This woman is so cool:
There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer.
Ms. Ellsworth has squeezed the entire circuitry of a two-decade-old Commodore 64 home computer onto a single chip, which she has tucked neatly into a joystick that connects by a cable to a TV set. Called the Commodore 64 - the same as the computer system - her device can run 30 video games, mostly sports, racing and puzzles games from the early 1980's, all without the hassle of changing game cartridges.
She has also included five hidden games and other features - not found on the original Commodore computer - that only a fellow hobbyist would be likely to appreciate. For instance, someone who wanted to turn the device into an improved version of the original machine could modify it to add a keyboard, monitor and disk drive.
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Two years ago she showed it off at the Hackers' Conference, an annual meeting of some of the nation's best computer designers. To her surprise, she received a rousing ovation - and a series of job offers.
One person who took notice was Andrew Singer, a computer scientist who is chief executive of Rapport Inc., a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif.
Mr. Singer contracted with Ms. Ellsworth as a consultant and has since found that she has abilities that engineers with advanced degrees often do not.
"It's possible to get a credential and not have passion," he said. He compared Ms. Ellsworth to Mr. Wozniak and to Burrell Smith, the hardware designer of the original Macintosh. Neither had formal training when they made their most significant contributions at Apple.