Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Changes

I have left Intel effective yesterday, and will join Quantum Intellectual Property services on Monday.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

"My" Photograph


"My" Photograph




Many websites, in particular social networking sites, suggest that you provide a photograph.

Here's the one I use.









Why is this "My" Photograph?


Anecdote: a coworker, Matt Merton, sent an email postcard back from a trip to Italy with the bust of a Roman Emperor, asking "What computer architect does this remind you of?"



The likeness was remarkable. Curly hair, beard.



Since I have always been a fan of Roman history, in particular of the "good emperors" such as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, I decoded to adopt this as "My" Photograph, for use on websites, etc.



I may have lost Matt's original email, but the photograph credited below seems reasonable.



Unfortunately for me, the photograph was not of Marcus Aurelius or Hadrian, or even Trajan, but instead was of Antoninus Pius, about whom I know little.  The adjective "Pius" does not really apply to me.  But what little is known of this emperor makes him seem like a good guy, although some blame him for making Rome too comfortable, softening Rome up for the barbarian invasions that plagued his successors.




Source, Attribution, and Credits for "My" Photograph


This photograph is derived from the photograph

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antoninus_Pius_BM_Sc1463.jpg

which contains the following licence information:

This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

In short: you are free to distribute and modify the file as long as you attribute its author(s) or licensor(s).





Picture shot by Marie-Lan Nguyen (user:Jastrow) and released under the license(s) stated above. You are free to use it for any purpose as long as you credit me and follow the terms of the license.



Example:  © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons




I am using images, such as JPG, GIF, or the like, of this photograph as "me" on various sites, for reasons explained here.



Unfortunately, it is occasionally hard to attach the attribution and credit to the image where used.  For example, many sites only allow images, JPG or GIF, to be attached, with nowhere to put credits. I would like to associate a link or flyover with the image, however, unfortunately, many sites do not allow this - or else I do not know how to do so.  I made some attempt to embed the credits within the photograph, but by photo editing skills are not so good.



I am therefore creating this page describing `"My" Photograph', and providing the attribution and credit here. I will try to link to this page, or to the page http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_22f8pwcsd4 which describes other social networking data, and which links to this page, in an effort to provide full credit.



Note that I attempted to contact the photographer using the email address provided, to no avail.







Making lemonade with my Toshiba M400 Tablet PC

I have blogged in the past about my Toshiba M400 Tablet PC. I so much loved my older Toshiba 3505 Tablet PC, but the M400 is just plain and simply a lemon. It has sat unused for the almost two years since I bought it, because it was simply too loud to be used at home.

Not just my PC, but apparently the whole M400 model line. Googling finds many people with my complaint: fan too loud, hangs. One fellow even went so far as to void his warranty by installing an on/off switch for the fan.

Several sites discussed how the fan noise was a bigger issue in Japan than in the United States. Apparently the Japanese are less tolerant of unnecessary noise than are Americans. Yet another thing I have in common with Japan.

Having a bit of free time, I decided to try to make a go of it again. Reinstalled from scratch. Tried using various utilities to tune CPU performance and fan speed: RM Clock, Notebook Hardware Control, and, most usefully, SpeedFan. However, although the latter accomplished some tunings, they were insufficient to make it tolerable.

"When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade..."

The M400 is too loud to use at home. However, we have a cottage near the ocean, filled with the roar of the surf. The M400 is, barely, tolerable here. The M400 is louder than the surf, especially when it goes into what I call "Hyper Fan" mode; but it may be okay to leave the computer at the cottage. Heaven knows I am getting no other good use out of it.

Annoyingly, the M400 is the first machine I bought a multi year warranty for. Expires next year. If there was any hope of it being fixed. But past attempts were vain.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

"Website" Root

Andy Glew @ Google Docs


This is Andy Glew's "website" at Google Docs.

Resume

Its main purpose is to hold my curriculum vita - a very verbose approximation to my resume, approximately 11 pages. Also a much shorter resume, approximately 1 page.




This site was updated Dec 27, 2008. As of this date the most up-to-date versions of my resume and CV may be found on Google Docs:



Other Stuff





AutoHotKey scripts: http://www.autohotkey.net/~glew/

Lots of posts on comp.arch.  Many excerpted for USEnet Nuggets in CAN, Computer Architecture News.

History of Andy Glew Websites

This Google Docs "site" replaces an earlier Geocities website: http://www.geocities.com/andrew_f_glew.

It's
rather sad: Google Docs has a better editor, but Yahoo GeoCities allows
me to have more meaningful URLs. Google Docs cannot really be said to
be a website at all, since the URLs are gobbledygook.



You may find other, stale, websites for Andy Glew
scattered around the web, often at schools I attended where my old web
pages live, but where I can no longer log on. E.g. UWisc. These stale
pages may have some useful data not represented here, since intervening
websites such as Geocities were more restrictive, in disk space and
convenience, than a university website, but the resumes are out of
date.




Similarly, Andy used to work at Intel MRL, where
there was Andy's MRL bio. MRL's web site was never actually editable by
Andy, only by the MRL webmaster.




For an example of a web based system that is easier to maintain, look at Ward Cunningham's wiki, e.g. Andy's wiki home page.




My LinkedIn pages provide some information, but are limited in size and, hence, detail.


See my social networking doc page for information about my presence on various social networking tools. In particular, see the "My" Photograph page for credits for the photograph I use on many such pages.


More AutoHotKey stuff

I just uploaded http://groups.google.com/group/lifehacker-coders/web/Glew-AHK-stuff.tgz
which contains a tree menu system, that can be navigated entirely by
keybaord, that contains a whole slew of windows commands (basically,
the simple commands in AutoHotKey help), plus a few "keyboard modes"
to allow m,ouse motion, window motion, window sizing, etc. by
keyboard. Plus the "maximize to half screen", "lower right screen",
etc.

Posting such stuff to the Lifehacker / AutoHotkey mailing list. Probably also www.autohotkey.net

Monday, August 03, 2009

AutoHotKey Swap Delete and Backspace

I found that the standard AutoHotkey technique to swap BS and Del



    Delete::Backspace
    Backspace::Delete



did not work for me, because I need to turn it on and off quite a lot as I move around.

So, I wrote the following.

Would post it to some AutoHotKey sharing site, but can't seem to access such at the moment.


;
; AutoHotkey Version: 1.0.48.3
; Language: English
; Platform: Win9x/NT/XP
; Author: Andy Glew: andy.glew@intel.com, ag-ahk@patten-glew.net
;
; Script Function:
; Swap Delete and Backspace
; with a menu to enable/disable.
;
; Why?: because I am constantly docking and undocking my laptop
; when undocked I don't need to swap Del and BS
; but when docked at work, with my Happy Hacker keyboard, I do.
;
; And I found that killing the script was a bit too annoying.

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

#InstallKeybdHook ; unconditionally installing the keyboard hook.
; TBD: may not be necessary
; TBD: may waste memory and slow down system

#SingleInstance force ; replace any already running instance of this script

#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

; Autoexec'ed
Menu,DeleteBackspace,Add,Swap backspace and delete,ToggleBsDelSwapSetting
Menu,DeleteBackspace,Add,#!Del/BS - this menu to enable/disable,ToggleBsDelSwapSetting
SwapBackspaceAndDelete = 0
Return

ToggleBsDelSwapSetting:
Menu,DeleteBackspace,ToggleCheck,Swap backspace and delete
SwapBackspaceAndDelete := SwapBackspaceAndDelete ^ 1
Return


;=============================================================================

; #-Win, !-Alt, ^-Ctl, +-shift
; # right Win, etc.
; * - ignore other modifiers
; $ - prevent self-recursion (e.g. {Del} can send {Del}

;=============================================================================

; On the Happy Hacker keyboard, I need to swap Delete and Backspace

; TBD: I wish that I could create a function to do such swapping, but I seem to be unable to in AutoHotKey

$Delete::
;MsgBox Delete %SwapBackspaceAndDelete%
if ( SwapBackspaceAndDelete ) {
SendPlay, {BackSpace}
}
else {
SendPlay, {Delete}
}
Return

$BackSpace::
;MsgBox BackSpace %SwapBackspaceAndDelete%
if ( SwapBackspaceAndDelete ) {
SendPlay, {Delete}
}
else {
SendPlay, {BackSpace}
}
Return

$NumpadDel::
;MsgBox NumPadDel %SwapBackspaceAndDelete%
if ( SwapBackspaceAndDelete ) {
SendPlay, {BackSpace}
}
else {
SendPlay, NumPadDel}
}
Return


#!Delete::
#!BackSpace::
#!NumpadDel::
Menu,DeleteBackspace,Show
Return

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Dragon Speech Recognition

I have just installed Dragon speech recognition. I used to use Dragon speech recognition more than 10 years ago, but gave up, not because of speech recognition quality, but because it annoyed cubicle desk neighbors, and mainly because it became a pain to have to reinstall on every new computer.

I have opened this blog entry to record a few impressions as I start using Dragon again after this decade of nonuse.

I think that I needed to enter in more training this time around about 12 minutes of reading Arthur C. Clarke.

I thought that under the old Dragon I was able to turn the microphone on and off by voice. Or, rather, I think there were three microphone modes: (A.) completely off can't be turned on or off at all by voice; (B.) completely on, used for all commands; and (C.) a mode where the microphone was actually on but where all commands except something like "turn the microphone on" were ignored. The last mode was convenient for disabling accidental voice commands.
Ahhh... there is such a mode: "go to sleep" or "stop listening."

The Dragon bar has something called a select and say indicator, that is supposed to indicate whether the application you are connected to supports all of Dragon's functionality. I find it rather amusing that the application bar is yellow when connected to Dragon naturally speaking tutorial. I.e. the tutorial program doesn't support Dragon completely.

It is a bit sad that Firefox's text window, such as I am speaking this blog entry into, inspires Dragon to say "dictating to a nonstandard window". I wonder if this will be enough to force me to use Internet Explorer for my blog entries.

It is already evident that speech recognition, once again, allows me to be more verbose than when I was typing. Since I am already pretty verbose even when I am typing, this may be considered a downside. On the other hand, it looks like Dragon's spelling is better than my spelling when I am typing.

Dragons undo and redo capabilities seem somewhat restricted. Particularly when you are typing in words like "undo" and "redo". I think the biggest annoyance that I've had with speech recognition so far is accidentally undoing.

Microsoft's habit of automatically changing the focus to Windows as they pop up just caused me a problem: I started speaking into a pop up window.

Dragon's correction occasionally has problems: I just tried to correct "cause" into "caused", and Dragon recognized the correction correctly, but somehow got the insertion of the correction incorrect, resulting in "ccaused".