The Communications Director of EmperorLinux Dr. Adriane Swalm Durey was born in Kansas. In May of 1993, she graduated as salutatorian from Bonnabel High School in Kenner, Louisiana. She then entered the Tulane University School of Engineering in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she was the recipient of a Dean's Honor Scholarship. (It was which at Tulane that she also discovered the joys of Linux.) In May of 1997, Adriane received her Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering, Summa Cum Laude with Departmental Honors. She also received the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science's Award for Academic Achievement by a Computer Engineering Major and the Annual Texas Instruments Award for Outstanding Senior in the Computer Sciences. The following May, she received her Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Tulane, as well, after successfully defending her thesis on Object Recognition by Equal Area Reprojection. During her undergraduate career, Adriane worked as a teaching assistant, a counselor for the Louisiana Governor's Program for Gifted Children, and as a student researcher.

In the fall of 1998, Adriane entered the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Electrical and Computer Engineering to begin working on her doctoral degree. While a graduate student, Adriane was first funded for two years by the award of a Claire Booth Luce Fellowship. Her remaining years were funded by a Graduate Research Assistantship. During this time, Adriane developed her interest from computer-based transcription of music to the melody recognition problem, which became the basis of her thesis, Melody Spotting Using Hidden Markov Models. She was guided in this work by her advisor Mark A. Clements. Adriane received her doctorate in Electrical Engineering in December 2003.

While a graduate student at Georgia Tech, Adriane also participated in the start-up of EmperorLinux (having married Lincoln, its founder, in the same year). She currently acts as the Communications Director, in charge of advertising, web content, and many other technical challenges appropriate to years of schooling in the fields of electrical and computer engineering.

Adriane is a member of IEEE, ACM, Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and Upsilon Pi Epsilon.

My official job here at EmperorLinux is to make pretty pictures for the web site, banner advertising (like on Linux.org), and print advertising (in places like Linux Journal). Hence, if someone is to blame for the funnily dressed penguins floating around this web site, it is I (with help from Larry Ewing and The GIMP). You can find additional examples that prove that I spend too much time with The GIMP---my adventures in digital signal processing. My latest GIMP-related project has been to make my computer talk to my new toy, a Wacom Intuos graphics tablet. It works wonderfully, thanks to this Wacom Tablet How-To.

When I'm not breaking the software on our latest computer offerings, (well, that is what you're supposed to do with test equipment) I'm learning new about new Linux related subjects and then using that information to further break and rearrange things. My latest efforts revolve around creating a cross stitch pattern plug-in for The GIMP. The first fruits of that effort will appear eventually below. In the meantime, I have created a Tux cross-stitch pattern the old-fashioned way. A PDF version of the pattern is available (and is still being tweaked from time to time). Tux enthusiasts need not worry; the imperial crown and staff are entirely optional.