SUMMARY: My background is more diversified than specialized (although I have an emphasis in digital audio signal processing which I have been doing for 15 years mostly on the Macintosh & some embedded platforms) and includes practical experience in: custom Macintosh applications, high and low level software design, firmware design, designing a custom new approach to high quality photo-realistic 3D graphics, conceiving and designing (in progress) a new kind of consumer music synthesizer using a TMS320 embedded processor, web design & graphics (this site), digital and analog circuit design including PCB design & manufacturing, all forms of real-time and non real-time DSP (FIR, IIR filters, binaural audio, spectral subtraction, ultra hi-res color spectrograph), quality UI design, and creative implementation to all sorts of electrical, mechanical, and software design challenges. On numerous occasions I have taken projects from the conception stage ('wouldn't it be neat if') to full implementation ('cool, it works!') designing all hardware, software, and mechanical systems. To get a better idea and to help you qualify me please take a look at http://home.earthlink.net/~kevyk.

 

DESIRED POSITION: Creative software or hardware consulting or employment working on innovative, never-been-done before, fun technologies with a creative group

DESIRED COMPANY: A creative company that encourages out-of-the-box thinking, looking for new ideas & fully realized implementations

DEGREE: None. One year of college at UC Irvine. All software, hardware & mechanical experience is self taught

PATENTS: Four. One in disk based copy protection and three in computer generated speech synthesis. One more was initially pursued (now elapsed) regarding a new way of displaying photo-realistic 3D graphics. Numerous Disclosure Documents

CLIENTS: Walt Disney Imagineering, LA Times, Davidson & Associates, First Byte Inc, Stanford University, Forensic Audio Lab, Phillips Interactive Media, others

CODING & DEV TOOLS: C, Pascal, some Cocoa, 68K assembly, 56K DSP assembly, TMS320, various microcontrollers (PIC 17xxx, 18xxx, 8051, others), Power PC, Metrowerks Code Warrior IDE, Microchip IDE, LabView, Project Builder, Interface Builder

PLATFORMS & OS’s: Macintosh OS, Windows, DOS, Various embedded systems (68K, 56K, PIC, others)

BEST ATTRIBUTES: Very creative particularly on projects that are new & exciting. Love working with creative people

LIMITATIONS: Mathematics only to 1st year college level, little OOP/C++ experience, little UNIX experience

EXPERIENCE: Began consulting at age 16. Have been designing hardware & software solutions for over 20 years

 

Please visit http://home.earthlink.net/~kevyk for more details or email Kevin at kevyk@earthlink.net

 

 

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE & PROJECT DETAILS

Inception & custom design (in progress) of a new kind of music synthesis device intended for non musicians
  • Uses embedded TMS320 DSP, LCD, CODEC, QProx chip, large data ROM, TAS3103 DAP biquad filter
  • Working with various musicians to build in various ‘music templates’: Jazz, Baroque, New Age, Nature, Celtic, etc.
  • Writing Macintosh simulation application & data munging software
Custom design (never completed) including mechanical, hardware, & software of a novel magnetic media scanner

  • Uses very accurate computer controlled micropositioning elements in X/Y/Z to raster scan magnetic media such as a cassette tape in order to graphically image in 3D a magnetic fingerprint of the media. Has 2 micron resolution
  • Uses MR/GMR hard drive head read element, interface amplifier, and A/D to acquire data
  • Custom Macintosh application to display magnetic intensity in 3D & make accurate measurements
  • Uses vacuum & vacuum chuck to maintain tape as well as magnetically shielded (µ metal) enclosure
Custom designed and built a laser-light harp for two time Grammy nominated New Age musician David Arkenstone
  • Uses red/green laser diodes and analog and digital electronics to drive a MIDI output
  • Designed reflective optics using variable % beam splitters and fine alignment
  • Assembly coding using PIC17C766 to scan and modulate (for visual effects) the beams and handling MIDI input & output
  • Metal and wood working
Leading Forensic Audio industry sound editing app suite for 'private investigator to the stars' Anthony Pellicano
  • Very mature high end Macintosh 32 bit sound application written in C and various assembly languages
  • 9 years of ongoing design, modification, and technical support
  • Full suite of DSP functions: spectral subtraction noise reduction, high resolution spectrography, spectral shaping, waterfall FFT, DTMF & CID decoding, FIR/IIR filtering, notch filter, high quality reverb, event identification, encryption, binaural audio, etc.
  • UI design & high resolution calibrated color & B/W print outs
  • Other support apps including stand alone recording and playback app and 2D image measurement app (below)
  • Minor H/W design: ultra low noise tape amp, modification of 24 bit A/D H/W to render it more accurate, others
2D graphics tool for microscopic photography
  • Mature Mac 2D image measurement tool imports/exports TIFF & PhotoShop images, pan/zoom, multiple layers, optically calibrated ruler labels w/ milli-inch resolution, graphical overview, color & B/W printing. Macintosh C
  • Provides user movable rulers to measure distances and angles between various magnetic (optical) events
Photo-realistic 3D graphics engine & object builder tool
  • Designed a new technique for rendering 3D images in extremely high detail based on ‘trixels’ (3D pixels)
  • Started a funded company & was seeking a Patent but ran out of funds when I could not generate enough interest
Walt Disney Imagineering
  • Designed control software using LabView to control the Indiana Jones ride prototype demoed to Michael Eisner
  • Produced sound effects
Children’s educational products for the Davidson & Associates
  • Lead designer of KidWorks 2, an award winning children's story telling tool. C coding and created sound effects. Managed 2 other engineers
  • Wrote Spell It Plus and Language Builder educational apps. C code & assembly
SmoothTalker Speech Synthesis technology (patent numbers 5029213, 4805220, 5140639 [this one not registered in my name])
  • Awarded 3 patents for low level designs in the synthesizer. This speech technology was later sold to Apple and is what they base their speech synthesis technology on
  • Implemented real-time speech synthesis algorithms on a 6502 Apple 2 without the use of D/A hardware assist
LA Times
  • Wrote the pollutant plotter app that plots the airborne pollutants in the weather section. Pascal
Disk/CD based copy protection (patent number 4849836)
  • Developed a patented scheme for implementing ‘weak bits’ on a recording surface. Designed S/W & 1st rev H/W
Telephony hardware interface & control software
  • Records calls and performs real time DTMF decoding & Caller ID decoding. Macintosh C and 68K assembly
  • Designed all hardware & software. Manufactured PCB’s. Shielded electronics using µ metal
Embeded processor Waveguide Piano privately demoed to Baldwin Piano at NAMM show
  • Embeded music synthesizer utilizing Stanford’s then new Waveguide music synthesis technique
  • Designed hardware and 56K & 68K firmware
Waveguide synthesis brass instruments for Stanford University
  • Prototyped demo of brass instruments using existing physical modeling design
Phillips Interactive Media
  • Wrote CDI authoring tool which did FFT spectral analysis of music in order to drive graphical events

 

 

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