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FAQ: Pt 1

Written by Gary Littleton

Friday, 29 December 2006

Guess I've done a lot of stuff over the years. Wonder why it is that most of the time I don't feel like I've accomplished very much. Guess that is an indirect symptom of ADD/ADHD. Anyway, here are a few things I've done, or facts about my life that people often ask me about, in no particular order.

I programmed the Windows game SqueezePlay. It was written in Microsoft C, and Anthony Henderson did all the graphics. The game might be available on this site as a download. If not give me a holler and I'll get you a copy.

I cowrote the Windows Benchmark called WinTach, released by Texas Instruments, with Mike Denio. Mike and I also have several patents together, including one that people often stare in disbelief when I tell them about. If you pick up the phone, and get an automated message to "press 1 for such and such, or 2 for whatever", that is almost a certainty one of our patents.

I started Audities "Insanely Great Pop" magazine, and was editor/director of it. Anthony Henderson was art director and my partner in crime along with lots of other talented people we drew to the cause, including Michael Coxe, who we recruited to run the mailing list and who still runs it to this day. A man we are all very grateful for.

Bob Vaughan and I started Tampa's first punk rock/new wave scene back in 1977. We managed to convince a little dive bar called Mi Back Yard to let us call it "The Maniac Lounge" and do whatever we wanted on the weekend. At the time I was working at Budget Tapes and Records on 56th Street, and would move shortly to Peaches Records in Clearwater. Most of my friends were in bands and we were all into the US and UK new wave scene, but there was nowhere to really play in Tampa unless you sounded like the Outlaws, so this was our opportunity. Bob and I made flyers and put them on cars (fairly outrageous ones for the times) in college parking lots and also on some cars in church parking lots (I thought it might get us some negative publicity). I booked the clubs with the bands my friends were in, which were the sum total of new wave at the time. Terry Carolan's Just Boys, Richard Barone's Snails, Dennis Dalcin's Shades, Ritz, Tease, and a few others. We packed the place for months until tension between the local bikers and the punks got so tense we pulled the plug. By that time I was about to graduate from United Electronics Institute and hire on with Texas Instruments, so the scene just kind of faded away.

I used to help Chinese Restaurants translate their menus into English. I don't know Chinese, but with the help of a book called "The Eater's Guide To Chinese Characters" and a good knowledge of the history of Chinese Food I did some pretty interesting and unique menus that told Americans tidbits about the history of the food. That moo goo meant "button mushroom", and gai pan meant "sliced chicken". Or that wonton meant "swallow a cloud" in Cantonese, because of the cloud like texture of the wonton noodles. Or that Kung Pao meant "chinese governor", and the story went that the chef of a chinese gov overbrowned chilis in oil to the point of burning, but was so much in a hurry he completed the dish anyway. The burned chili flavor was a hit, and so any dish called "kung pao xxx" today starts with chilis overbrowned in oil.

I have a lot of patents related to software and electronics. One that people ask me about is used very commonly in industry. It's called Load Time Linker for multiprocessor systems and covers moving a module hosted on one system to a different system and linking it where calls can be made between the systems. If you use a browser, and you've ever downloaded a activex control, or a javascript from a server, or a javabean, flash, etc, then you've used technology based on the patent. I originally did this technology for TIGA (TI Graphics Architecture) so that modules could be developed to extend the functions of a pc based graphics coprocessor (the TMS34010 and TMS34020 Graphics System Processors). I called the modules Dynamic Load Modules, and they came in two flavors, Relocatable and Absolute.

In 1983 I wrote a bulletin board system and chat system called ProNET, and Anthony Henderson and I ran a Houston BBS called 1984 and Oceania using the software. We had over 2000 users, and were featured in the local papers, the Houston Chronicle and Post. The software ran on an Apple IIe, with a 32mb hard drive, and was originally written in Applesoft Basic, and later I ported it to the C Language using the Orca/M C compiler. Back then we never used our real names online. I had a lot of handles, including Hardware Wizard and Anonymous Caller and Bill Hunt. Anthony called himself Spellsinger, Doc Macintosh, and Dark Star. Funny to thing about those days. People sometimes wonder why I'm not that into chatting online, sometimes I feel like I got it out of my system 20 some years ago.

My dad, James Grantham "Babe" Littleton, was a Tampa policeman for 26 years, and Chief of Police of Tampa for 8 years. Dick Greco appointed him Chief in 1969 and he retired in 1977.

I was a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Texas Instruments, Inc, and also chief technologist for their eServices consulting division. I also managed the digital signal processing curriculum, and develped TI's internal webcasting architecture and software. I quit TI in 2004 and started my own company mastermindresearch.com. Though I wasn't really old enough to retire TI still gave me retirement benefits and a retirement party.

I wrote the book "Video Display Processor Programmer's Guide" for Texas Instruments. The book explained how to use and program the popular TMS9918, TMS9118 series of Video Display Processors that were used in the Colecovision, TI 99/4 Home Computer, and a ton of other products.

Tags: oceania pronet wintach digital signal processing bbs audities mi back yard tampa punk scene just boys richard barone dennis dalcin anthony henderson squeezeplay chief of police gary littleton gary littleton tiga graphics architecture texas instruments tms34010 tms34010 tms9918 tms9928 video display processor
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