FireThorne Consulting^®

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This site is intended to provide a variety of information: some as a public service on general topics, especially topics related to the West coast; and some related to my professional activities.

FireThorne Consulting

FireThorne Consulting is a sole proprietership which provides a variety of specialist services connected with computers and their use. My current primary activities comprise R&D (including preparation of science submissions for SR&ED claims); project technical review; computer-human interaction research (particularly speech recognition and synthesis); writing; and computer consulting services. My resumé provides an indication of my background and experience which includes:

• Professional Engineer
• qualified military pilot [Scroll of Honour during pilot training]
• flight test engineer [flight trial design]
• scientific researcher [artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-human interaction (CHI)]
• tenured full professor of computer science [designed and taught courses in most areas, plus administration]
• adjunct professor of psychology [activities related to speech and cognition research]
• consultant to government and industry [chip design and fabrication, SR&ED program, planning & negotiation, ...]
• successful entrepreneur [projects completed on time and on budget, technology transfer]
• director of several companies [microchips and software development]
• author of peer reviewed papers
• author of two patents
• editor of peer reviewed journal in CHI
• national computer science research-grant review committee chairmanship
• Scientific Research auditor for Revenue Canada (now the Canadian Revenue Agency) evaluating the research content of applications under the Scientific Research & Experimental Development Program
• Project Leader for the Gnuspeech articulatory speech synthesis software project for the Free Software Foundation (Macintosh & GNU/Linux)

Bowen Island Ferry Service

Ferries are always a hot topic for West Coast Island communities. At the time of the fast ferry fiasco, considerable information was made available on the Ferry CURE web site(Ferry Coalition of Users to Restore Equity), a sub-site of this one. Extensive information is still available as an archive. The current hot topic is ferry marshalling in the context of planning the future of Snug Cove, the main commercial centre of Bowen Island, where the ferry docks and, currently, disgorges its rapidly increasing number of cars down the main street, which is also used for ferry marshalling. The Ferry CURE web site has a number of proposals for dealing with the problems, including aerial photos, plus links to some of the Snug Cove planning documents

Please visit, and gain a little insight into the trials of Island life, and the workings of our great Province.

Contact: email David R. Hill • Phone: 604-947-2759

Page last updated 2011-05-05
* Note: “FireThorne” and the burning tree logo are registered trademarks of David R. Hill