To honour Jerry - A proposal

[santosh nath]

Hi all,

I feel Jerry is undoubtly the most popular contributor in this
group. I have never seen any query unnoticed or unattended
since Jerry is there. I think his answers are also pretty
accurate and helpful for us. Somebody (I think Rick Lyons)
wished his long life.
All of us we do so- Jerry!

You are contributing to the industry since 1952(If I am not wrong!!)
Still you have full youth and energy and helping us a lot- thanks
Jerry.

The group is not always fun - it gives lot of insights and learning.
Apart from few others Jerry is steering the group. He always brings
life when it becomes dull and monotonous.

We are all apart miles away and could not meet togather and honour Jerry.

I guess other users if agree with me would come up with some proposal.

Please don't make it a laughing stock - at least for Jerry!!

Regards,
Santosh

[David B. Thomas]

I have a little sign up in my office honoring Jerry. It contains my
favorite quotation from him.

"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things
you can get." -Jerry Avins

David

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

"David B. Thomas" wrote:
>
> I have a little sign up in my office honoring Jerry. It contains my
> favorite quotation from him.
>
> "Engineering is the art of making what you want from things
> you can get." -Jerry Avins

I use that as one of my ever changing .sigs.

Thanks Jerry.

Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo [email protected] (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer.

[Peter J. Kootsookos]

Al Clark <[email protected]> writes:

>
> And I love those stories of left handed wrenches and home-made vacuum
> tubes.
>

Those stories are one of the many reasons why comp.dsp is my favourite
newsgroup!

The stories, and the DSP. :-)

Ciao,

Peter K.

--
Peter J. Kootsookos

"Na, na na na na na na, na na na na"
- 'Hey Jude', Lennon/McCartney

[Rick Lyons]

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 21:48:17 GMT, Erik de Castro Lopo
<[email protected]> wrote:

>"David B. Thomas" wrote:
>>
>> I have a little sign up in my office honoring Jerry. It contains my
>> favorite quotation from him.
>>
>> "Engineering is the art of making what you want from things
>> you can get." -Jerry Avins
>
>I use that as one of my ever changing .sigs.
>
>Thanks Jerry.
>
>Erik

Hi,
I use

"Engineering is the art of making what
you want from things you can get."
-Jerry Avins

in my DSP class.

It has, for me very a deep, almost profound meaning.
It means you do not give up, just because things aren't going
your way. If you have a job to do, you think of some way to
get the job done. You don't see some difficulty and then
complain to your boss that you don't have what you need
to finish the job. You think, you struggle, you experiment,
you get your engineering pals to help you, you try everything
possible to get the job done. You call your wife and say,
"Sugar, I'll be home late tonight. I've just *got* to solve
this problem. Call ya' later." You realize people are
counting on you, and you bust your buns to solve your
engineering problem.
You keep your strong pure heart and when you finally
succeed, and it's 11:30 PM and no one else is in the
building, and you're walking down the hall to go home,
and the only sound is your shoe heels on the floor,
your fatigue will be one of the sweetest sensations
you'll ever have. You'll be able say, to whisper to
yourself, when no one can hear, "I solved the problem."

And if you're really thoughtful, you could paraphrase
Mr. Spock, from the "The City On the Edge of Forever",
and simply say, "I was successful."

[-Rick-]

[Eric Jacobsen]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 00:36:30 GMT, [email protected] (Rick
Lyons) wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 21:48:17 GMT, Erik de Castro Lopo
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>"David B. Thomas" wrote:
>>>
>>> I have a little sign up in my office honoring Jerry. It contains my
>>> favorite quotation from him.
>>>
>>> "Engineering is the art of making what you want from things
>>> you can get." -Jerry Avins
>>
>>I use that as one of my ever changing .sigs.
>>
>>Thanks Jerry.
>>
>>Erik
>
>Hi,
> I use
>
> "Engineering is the art of making what
> you want from things you can get."
> -Jerry Avins
>
>in my DSP class.
>
>It has, for me very a deep, almost profound meaning.
>It means you do not give up, just because things aren't going
>your way. If you have a job to do, you think of some way to
>get the job done. You don't see some difficulty and then
>complain to your boss that you don't have what you need
>to finish the job. You think, you struggle, you experiment,
>you get your engineering pals to help you, you try everything
>possible to get the job done. You call your wife and say,
>"Sugar, I'll be home late tonight. I've just *got* to solve
>this problem. Call ya' later." You realize people are
>counting on you, and you bust your buns to solve your
>engineering problem.
> You keep your strong pure heart and when you finally
>succeed, and it's 11:30 PM and no one else is in the
>building, and you're walking down the hall to go home,
>and the only sound is your shoe heels on the floor,
>your fatigue will be one of the sweetest sensations
>you'll ever have. You'll be able say, to whisper to
>yourself, when no one can hear, "I solved the problem."
>
>And if you're really thoughtful, you could paraphrase
>Mr. Spock, from the "The City On the Edge of Forever",
>and simply say, "I was successful."
>
>[-Rick-]

For some reason the scene I think of is from Howard the Duck. The
evil monster needs energy so he angrily makes his way to the nuclear
plant trashing everything along the way, trashes the plant gates,
trashes the buildings, trashes the entrance to the reactor and climbs
in for a while. A bit later he strolls out and climbs back in the
truck with the driver and calmly says, "I feel much better now."

Not at all the same sentiment that Rick was capturing, but one more
often appropriate for my moods sometimes. ;)


Eric Jacobsen
Minister of Algorithms, Intel Corp.
My opinions may not be Intel's opinions.
http://www.ericjacobsen.org

[Eric Jacobsen]

On 12 Aug 2003 09:11:49 +1000, [email protected] (Peter J.
Kootsookos) wrote:

>Al Clark <[email protected]> writes:
>
>>
>> And I love those stories of left handed wrenches and home-made vacuum
>> tubes.
>>
>
>Those stories are one of the many reasons why comp.dsp is my favourite
>newsgroup!

Absolutely.

>The stories, and the DSP. :-)

Oh, yeah, we do that here sometimes, too. ;)

>Ciao,
>
>Peter K.
>
>--
>Peter J. Kootsookos
>
>"Na, na na na na na na, na na na na"
>- 'Hey Jude', Lennon/McCartney

^^^^^ Yet another famously clever sig.



Eric Jacobsen
Minister of Algorithms, Intel Corp.
My opinions may not be Intel's opinions.
http://www.ericjacobsen.org

[Ajith Kumar P C]

[email protected] (Peter J. Kootsookos) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Al Clark <[email protected]> writes:
>
> >
> > And I love those stories of left handed wrenches and home-made vacuum
> > tubes.
> >
>
> Those stories are one of the many reasons why comp.dsp is my favourite
> newsgroup!
>
> The stories, and the DSP. :-)
>
> Ciao,
>
> Peter K.

Dear all
I am very new to this group. This group is very helpful to
understanding ideas in very different directions. From my short term
experience with this group, Jerry is very helpful. Some times he
explains things in very gently and sometimes points out the home work
questions, and ask to try oneself. I am thankful to him, because of
his helping mentality. Not only Jerry, lots others also in the group
to help others by their knowledge. I can points out many of them like
Clay, rbj, Eric, Rune, Bhasker, Rick, Clark, Ciao .......the names are
continuing. Once again thanks to Jerry and thanks to everyone. I
personally think nothing needed to appreciate these people. They are
honoured by themself by their "Selfless Karma(work)".
regards
ajith

[Jerry Avins]

santosh nath wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I feel Jerry is undoubtly the most popular contributor in this
> group. ...

Santosh and all,

Thank you. I am indeed honored by you, I think more than I deserve. I
have this group to thank for most of what I know about DSP; I came here
to learn what it was all about. If I can help beginners, it is because I
still remember clearly what it is like to be confused. In fact, I am
frequently reminded! Learning can be quick when there is context for new
information. My experience in related fields helps me to understand DSP
concepts and to find fortunate analogies for explaining them. In keeping
with tradition, I'll illustrate that with a story.

A traffic-light progression system is one in which cars moving at the
right speed always face a green light when they reach a controlled
intersection, whichever way they travel along the road. (If they go too
fast, the light will not yet be green; if too slow, it will have turned
red again. Catching another red after restarting is almost inevitable.)

My uncle Nathan had, in the 20s, been the only electrical engineer in
the Traffic Division of the NYC Police Department (Later, the Traffic
Department), responsible for the timing of every traffic light in the
city. When I was a kid, his responsibility was only one borough, and he
had assistants. He designed the progression system for the Grand
Concourse, one of the first in the country. From time to time, it needed
to be modified (retimed side streets, speed limit changes, relocated
signals). He liked to work on this at our house, spreading his
"schematics" out on our big dining-room table (we usually ate in the
dinette half of the kitchen). They consisted of vertical station lines
representing the signal lights, and bands with negative (northbound) and
positive (southbound) slopes. I learned how the system worked by
watching him and asking questions. I, my uncle, and his colleagues at
large took it for granted that the analysis was complex and esoteric.

When a friend from Boston (another EE) visited, we had occasion to drive
down the road. He commented that red lights always turned green as we
approached. I replied that it was designed to do that, and he opined
that it must be lousy for cars going the other way. I said that it was
the same for them and he asked how it was possible. Lacking graphics but
sharing a common fund of knowledge, I suggested he think of the lights
as a standing wave, with traveling waves going north and south. He was
briefly silent, then made it clear that he completely understood by
deducing that cars must in consequence move in bunches. Traffic lights
are binary, so the traveling waves are square. (Later, when remote
control of timing became possible, I helped my uncle retime the lights
for rush hour so that the bunches were longer in the heavy direction at
the expense of shorter ones the other way. A good analogy can be a
powerful aid to understanding, creating new possibilities.)

I don't believe that I'm the most helpful one here, especially not for
difficult questions. If I'm the gabbiest, it's because there's no one to
tell me that I have to do my job in order to keep it.

Thanks again to all. Maybe I can find a good way to frame this thread.

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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