On April 17, 1999, in the post below, Rick Lyons issues “A Call for DSP Tricks”

Well Guys,

We have a plan on how we’ll collect, compile, and display any clever DSP Tricks that you’d like to share with other DSP practitioners. By a “Trick”, we mean some clever DSP technique used to make a processing algorithm operate more efficiently. (For example, how to estimate the magnitude of a complex number, based on the I & Q values, without having to perform a square root calculation.) The “we”, in this operation, are Julius Kusuma, Ole Wolf, Grant Griffin, and Rick Lyons.

We’re also looking for additional volunteers to help “review” some of the submitted “DSP Tricks”. Here’s a brief description of our plan:

  1. You submit your “candidate” DSP Trick by posting a brief description of it here on comp.dsp.
  2. The DSP Tricks Team will review and “publish” (display) the tricks on the new dspGuru.com web site. Please bear with us, the review process might take a while. We may not be able to use every submission. If someone submits: “left shift a binary number by one bit to accomplish a multiply by two”, that may be too trivial to use. We’ll have to decide. If Dr. Mike submits a trick related to enhancing Elliptic Curve Cryptography, we’ll have to decide if that may be useful to mortal men. (Volunteer to be a “reviewer”, and you can help make these decisions.)
  3. We prefer that you create your own supporting materials such as equations, artwork, and software. However, we’ll help wherever we can to make the web site version of your “Trick” understandable.
  4. While the trick will not belong to anyone, your name will be listed as the Contributor.

So guys, if you’re willing to share your DSP Tricks with other DSPers, we’ll take the trouble to make it happen. The goal here is to assemble a collection of useful DSP Tricks that will make DSP engineering easier for us all. One DSPer (fuller1) suggested we compile a list of “gotchas.” That’s an idea that will have to wait until we get settled in compiling Tricks. We’ll ask you guys to submit gotchas later, at which time we’ll do our best to explain what a gotcha is to our European friends. (Anyone want to volunteer to define “gotcha” in a clear, concise, and understandable way?) We’re hoping you’ll submit tricks that fall into something like the following general categories:

CATEGORIES:

  • Algorithmic (arithmetic) tricks;
  • General software (programming practice) tricks;
  • DSP chip/microprocessor-specific instruction set tricks;
  • Hardware architecture, or implementation, tricks;
  • etc.

TO SUBMIT A DSP TRICK, please do the following three things:

  1. Use the following “Form” and submit your DSP Trick by posting it on the comp.dsp news group. That form will make life easier for the volunteers who compile the tricks.
  2. Include the word “Trick” in your comp.dsp post’s “Subject” line, making it easier for us to recognize your submission.
  3. PLEASE! DO NOT delete the text: “THIS WORK IS PLACED IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN” from the form. DO NOT submit any Company Proprietary material. We cannot publish it. (We must protect ourselves with that “public domain” text.)

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--- DSP Trick Submission Form ---

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THIS WORK IS PLACED IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
Name: (A title for your Trick.)
Category: (One of the category choices listed above.)
Application: (When would someone use your Trick?)
Advantages: (What's good about your Trick.)

Introduction: (Some text to help the reader understand.)

The Trick: (Here's where you describe your DSP Trick.)
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