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Roger M. Firestone Professional information Publications Resume Music and Theatre Save the Podes! Home scenes Freemasonry (general) Freemasonry (personal) Freemasonry (published articles) Freemasonry (Difficult questions) Freemasonry (FAQ on Judaism) Humor Astronomy Geography and Travel Job hunting Links HTML References HTML mode for emacs Bag o' links (tm) Etc. 28 Dec 1994 Wed Apr 29 12:35:07 PDT 1998 Most tags have been reset as of 11 Feb 1996. What pages at this site were changed or are new in the last 7 3 14 30 90 180 365 days?

Music and Theatre

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	Welcome! (41K sound) This home page is under construction. (Aren't they all?) It is located at the CalTech Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) (formerly known as Caltech Concurrent Supercomputing Facilities) at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. If you find any bad links, please let me know. Most image and sound files have sizes indicated; if not, they are probably under 10K and are mostly icons. This should be a lynx-friendly site.
Professional Information	Background I am a mathematician and computer scientist. I have been working in parallel processing since the 1960's. If you would like to look at my resume, feel free to browse there. You may also wish to view some of my published papers. Current Pursuits 1998 In 1998, a new DARPA contract in autonomous tactical systems began. We are studying how to deal with robotics and multiple robots in the presence of adversarial action. There are many applicable technologies: AI planning, AI game playing, OR games (discrete and differential), fuzzy methods, AI expert systems and knowledge engineering, and so on. We aren't trying to deal with scene recognition, sensor interpretation, actuators and effectors, and so on; we hope that those problems will be solved by someone else. Lots of interesting research topics! The first job is to assess the state of the art in these technologies; then maybe build something. As a proof-of-concept trial, we are hoping to do one-on-one sailboat racing in late summer (but with a skipper advisor, not a real robot running the tiller and trimming the sails). 1997 In 1997, I began working on DARPA programs relating to systems architecture and security ("information assurance") for command and control (C2) applications. It's still a little early for results to arrive in what are called leading-edge services, which is a logical (virtual?) testbed for migrating capabilities from R&D to deployment as part of the Defense Information Infrastructure. 1996-7 In 1996-7, I worked in a number of miscellaneous areas of computer science, primarily on government contracts. These included: Defining a framework for the Army Systems Architecture (there is a Web page, but it is restricted access at present) I also investigated the implications of the Army Technical Architecture for more detailed systems architecture. Producing a technology trends analysis for document management (also a restricted-access Web page) Writing a number of proposals, particularly the technical sections (definitely proprietary!)--results were a sole-source win at DLA, a competitive win at CASCOM, two subcontract wins (with Logicon and Cubic), and one loss, for an 80% success rate Working on a project involving transition to the next generation of the Internet Protocol (IPng or IPv6) for a government agency--the Web link preceding is a collection of references I have found for the subject; one activity was a tutorial on IPng, which has been released as National Communications System Technical Information Bulletin (NCS TIB) 97-1. Copies will be available from the NCS (701 S. Courthouse Road, Arlington, VA 22204-2198) or from COMTek (Communication Technologies, Inc., 503 Carlisle Drive, Suite 200, Herndon, VA 20171, 703-318-7212), or this site's web page. Beginning an investigation of approaches to dealing with congestion in networks. Related to this, I have collected some ATM links and began developing a model for understanding congestion in communications networks under conditions of emergency or national security crisis. 1996 Earlier in 1996, I did some proposal development work for a planned NIH program in application of parallel processing to x-ray crystallography. Sorry, but the details are proprietary. Recent Completed Work My most recently completed work in high-performance computing consisted in parallelizing an application in geophysics: The computation of the geomagnetic field according to a spherical harmonic model of field components. The original model was created at the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, CO. The parallel version uses that basic model in combination with digital terrain elevation data (DTED) to compute the field strength over an entire square degree of the earth's surface at intervals as fine as 3 seconds of arc, or up to 1.44 million points. On an Intel iPSC/860 with 32 processors, this task required approximately three minutes and included computation of false color imagery to represent the intensity. This work was supported by DARPA under the HPCC Initiative. Other activities in the mid-1990s included a number of activities related to signal processing, particularly a study funded by MIT Lincoln Laboratories on space-time adaptive processing (STAP). Preliminary results from this effort indicate that this technique, long known but computationally infeasible on the computing equipment of the 1970s, is now likely to be a viable approach for radar systems of the near future. If you can't afford a supercomputer but have a lot of workstations around, you might want to explore PVM: Parallel Virtual Machine, which is a tool for developing parallel/distributed programs on networks of workstations, as well as on various supercomputing architectures. Colleges and Universities If you read my resume, you'll notice that I went to Brown University and some of the alumni home pages may be of interest. Brown University alumni/ae may wish to help Save the Podes!!! I also spent time at the Twin Cities Campus of the University of Minnesota (my elementary school and high school were there, and I took about half a year of college courses in calculus, German lit., and social science before going to Brown), at New York University--Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (CIMS), where I received my doctorate, and at the College (now University) of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I received my MBA. Economics and Politics In an area unrelated to high-performance computing, I am also a Visiting Scholar of and regular participant in the Colloquia on Classical Liberal Thought at the Locke Institute at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. A recent speaker at a Colloquium was William Niskanen, CEO of the Cato Institute. I plan to post some essays on those subjects in the near future. I served as precinct captain for Blake precinct in the fall 1997 campaign for a Virginia House of Delegates seat by Jeannemarie Devolites. The expected margin of loss in that precinct was about 150-200 votes; the actual margin was only 37. About thirty votes of that improved margin were probably due to our efforts in the precinct; the rest were due to an apathetic job by the opposition who failed to get out the vote in a secure precinct. Jeannemarie won the election by several percent of the vote, turning out an incumbent.
Personal information	Music and Theatre I participate actively in the performing arts as an actor, musician, composer, and arranger. Freemasonry This information has moved. You may reach general information or personal information by selecting the appropriate link.
Links	Here are some interesting and/or useful places to visit that I have found, or topical archives I have created: (I'm adding most of my new URL discoveries to my Bag-O'-Links (tm).) The following has been somewhat re-ordered and augmented. Link sets I have created Astronomy Geography and Travel, including web cameras for various locations, maps, travel information, etc. Job-hunting Need to look up some Unix manual pages? Search Engines for Web browsing New information about pi Weather Information Links to other places InfoMac Hyperarchive of freeware and shareware (created by MIT as mirror of base archive at SUMEX-AIM at Stanford University) Network Starting Points Where to begin searching the Net The MetaIndex Some more places to begin navigating the Net Scott's Internet Hot List Hot Sites Yanoff list of Internet services (tons of good links) Direct access to Yahoo search: The World Wide Web FAQ (frequently asked questions--with answers, of course!) Mother gopher at the University of Minnesota Access to all of gopherspace! (Unfortunately, gopher seems to be dying out.) Security APL Quote Server A place to get stock market information The Buzzard's Nest (why that name? who knows?) Twin Cities Page (my home town is St. Paul) See the USA (don't need a Chevrolet) All the known Web Servers (almost) A really big list of home pages The Whole Internet Catalog ZIP+4 Lookup (if you need a ZIP code for a US address, this will give you all nine digits) and other USPS services MIT Lincoln Laboratory Home Page--check out the Desktop Reference! (They seem to have reorganized this site, and the D.R. may be gone.) Phone and email address lookup (courtesy of Texas Tech University) Mac Software Archive at the Univ. of Texas--really neat WWW interface! AOL's mirror of popular FTP archives (including info-mac and UMich) Radix Net Web Explorer Guide to Learning Find an ISP (Internet Service Provider) near you Politics! Dr. Who Global Network Navigator The Switchboard (a phone directory for the whole US! White pages for both people and businesses!) Some random places I have been on the Web WorldWeb--a provider in Alexandria, VA TidBITS--the weekly dispatch for all Macintosh users "Hiram's Inner Chamber" Information about Freemasonry--under construction The Best of the Web '94 WELCOME TO TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY Felidae Enterprises Home Page HomePage Services of Minnesota The Mother of all Humor Archives Search Usenet News CyberSight A rather funky place on the Web. Carol Anne's home page....Rev. 12/25/94 A really nice home page by someone listed at CyberSight, but it seems to be inoperative. Amy Brown Another home page by someone at CyberSight, who could be a really good commercial artist if she wanted to. Dan Goodspeed A student-written page at RPI Going Places Travel info The Dominion SF Info Terra Goodnight (weird enough to be worth a visit--at last with an explanation of "dirtgirl") Monika's Page with a lot of great information and links The Daily Bikini (yes, I know it's not politically correct, but it has some neat links, and...) The Dilbert Zone (if you haven't found this yet, you aren't a real hacker...) North Carolina State University (a source for html icons and an enormous number of web pages covering the University in detail--an excellent example of what can be done with the Web) A mixed bag of miscellaneous links which is augmented frequently as neat stuff turns up, so check back! Genealogy
Reference	HTML Primer Introduction to HTML HTML FAQ HTML Quick Reference Netscape HTML Extensions HTML Forms Tutorial HTML+ HTML 3.0 HTML 3.2 Fact Sheet (Fri Feb 21 08:38:15 PST 1997) HTML 3.2 Reference Specification (Tue May 27 09:34:30 PDT 1997) Weblint (an HTML syntax checker) Emacs html editing mode (my version, with additions to the original; this is the actual code, which you may download and use--byte-compiling is advised!) Adds horizontal rule (HR) and line break (BR) tags Updated 02 Aug 96 to request an alternative text string when entering an IMG (to keep lynx users and those that don't download every image happy) 03 Feb 97 update adds FONT tag (but you have to add your own SIZE and COLOR attributes) 03 Feb 97 update adds table mode 21 Mar 97 update adds ability to add any container tag to region, extends table mode, and changes IMG source entry to assume a local file (rather than just a string entry--allows completion, but editing must be done on the result; is this a good idea?), slightly modifies table mode (add caption becomes C-c C-t k, so that C-c C-t c adds column spec and C-c C-t g adds a column group) 7 Apr 97 update adds C-c SPC command to insert non-breaking space special character (&nbsp;) which is handy in tables 19 Sep 97 update fixes bugs with html-add-superscript and html-add-subscript (they opened an area rather than a field; the latter is correct) and generates a level-1 heading for the title of the document when html-init is used (as well as putting the title into the <HEAD> area) 22 Sep 97 update removes deprecated XMP and LISTING functions (since the same capability is provided by the <PRE> tag) 25 Nov 97 update adds !DOCTYPE insertion to html-init function 03 Dec 97 update adds entry of JavaScript areas with C-c j command An emacs Web browser is available for experimentation. Follow that link if you want to find links for where to download an emacs editor for your system (even the Mac), learn about emacs-lisp, or explore other GNU software links. If you have mastered the above, you might want to look at Advanced Web Development information written up at Georgia Tech. (The site seems to have moved to a new location, however, and may no longer be updated as developments occur.) The Web Reference pages are also very useful. For Mac users, the clip2gif home page provides access to a really clever (clipboard sensitive, scriptable, etc.) way to create GIFs for your illustrations. More information can be found in the Transparent/Interlaced GIF page (if it is working). Also look for a program by M. Piguet called Gif Builder if you would like to do some simple Web page animation. Another place for information on Web animation is provided by CNET. (Fri Feb 21 08:26:12 PST 1997) Mac users (like me) might also like to visit some of the following sites, derived from a recent issue of MacWEEK: (Fri Feb 21 08:28:11 PST 1997) Macintosh HTML Editors Mac FAQ Web Wonk (tips for designers and writers) Doctor HTML will check your Web site for accuracy For those who are into programming for the Web, the NBS Unix World Wide Web Management Utilities provide some useful tools and techniques. In addition to CGI programming, one may also look into server-side includes (SSIs) as ways to accomplish some tasks in a simpler manner. Server Side Includes Features The Server Side Includes Tutorial Web-AID HTML On-Line Reference - SSI+ Server Side Includes Beyond HTML, there is JAVA. Some Java scripts can be borrowed and adapted. CNET also has a Java resource page. CNET offers some thoughts on practical uses for JAVA. (Fri Feb 21 11:00:00 PST 1997)