Mr Andrew Small's Vanity Page
beard, glasses, pallid complexion, must be a softy
Age: 29
Job: Working for Hitachi's micro-controller software development tool center in Maidenhead. This means I create programs that let other programmers create programs. For some reason I'm terminally single.
Qualifications: 2:1 BEng (Hons) Electronic Engineering from Staffordshire Polytechnic - in the last year it was a polytechnic and proud of it. I almost got a job at Jaguar but then the recession struck so no chance to Drive the Dream. Got into a small software department to work on the Windows GUI of a plastics injection molding simulation (great stuff with a MS Visual Basic front end, MS Fortran to do the maths and Watcom C to handle the huge arrays). Highlight was optimising the Basic graphics calls to direct Windows API calls and getting a 7 times speed improvement. But the money was naff (under 5% rise over two years from a graduate starting salary, phoning up to beg a stay of execution from the bank but got cut off as I hadn't enough cash to feed the payphone. it was raining.) and I was tempted into GEC. Emerged two years later as Word Guru(TM) and ISOphobic, but did get enough Visual C++/MFC development to move to Hitachi.
As you can gather, this is a very Windows centric view of the world, so I bought a Net Yaroze to get some embedded experience (er, and play games... OK, yes, because it was cool and BLACK).
System: A Toshiba portable 486DX66 running Windows 95 bought for just £400 at a PCWorld stock clearance. Amazingly the 115K link works - the real limit is the 300Mb hard disk. The output is to a really cheap Goodmans 5" (yes, five inch) portable TV with a video aux input. Astoundingly (if my code is actually working for once ;) it appears to support both PAL and NTSC modes.
Opinionated Winge: The Sega Saturn is as good as a Playstation, but just in different areas. Unfortunately (for Sega) the PC and its 3D cards moved the games into a new dimension a year too early. Personally I'm disappointed by the PlayStation - everyone raved about Gran Tourismo* but a modern gaming PC blows it away (not surprising since it costs 10 times as much as a PlayStation) . This will always happen until High Definition Digital TV takes off - unfortunately these are currently as much as a modern gaming PC. Maybe this is why Sony are holding back on the PlayStation 2.
*I could be biased here as it took me 93 days to get my B license, and I celebrate wildly if I'm not sixth. Also, try playing GT with a DualShock controller and no sound - something subliminal happens that makes Janis Joplin sound happy. I've never been able to play with it again.