Gary Linscott's Home Page

I'm now working for Microsoft in Seattle. I graduated from Queen's University in 2005 after four years and one co-op year (the time at GameTitan). I really enjoy programming contests and was a member of the Queen's ACM team for the five years I was in University. I also enjoy competing on Topcoder, which provides excellent practice for ACM and is quite a challenge in it's own right. My handle there is gladius.

Some of the things I randomly work away on involving programming are: Emulation, Board game AI, Image processing (Texture synthesis, wavelet compression), Sound generation, Graphics programming and other misc. items such as GBA programming and plugins for Asheron's Call. Descriptions (and source for some) of most of the major projects I have worked on over the years are in the projects section.

Outside of the computer I enjoy playing football, tennis and jogging.

Check out my blog for some random thoughts.

I interned at Microsoft in the summers of 2003 and 2004 and both experiences were wonderful. The people were amazing to work with, not only for their knowledge, but they were also incredibly easy to get along with. The technology was also great to work with, Microsoft is doing some cool stuff.

Before that I was a professional Gameboy Advance developer for a year and had a few published (and a few not published) titles while I worked there. I devloped the toolset and the engine for use in two games, Spykids 2, Jazz Jackrabbit and Cat in the Hat. This was also a very satisfying job, but don't let anybody fool you into thinking that developing even relatively small games is easy!

Prior to that job I had a few smaller jobs, developing monitoring tools for windows, and doing webpage work with good ol' Perl.

The ACM team was a major part of my life for five years. Having 2 practices a week at 5 hours a practice most times makes for a fair amount of time committed. Thankfully we have some great coaches in Thomas Tang, Amber Simpson and Chris Wolfe. Since I've gone to the worlds twice, I've retired and been promoted by default to the coaching staff as well :). The ACM has a rule that you can only compete in two world finals, so I'm done as a competitor.

In the second year I was on the team we made it to the world finals in Honolulu, Hawaii, placing 2nd in our region. This was a great experience and we met a lot of great programmers and had a huge amount of fun with some other teams (hi there Calgary and St. Mary's). We placed in a tie for 27th there and learned much from the experience. The team was Chris Wolfe, Chris St. John and myself.

In the third year we unfortunately did not make it back to the worlds (even though we had the same team, which goes to show that luck -- and a lack of lunch -- can be large factors in the competition). We placed 6th overall in our region.

In my fourth year on the team we made it back to the world finals which are in Prague, placing 2nd in our region. We placed 12th in the world, and were extremely pleased with our performance there. 12th out of 3000 is not too bad :). The team was Bartholomew Furrow, Daniel Trang and myself.

You can get in touch with me at premandrake@hotmail.com.