User:Johnlogic
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My name is John Carlsen. I'm a computer engineer originally from Silicon Valley.
I'm proud to contribute to Wikipedia. Though I consider it unsuitable for scholarly research (due to the relative annonymity of its contributors and the dynamism of its contents), I often use Wikipedia for quick reference. I get a lot out of the articles (and have also enjoyed some of the discussion "talk" pages), so I'm pleased to give a little effort in return.
What a great project.
Contents |
[edit] Interests and contributions
[edit] Selected topics
[edit] My career
- Atari, syzygy
- Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari; to me, a great employer and mentor), Al Alcorn
- Activision, Sargon (chess), Timeline of chess, Brodie Lockard (designer of the computer game Mahjong solitaire, a.k.a. Shanghai solitaire), Brad Fregger (Shanghai producer)
- Media Vision, Inc. (MVI), 1990s PC sound card and CD-ROM multimedia kit maker and the subject of one of Silicon Valley's worst securities fraud litigation cases, Pro AudioSpectrum (a family of PC sound cards I helped design)
- Iguana Entertainment, a now-defuct video game company I helped found and move to Austin, Texas
[edit] Engineering
- Programmable Array Logic (PAL) semiconductors, among the first programmable logic devices (PLDs)
- phase-locked loop (PLL) circuits, specifically introducing digital PLLs
- universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART), a mechanism in electronic circuits used to convert data to and from serial bit streams, which usually includes at least one PLL
[edit] Computers
- LaFarr Stuart, a computer music pioneer, and my lifelong friend and mentor
- Homebrew Computer Club, the 1970s Silicon Valley computer club that help spawn personal computers
- Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California
- RAMAC, the first computer hard disk drive, introduced by IBM in 1956
- Games Computers Play (GCP), a 1980s multiplayer online game
- Lunar Lander (computer game)
[edit] Misc.
- An Inconvenient Truth, a page about Al Gore's motion picture (based on his book by the same name): I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it, with the caveat that Gore should have disclosed that he sits on the board of directors of Apple Computer before prominently displaying his use of an Apple notbook (a PowerBook?) computer in the film. After noting in the movie's article Gore's position on Apple's board, my comment was pulled and I flamed on the talk page by a bunch of fanatics (pro-Gore, pro-Apple, or both) who clearly weren't sensitive to the potential conflict of interests. So far, that's the only ugly instance of mob rule I've seen on Wikipedia.
[edit] Copy editing
In addition, I also do lots of copy editing. (My own spelling, diction, grammar and syntax are far from perfect, but I do have some formal training.) On Wikipedia, I reckon that poor copy quality is the trade-off for good copy quantity.
[edit] Contact info.
If you have questions or comments about my contributions, please feel free to contact me via Special:Emailuser/Johnlogic (Wikipedia's "E-mail this user" link, to the left) or more directly via my company's "contact" page.
