A Midsummer Night’s Blog

Introduction

Filed as Fencing, Geek Stuff, General on November 4, 2008

11/4/2008

Hola Amigos y Amigas!

My name is Puck Curtis and I am an electrical engineer and fencing teacher.

Behold the Geekness of Me

As far as the geek side goes, I specialize in embedded systems and I work for Rabbit Semiconductor.  Embedded systems tend to be very small computers that don’t require much power and specialize in a bang-for-buck rather than processing power.  If you stack a Rabbit device up against the latest ATI Radeon 4870×2 you will notice the following things:

Review at Guru3D.com

Rabbit RCM5400W

• 1 processor at 73.73 Mhz
• 512K of SRAM memory
• 16-bit memory bus
• ~38.4 killoflops per second
• ~2 Watts of power consumption
• $119

It’s easy to see that the little Rabbit loses when it comes to sheer number crunching, but this little guy will work as a WiFi device with encryption, serve web pages, and act as the brain of a robot all at once while only pulling just a bit of power.  If you shut down the WiFi the power consumption drops even more.  This is why I consider embedded design part of the Green Economy.  Lower power means lower carbon footprint and the world is a bit better off for it.

Fencing

When it comes to fencing, I’m trained as an Italian classical fencer and I currently hold the teaching title of Provost at Arms through the San Jose Fencing Master’s Program.  This title is specific to classical Italian foil, epee, and sabre.  On December 13, 2008 I will take the fencing master’s exam and if I pass and present an acceptable thesis, I will be able to call myself a Maestro of classical Italian fencing.

I also teach historical fencing and sit on the board of the Tattershall School of Defense and I am a historical fencing coach at the Davis Fencing Academy.  I have been fencing within the SCA since 1992 and my current interests are Italian rapier, Italian longsword, and Iberian swordplay from Montante (greatsword) to sidesword.  I am one of the two people responsible for maintaining the Destreza Translation and Research Project.

I spent the last two months in Spain training with the historical group of Spain, La Asociación Española de Esgrima Antigua (AEEA).

Welcome to the blog,

Puck