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Liberia\">Liberia<\/a>, and have lived in and traveled to a wide variety of places.<\/p>\n<h1>Things I&#8217;m interested in<\/h1>\n<h2>Computing<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>I have worked in computational linguistics (pre deep learning) and played around with NLP using deep learning.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve built compilers for .NET and using LLVM.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve helped build AAA video games and in tiny VR startups.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve paid the bills with a lot of full-stack web app development.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My resume is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/gordontisher\/\">here<\/a>, and my GitHub profile is <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/chalcolith\">@chalcolith<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some projects to highlight:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I spent almost ten years as a core member of the <b><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/ponylang\/ponyc\">Pony<\/a><\/b> programming language team; Pony is an open-source, actor-model, capabilities-secure, high performance programming language.<\/li>\n<li><b><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/chalcolith\/kiuatan\">Kiuatan<\/a><\/b>: a packrat parser generator for Pony that can handle left recursion.<\/li>\n<li>An unpublished compiler for scripting in a massive distributed VR engine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Linguistics and Languages<\/h2>\n<p>I have a master&#8217;s degree in Applied Linguistics.  I&#8217;ve studied and forgotten <a href=\"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=356\">numerous languages<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I like to keep up some classical Greek; I <a href=\"https:\/\/chalcolith.com\">translated the Gospel of Mark into English<\/a> in a rather idiosyncratic fashion.<\/p>\n<h2>Choral Singing<\/h2>\n<p>I sang in choirs in university, and have sung in various community choirs since then.<\/p>\n<p>I was for fifteen years a member of the <a href=\"https:\/\/pcda.bc.ca\/avc-choir\/\">Abendmusik Vesper Choir<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I was most recently in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kamloopssymphony.com\/ksochorus.htm\">Kamloops Symphony Orchestra Chorus<\/a>.  I&#8217;ve done a bit of classical solo work around Kamloops.<\/p>\n<h2>Aviation<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always been an aviation geek. Health issues put a stop to my flight training, but I fire up MSFS from time to time.<\/p>\n<p>I have a Canadian advanced drone license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My name is Gordon Tisher; I live in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. I am a software developer by trade and I enjoy studying languages and linguistics on the side. I am married to an excellent woman by the name of Andrea, and we have two children. I grew up in Liberia, and have lived in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/balafon.net\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;About Me&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-391","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1750,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/391\/revisions\/1750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}