Andrew T. McFadden

fadden@fadden.com
https://fadden.com/resume.html

(This is a detailed work history that has accreted over time, rather than a carefully crafted résumé, but it'll do for now.)

Skills

Things I've done recently:

• C#, C/C++, Java (incl. JNI)
• Linux (desktop and Android), Windows

Employment History

faddenSoft -=- November 2017 - Present

Notable projects:

• CiderPress II. Utility for managing Apple II and vintage Macintosh disk images and file archives. Written in C#, it features a multi-platform command-line interface and a Windows GUI.
• 6502bench. Code development "workbench" for 6502 CPUs. The SourceGen disassembler is written in C#, using Windows Presentation Foundation for the UI.

castAR, Inc. -=- June 2016 - June 2017

Software engineer and architect, developing software for an augmented reality headset system.

Key responsibilities:

• Developed Android service that drove the AR glasses over USB. Supported multiple generations of hardware. Used embedded Lua for device configuration. Wrote command-line tool to manage service. (Mostly C++.)
• Developed Android service that controlled Bluetooth LE game controller "wands". Wrote a companion app to exercise wand features, and a command-line tool to manage the service. (Mostly Java.)
• Made modifications to the Android framework, notably the graphics compositor (SurfaceFlinger).
• Maintained browser-based tools for configuring glasses and visualizing data streams from them. These displayed various data streams graphically, and allowed parameters to be tweaked in real time. (Mostly Javascript and Lua.)
• Wrote a lot of technical documentation, on our software and on general Android development topics.

As a result of my work at castAR, I am named as an inventor on the following issued patents:

The company went out of business in June 2017. I was briefly employed by CastAR (ABC), LLC during the asset auction period, to help potential buyers understand the value of the intellectual property. (The assets were purchased by Tilt Five.)

faddenSoft -=- December 2014 - June 2016

Reprising my role as founder, chief architect, and head dish washer, I re-founded the 2002-era faddenSoft, LLC as a sole proprietorship.

Notable projects:

• Tic-Tac-Toe with Stuff. A simple game of tic-tac-toe, implemented excessively with the Unity 3D game engine. Initially released in April 2015 as an Android app.
• Maze Escape. Escape from a 2D maze. Implemented with the Unity game engine, released for Android in June 2016.

Android, Inc. / Google, Inc. -=- May 2005 - June 2014

I started as a Senior Software Architect at Android, a 10-person startup.  The company was acquired by Google in July 2005.

• Part of the system-level graphics team, which is responsible for the parts of the graphics system below the app framework rendering layer.
  • Tracked down stability, correctness, and performance issues. Worked with various OEMs to track down and fix driver bugs.
  • Modified the media system to allow graphics surfaces to be used as input to the video encoder. Set up a site on my home web server with sample code (bigflake.com/mediacodec).
  • Developed the Android "screenrecord" tool.
  • Created Grafika to exercise and demonstrate various graphics and media features.
  • Wrote the Android System-Level Graphics Architecture document.
• Wrote Android Breakout as sample code for simple games.

• Tech lead for an internal project, never released.
• During this time, testified in Oracle v. Google (patent phase).

• Worked on Google's Calendar application.
  • Made various changes required to "unbundle" the app, including extended validation.
  • Added various features, working primarily on the content provider.
• Did the odd bit of "Dalvik consulting".

• Primary developer of the Dalvik virtual machine runtime.  Wrote 85-90% of the code that shipped in the 1.0 runtime, and did significant development post-1.0. Some things I did:
  • Bytecode interpreter, in C and ARM assembly.
  • Class loader, object model, native threads, synchronization.
  • "Internal" library features, like reflection and proxy classes.
  • Native method access (JNI), including -Xcheck:jni support and dynamic shared library loading.
  • Bytecode verifier and register maps (to support type-precise GC).
  • Developer features: remote debugger support (JDWP), method profiling ("traceview"), deadlock prediction.
  • (In short, wrote nearly all of the features found in Android 1.0 - 1.6, except for the garbage-collected heap and a few odds and ends.)
• Wrote developer documentation on VM-related topics, e.g. JNI Tips and the Android SMP Primer (my version) (current version).
• Created the first incarnation of DDMS, a GUI app that manages the connection between a debugger and multiple Dalvik VMs running on a device.  (This was later converted to an Eclipse plug-in and built into the Android SDK, and subsequently replaced by Android Monitor.)
• Maintained and enhanced JamVM, which was used for Android framework development while Dalvik was under construction. Added JDWP debugger support.
• Helped out wherever I could, e.g. wrote zipalign.

• Developed design for the Android "mid-level" architecture, i.e. the code that sits between the operating system and the application.
• Started development on the application framework, which was initially planned to run on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows (Cygwin), as well as devices. Wrote cross-platform libraries. Created the initial implementations of some fundamental framework features (graphics composition, event handling, debug logs, asset management). Wrote the original Android build system ("FMS").
• Developed the Android "simulator", a GUI front-end that allowed Android software to run natively on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. (This significantly pre-dated the QEMU-based system emulator that shipped with the SDK.) The hardware abstraction was later improved by using a (Linux-only) pre-load library that patched various library and system calls.

At various times, I learned Java, Javascript, Python, ARM assembly, SWT, and wxWidgets when I needed to use them.

I actively assisted developers on stackoverflow.

As a result of my work at Google, I am named as an inventor on the following issued patents:

FaddenSoft, LLC -=- August 2002 - May 2005

Founder, member, chief architect, and head dish washer.  I worked on projects that interested me and published them as freeware or shareware on the web, and occasionally did contract work.  Notables:

Technical Consultant -=- March 2005 - April 2006

Provided technical expertise to a law firm during software patent litigation (initial trial in TiVo v. EchoStar).

Akimbo Systems, Inc. -=- November 2003 - December 2003

(Software engineering contract.)  Developed an event logging system in C# .NET.  Developed an API for engineers to use to log interesting events to a compact binary format.  Wrote log harvesting and aggregation servers, as well as tools for sorting and formatting event logs.

CiderPress -=- initial shareware release March 2003, open-sourced March 2007

Developed CiderPress, a Windows application for manipulating Apple II archives and disk images.  Features include a full set of archive operations (similar to WinZip) as well as Apple II-specific text and graphic file format converters.  The program uses low-level I/O operations to access Apple II hard drives, floppy disks, CF cards, and CD-ROMs.  Five different filesystems are supported.  The project was developed in C++ (about 100K lines of well-commented source code), using Visual Studio 6.0 and the MFC library.  (I did a "refresh" in early 2015 to get it working with modern compilers and tools.)

Moxi Digital / Digeo, Inc. -=- January 2000 - July 2002

Software architect and team lead.  Moxi built a set-top box featuring multi-tuner video recording, CD jukebox, MP3 ripping and playback, DVD playback, and wired or wireless distribution.  The device went on to win Best In Show at the January 2002 CES convention.

Moxi Digital was originally known as Rearden Steel Technologies.  It was acquired by Digeo in May of 2002.

Responsibilities and achievements:

• Part of the "Gang of Five" that developed the detailed design of the hardware and software.  Developed detailed plans for application infrastructure, graphics and sound architecture, "mother" services, and other topics.
• Part of a small group that defined the merged Moxi/Digeo architecture after the acquisition.
• Led a team varying in size from 2 to 4 engineers.  My group was responsible for application infrastructure, graphics drivers, satellite and cable tuning, DVD playback, user input, and porting Macromedia Flash (4.x and 5.x) to our architecture.
• Designed and implemented "Central Services", the core of the Moxi application infrastructure.  CS loaded apps, managed access to graphics and video resources, handled user input devices, and provided debugging hooks for developers (thread watcher, memory watcher, and a graphical "control panel").
• Designed and implemented the initial version of the "RATI" library, a hardware abstraction layer that proved to be extremely useful as the hardware evolved.
• Designed and implemented remote execution wrappers with pseudo-ttys and network sockets. These connected to "xterm servers" running on developer workstations, allowing developers to view the output from multiple remote processes.
• Managed the relationship with one of our graphics chip vendors (ATI).
• Gave presentations on different system components to vendors, potential buyers, and internal folks.

NotifyMe Networks -=- January 2000

Software engineering contract (two weeks with ongoing advisory relationship). Helped design the NotifyMe service.  Developed service launcher and some service infrastructure libraries.

The NotifyMe service used a bank of outbound phone lines to provide automated, interactive customer notifications.  Target customers were corporations that wanted to provide information to their customers and get simple feedback.  Examples include online auction sites and furniture delivery companies.

WebTV Networks, Inc. / Microsoft, Inc. -=- March 1996 - December 1999

Software engineer in the online service development group.  WebTV runs an online service, connecting users to the Internet with a television set-top box.  The service was initially written in C on BSDI, but was primarily developed on Sun Solaris 2.x (SPARC).

WebTV was acquired by Microsoft in August of 1997.

Primary responsibilities:

• Designed and implemented the WebTV dialup infrastructure.  The system automatically configures the set-top box, selecting multiple dialup access numbers from several different Internet access providers based on the customer's phone number.  Selection process optimizes for call cost (to customer and to WebTV) while load-balancing and attempting to provide redundant access in case of IAP failure.  Works for NANP (US/Canada) and Japanese phone systems.  Wrote tools to examine and manipulate telco data and per-customer settings.
• Designed and implemented the client upgrade system.  Three different classes of WebTV box are upgraded automatically by the service as needed.  ROM images are split into pieces, compressed, and digitally signed before being downloaded.
• Held general ongoing responsibility for several major service components.

Other achievements:

• Responsible for implementing service support for new products, including EchoStar "DishPlayer" and Thomson "eTV".
• Developed offline e-mail access for two different classes of WebTV client.
• Implemented data compression algorithms for use in client-service communication.
• Developed pieces of the early service infrastructure (handled system dependencies in build process, added "fun" stdio, tweaked client connection handling, ported service from BSDI to Solaris, etc).
• Developed and maintained service side of phone activity logs and box crash logs.
• Wrote service documentation for pieces I developed, including a 70-page tome providing a general overview of the dialup system, for use by engineering, QA, network operations, and customer care (the "Greater Scroll of Dialing Wisdom").
• Plugged several security holes exposed by users, and several more that weren't.  Redesigned "tricks" service to allow different levels of access for regular customers, outsourced Customer Care, and internal users.

As a result of my work at WebTV, I am named as an inventor on the following issued patents:

Catapult Entertainment, Inc. -=- August 1994 - March 1996

Software engineer in the online service development group.  Catapult created the XBAND Video Game Modem and Network, a device and service that allowed owners of Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) consoles to play against other users over a phone line.  (Catapult was later purchased by Mpath Interactive, a/k/a HearMe.)

Major feats:

• Implemented a significant portion of the service that Catapult launched with in mid-November '94.  Notably: customer database, intra-service mail, news, game matching, game result tracking and player ranking, game patch management, build environment, logging, stat generation, and general network infrastructure including RPC between server processes.  Service was written in C on SunOS 4.
• Ongoing responsibility for much of the service.  Carried a pager, and fixed anything that broke.  Continued development on customer database, new game platform support, security, and client interaction.

Lesser feats:

• Implemented data compression algorithms for use in client-service communication.
• Spent a month in Japan, adapting the service for use with the SNES-J client.
• Shared assorted SunOS sysadmin duties with the rest of the team.

Highland Digital -=- June 1994 - July 1994

Software engineer.  Highland Digital was primarily a Sun value-added retailer (VAR).  They kept a small software team to develop products that addressed specific problems.

In brief:

• Ported various WWW tools to SunOS and Solaris.
• Set up highland.com web server.

Amdahl Corp. -=- June 1991 - May 1994

Software engineer in the UTS System Software Group.  Amdahl built IBM-compatible mainframes and software to run on them.  UTS is Amdahl's mainframe UNIX product, based on SVR3 and SVR4.  As demand for mainframes slowed, Amdahl began to move toward Sparc-based systems.

Things I did:

• Ported and enhanced utilities from AT&T's SVR4.x to UTS4.y.
• Added new system configuration and maintenance commands.
• Made changes to UTS4 kernel.
• Ported public domain and GNU-license software for internal use.
• Debugged a lot of strange situations.
• Worked on A+Texture, which was supposed to be a suite of applications for World Wide Web development.  Enhanced NCSA Mosaic.

Other Projects

CD-Recordable FAQ -=- March 1996 - 2010(-ish)

Created the Frequently Asked Questions list for CD recording, starting with the list of questions that I wanted to have answered.  The FAQ currently fills about 250+ pages (depending on how you print it), has been translated at various times into Hungarian, Turkish, Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Chinese, and at its peak got several thousand visitors a day.  Customer support organizations at major hardware and software companies regularly referred customers to it as a resource.  I have been interviewed by various newspapers and made a live appearance as a guest on TechTV's "Call for Help" program.

The FAQ is converted from an ASCII text Usenet posting to an indexed, multi-page HTML format using a text-to-HTML program I wrote for the purpose.

NufxLib and NuLib2 -=- February 2000

Designed, implemented, and documented a data archiving library and application. The NufxLib library allows applications to add, extract, rename, delete, and examine the contents of NuFX archives (popular in the Apple II world, mainly for use with software emulators). NuLib2, a replacement for the original NuLib (see below), is a command-line application implemented with NufxLib.  Both are available as source code on GitHub under BSD licenses.

HardPressed[tm] -=- March 1992 - July 1993

Designed and implemented "HardPressed", a transparent file compression product for the Apple IIgs.  Project involved extensive patching of the operating system, development of GUI user applications, and writing lots of code that had to be absolutely reliable.  Sold as a commercial product through WestCode Software.

The complete source code is available here.

Hacking Data Compression -=- October 1992 - January 1993

Developed a 12-part online course for the GEnie online service, entitled "Hacking Data Compression".  The course taught compression theory and algorithm implementation, focusing on lossless data compression for Apple IIgs applications written in C or 65816 assembly.

Netrek Enhancements -=- December 1991 - May 1994

Developed several enhancements to Netrek, a multiplayer space combat game written for UNIX and the X window system.  Among them:

• Implemented UDP networking code.  Netrek was originally written to use TCP/IP, and performed poorly over lossy connections.  To the best of my knowledge, Netrek was the first game that ever used UDP over the Internet.
• Developed a suite of server administration tools, including a graphical observation and maintenance tool (XShowGalaxy).
• Developed the "meta-server", which provides up-to-date information on public server usage.  (Looks like one is still running on metaserver.netrek.org port 3521; telnet to it.)
• Wrote a curses-based player-list editor.
• Wrote a secure packet-passing daemon ("trekhopd") to allow gameplay across a bastion-host firewall.
• Created the Frequently Offered Clever Suggestions (FOCS) list for would-be developers.

I gave a deposition for the defense in a patent lawsuit (HearMe vs. Lipstream Networks re: US 5,822,523) where Netrek was used as an example of prior art.  And again, when the same patent came up in PalTalk vs. Microsoft.

Optical Disc Jukebox Daemon -=- Spring 1991

Wrote a client library and server application to control an optical disc jukebox that the Berkeley CS department had acquired.

NuLib -=- Early 1989 - 1991

Developed a full-featured file archiver for use with Apple II ".SHK" archives.  NuLib was written in C and ported to a wide variety of different UNIX systems.  The program is still in use, mainly by Apple II emulator enthusiasts, though it has largely been replaced by NuLib2.

Background

Graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, May 1991.

Outside interests include martial arts, notably Krav Maga, Muay Thai, and Danzan-Ryu Ju-jitsu. As part of my martial training I am certified in seifukujitsu (massage therapy).

I have been known to perform certain acts of interior decoration.

Last updated: 2024/08/01