First, make sure you are sitting down because I’m going to reveal some shocking things about myself here:

In 1983 I was in high school.  (Yes, I am that old)  Pretty much I was late for school every day.  (again…  I know.. very surprising!)  As “punishment” I got detention and had to stay after school.  Detention could be spent in a variety of rooms, my preference was the computer lab.  The trick here was that I wanted to spend time in the computer lab.  So it was impossible to “punish” me.  At some point I think they caught on and made me spend my detention in a different room, but that actually punished them more than me, so eventually they gave in.  But I digress…

The point of this post is that in the 1980’s when I programmed, I just tried stuff to see what would happen.  I had no fear of typing “Run”.  The result was that I made some cool apps.  But these days, in iPhone OS, where I’m not that swift on objective-c, or these days Open GL ES – I tend to be taking more of a ‘research-research-research’ approach and am not clicking “Build and Run” as often as I would of when I was 16.  At least that how I feel at the moment.  I can’t say that it’s fear – because I know that nothing will explode.  But there’s something going on.

What do you think?  Are you less creative or less adventurous with technical things than you were when you were younger?

Hindsight certainly is 20/20 and I like to review technology after the fact to reflect on how well it worked. Overall my G5 was a great machine and it was difficult to let it go. But a couple of the components were very hard to let go: the monitor, and the storage…

The original Apple 23″ Cinema Wide Display…

…was an awesome monitor.  As much as I complain about mac monitors, their high price tag and the singular input, I have to say that Apple makes good monitors.  They last and they have good color.  If not for the fact that this monitor was ADC I would have kept it.  But I couldn’t let myself pay $100 for an adaptor that still only gets me to Apple DVI.  Maybe if it were a breakout box that got me HDMI and other inputs, I would have considered it.

The Storage

Almost three years ago I purchased a storage solution which consisted of an eSata card, an eSata mini tower, and 5 x 500 GB hard drives.  I had originally intended to set it up as a RAID 5, but after I got it found that the solution wouldn’t do Raid 5, so I used it as 5 mounted volumes. The drives were fast and (thank God) I never had any data loss with them.

To prepare for the sale I cleaned up the Fusion 500 P and blew out all the dust. Taking it apart reminded me how well it’s made.  It is completely modular.  The fan is easily removed and makes it’s connection to power simply by plugging it in.  Typicaly for these types of eSata towers, each of the drives is screwed into a tray which also slides into place making it’s connection.  This make for easy clean up.

The unit holds 5 drives, all which run off a single multiplexed eSata connector.  The accompanying host adaptor card has 4 eSata connections.  This means that theoretically you have 4 towers with 5 drives each, or 30 drives.

To get my data backed up, I replaced one of the 500 GB drives with a 1.5 BG Seagate and moved everything over.  Then swapped a few of the drives out and repeated to a second 1.5 GB drive.  Each copy of 500 GB took about 3 hours.  Since these drives are connected eSata, it’s best to shut everything down, then swap out the drive.  Powering up requires that the drive be turned on first and then the system.

Speed-wise, the drives are quite a bit slower than a direct connected eSata, presumably because of the multiplexed connection. I never noticed it in use. They always seemed fast.  I never experienced any drop frames in Final Cut. But under benchmark they came in around 40 MB/s for both read and write:

The Fusion 500P was the hardest to give up because the technology isn’t very old.  The Fusion is still being sold today and after cleaning it up I realized that three years of use hardly shows. And all you have to do is swap out the hard drives for newer, bigger ones and you’re on your way to a 7.5 TB tower.  Also, in my new Intel Mac Pro, a RAID 5 IS possible – so you could add in some data protection.  But it’s gone now and I’ll be looking to replace it with something new for storage.  Keep your browser bookmarked here for what I buy and how it works.

This birthday has made me think a lot about the past, which is why I posted this picture from a 1974 vacation. Since my bday is so close to Christmas I often confuse some of my bday memories with Christmas ones. When I was young my parents celebrated my birthday on Thanksgiving, but were careful to explain “This isn’t your real birthday – we’re just celebrating it now.” Then they would celebrate my birthday again on the actual day. This had two results – one is that I was fairly confused as a child and two, my brother and sister surely felt cheated about me getting two birthdays when they only got one. Now if you ask my wife, I basically celebrate my birthday straight through from Thanksgiving until the end of the year.

When I was in Jr High School, I think it was 1979, I left all kinds of hints that I wanted a computer for my combined birthday and Christmas gifts that year. I had picked out the one I wanted – an Imagination Machine. It was quite expensive for the time, retailing at $600, but yet I held out hope that somehow my parents would figure out a way to afford it.

Unfortunately (for them) my parents picked that year to hype up the gift they were giving me, which was NOT an Imagination Machine – but a bicycle. When I “opened” the present – let’s just say that I did not act appropriately. I was extremely upset and let everyone know it. I’ve always felt bad about my behavior – I even felt bad as it was happening. To live in grace and forgiveness I attribute it to just being a kid: 12 or 13 years old. And to be fair (to the 13-year old me) their gift had been hyped up so much that even though I should have known they couldn’t afford the computer – I believed that they somehow worked it out. I’m sure everyone in attendance remembers that year’s celebration – or at least my outburst. But I also remember other things about that Christmas, like that my brother was sick and we opened gifts on his bed. The bicycle wasn’t wrapped. They gave me a small box with a note in it – and the bike was hidden behind his door.

Needless to say, I never got an Imagination Machine – and the bike was actually quite awesome. I loved that bike and used it to get anywhere in the city until I got a car in High School. I also used it to deliver papers which allowed me to raise enough money to buy a computer a couple of years later: a TRS-80 Color Computer.

What will I remember about THIS birthday? Probably that my 3 year old daughter called me and sang Happy Birthday to me over the phone. And that last night at 11:45 pm, after a very long day including a 5 hour car ride home from Hemet, that Gillian and I made a snowman with what little snow was left in our back yard. I hope she remembers that for years to come as well.

But one ridiculously influential thing that happened during the week was that I overheard someone use the term “19-2″ as slang to describe the speed of something – and for some nerdy reason – I thought it was very cool. Who ever it was said something like “It was fast. It was like 19-2.” Now this is going to take some explanation – and even after I do my best you’ll probably still scratch your head. But let’s try.  Travel with me back in time to Michael Smith Nerd World 1987…

To mark the era in a tech history timeline, this was before the commercialization of the world wide web, before cable modems or dsl, before laptops, and before normal people had email. Cell phones were only in movies. There were no iPods or mp3s – CD’s were just starting to catch on. The VHS vs Beta format war wasn’t even over. I did have a modem that I used to connect to and manage the local BBS, but it was probably only 2400 baud. That means it maxed out at 2400 bits per second, or 300 bytes (characters) per second.

But I overheard some random person use 19-2 as slang. The reference was a baud rate – a “futuristic” blazing fast 19,200 baud. But his use of the term was just like saying “it screams.” I was convinced that I was hearing this slang before it became popularized.  What could be faster than that? In my tech-world-view 19-2 was extremely fast because I couldn’t conceive of a reason to need faster modem speed than that. Thus began my delirium.

In the geekfest of CES 1987, in passing I overheard ONE person use a term that I can barely explain today, and became convinced that it would sweep the nation and become common lingo. And I was going to monopolize on it and name my software company after it. In 1998 I hired a local law firm to file trademarks in Kansas and Missouri. 16 trademark applications were filed, which cost me $265.12. Notice my attached business card that has the brilliant tag line “makers of high baud software.” What does that even mean?

Check it out. I just noticed that my suite number was 192. That was real. It was a mail box place and I got that box. I also had a custom license plate that had 19 2 on it. I think I kept on that trend for a while. Dare I say “interestingly” – a 19,200 baud modem never really became popular. After 2400 came 9600 baud, then 14,400, and then the industry skipped up to 56k modems which blew away my puny 19.2k.

The marks were registered for ten years and expired on May 12, 1998. Had I kept them I could just say, “oh I meant 192 GIGS per sec.”  I was REALLY forward thinking.

Who taught me how to write a resume back then? The funny thing is that I think this resume got me the job at US Sprint.  But what I find best about this is that even with only one related job listed and basically only a High School diploma the resume is still 2 pages. You have to check out page two because there’s some golden stuff back there…

I was 20 years old, 6′-2″, and – wait for it – 130 lbs. But of course in “good health”. Same height that I am now (of course) but 55 pounds lighter – and in good health.  I’m not sure why I thought it important to put any of that personal information on there.  I guess I was trying to fill out the very important 2nd page.

Looking at page 2 I’m sure this was my US Sprint resume because of the “Telecommunications Experience” that I listed.  I was the Sysop of our local BBS.  Wow!

I also see here that I had a submission pending in STart magazine. I don’t remember every being published in STart magazine so there might be a rejection letter floating around somewhere.

Oh, and who the heck is Max Jester?  He must have been a friend from KTI.  A few years earlier I was caught hacking at Marymount College but that’s a different story.  (oh.. just found max on LinkedIn)

SCADS OF CAD

The GEM-based SCAD lets you work on 16 drawings at once and is accurate to .001 inch. SCAD works on either monochrome or color and lets you save DEGAS-compatible pictures of drawings at any location or magnification. Images are exactly the same size on paper as onscreen, and you can define your page size up to 32 inches square. View controls include Zoom In, Zoom Out, Absolute Move, Ieft, Right, Up and Down. SCAD has loadable font styles, 128 user-defined line styles and 256 user-defined fill patterns. You can rotate items in .1-degree increments and enlarge or reduce them in .1% increments.

$99.95. Xetec, Inc., 2804 Arnold Road, Salina, KS 67401. (913) 827-0485, PRESS. CIRCLE 245 ON READER SERVICE CARD

This little girl has an Atari ST and a printer, but where's the monitor?

This is what I was doing 20-some years ago:  In 1985 I met John Flickenger (who owned Xetec) at an Atari users group meeting.  I set up a meeting with him and at 18 years old pitched the idea of me writing a music sequencing program for Atari ST. He passed on that idea but was very interested in a CAD program Rich White and I had written for Atari 800 while in High School. So John hired me to write a CAD program for the Atari ST.

I believe the above paragraph was the only mention of SCAD in the press.  I doubt the writer (Gregg Pearlman) ever got a copy or saw the app running.  Although he might have seen it presented at the 1987 CES.

• SCAD stood for Smart Computer Aided Design.
• I don’t think Xetec ever sold any copies of it.  I’m not sure they ever put it into production.
• At my suggestion we advertised it as NOT COPY PROTECTED.  At that time I was annoyed by the copy protection in some of the competitive products which forced the apps to be installed in a specific location.  My theory was that for every copy out there someone had to buy one, and that piracy was a form a free advertising.
• I think I was paid minimum wage ($3.35 an hour in 1986) plus was promised 10% of the profits. They may have paid me $4 an hour.  Can’t remember.  Having not sold any (or many copies) I never received any royalties.
• I wrote it from 1986 to 1987 and dropped out of “college” because I was “too busy writing it to do my school work”.  (If you can call Kansas Technical Institute a college).
• Secretly I had enlisted Rich White to help with feature ideas and program design, although I wrote every line of code.  Rich had gone to Lawrence KS to college.  I would send Rich builds of the app which he tested. Once a week or more we would talk on the phone and he would tell me about bugs he found and give me feature requests.  Rich was never paid for this help and I never told Xetec that he was helping me.
• Even now I’m quite proud that I wrote my own math routines.  SCAD did real time reporting as you were drawing lines, showing the length of the line and the angle of the line.  This required floating point math and the built in FPU was very slow.  To speed it up I created my own math system using 16 bit integers which ranged from -32,768 to +32,768.  I slipped the decimal point over so that my number system ranged from -32.000 to +32.000 and I only supported inches.  Addition and Subtraction used the normal functions but multiplication and division required me to write a custom function because 2 * 2 in my math system would be 2000 * 2000 which would give a different result.  Complex math functions like Sin and Cos also had to be created.  Who knows how I did that.
• I also created support for plug ins.  I had never seen it in any other application at the time.  I made a way for a plug-in to be pre-compiled and then loaded in at run time.  SCAD code relied heavily on global variables.  So the plug in had to be compiled using my same header files so that it would be able to access all of the same data and variables.  The idea being that we could later sell plug ins that would add functionality to the application.
• I left Xetec in 1987 to move to Kansas City and work for US Sprint.
• Several years later John offered to sell me the rights to SCAD for $1,000.  I considered it but declined.
• I wish I had a screenshot to show.  Rich still has the program on a Atari ST emulator.  I’ll see if I can get something from him.

UPDATE: Rich sent me some screenshots.  Look at that detail:

Notice that the whole application takes 241k.  The Atari ST was 512k machine.  The Atari 1040ST was a 1 meg machine.  1 Meg of RAM.  It ran at 8 MHz.