I’m back for 2023!! 1 Jan 2023, 10:56 pm

I’ve been away from this website for too long.

I’ve taken down some very stale posts and I’ve got some plans for the year ahead. Between work and my personal passions, I should have plenty to write about this year.

All of my product development has transitioned from PowerPC and the Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) VxWorks to embedded Linux on Intel and ARM. I have lots to learn but I’m more excited about work than I’ve been in years. I have multiple new designs in development so I’ll be learning under pressure which is the best way for me. I just can’t learn as much from a book as I do working hands on. I need to solve difficult problems under pressure to truly burn new skills into my brain. Anyone can “learn” a new technology but it’s like learning a foreign language, when we think in the new language, you’ve fully learned something. Maybe, I can tell some good stories in these blog’s pages.

I’m interested in … well everything frankly but I will try and focus this year. Most likely, no one will read this but it’s fun to look back a couple years now.

Work is more insane than ever but I plan to spend more time writing and less time on my hardware/software hacks. Later in the year, I may get back to hardware but at the moment you just can’t buy the parts. So I’ll be sticking to software until the supply chain gets back to normal.

Systems Software 28 Mar 2021, 7:44 pm

For as long as I’ve been a professional software engineer, I’ve struggled to explain to people what I do for a living. Most people think that all software engineers are the same and that they are all equally skilled at developing iPhone apps or the software in self driving cars. I can forgive the lack of understanding from the general public but many managers seem equally ill informed. Often a person will come right out and ask, “So what kind of software do you write?”. In those moments, I’ve always struggled because I’ve always lacked a term. I’d mostly answer, “low level” or I’d refer to “the metal” or similar reference.

Now, I’ve become increasing comfortable with the term, “system software”. No, I’m not a kernel developer but I’ve helped debug one. Mostly, I’ve been working on high performance computing applications or the tools to enable them, boot loaders, board support packages (BSPs), device drivers, middleware, profiling tools, debuggers, firmware, exception handlers, fitting math routines to vector instructions, integrating new hardware and software, and on and on. At times, I’ll write or tune some application code; often when performance is critically important. I find writing system software to be the most rewarding since I most often get to see my work leveraged into a much larger final system or product. My career started writing software for vision guided robots which was the peak of immediate feedback. If your robot crashed it’s camera and lighting rig into the work-surface, you likely skipped a few steps debugging code! That’s a true story but thankfully wasn’t me and for that poor engineer a particularly bad day. However, the good days could be great.

I recently started a new large project with an extensive collection of multidisciplinary engineers responsible for the many facets that make up the final product. As one of the system software engineers, I’ve being breathing life into a mass of new hardware. This will be fun!

Vim or “What’s old is new again” 26 May 2020, 2:25 am

Ever since I began my professional career, I’ve been a fan and heavy user of the “vi” editor.  I could always count on my editor to be available on every Unix system I used, and I never needed much time to update my personal configuration as I moved from system to system.

Years ago, almost every one of my coworkers became obsessed with the Emacs editor (mostly GNU Emacs).  At times, I seriously questioned just how much time people were investing into their Emacs Lisp libraries.  I was just the odd duck and never one to follow the crowd.  I was happy with my multi-modal editor which seemed to perplex many new users but that somehow I found relatively minimalist.

As time went on, most vi editors have been replaced with  Vim (“Vi IMproved”).  I always stuck with the basic editor workflow and never dug much deeper.  As Vim became more popular, it became available on almost every operating system you could think of and a “Vim mode” even began to become a common feature on many Integrated Development Environments (IDEs).

With more time on my hands, and more mileage on my hands as well, I’ve decided to improve my mastery of Vim.  Clearly, I’ve only scratched the surface of Vim’s commands and features, and my workflow could use some optimization.  Hopefully, I can make some meaningful improvements to my software development process and reduce the amount of typing needed to accomplish the same tasks. This will be fun!

Will Santa bring me a Raspberry Pi? 28 Nov 2011, 12:32 am

As the last days of November fall away, a December release date for the Raspberry Pi computer is starting to look likely.  I’ll have to send Santa an updated wish list. Thankfully, the elves in the UK are working overtime to get the Raspberry Models A and B ready. Santa, make mine a Model B.

Amahi Home Server Plug Edition 26 Sep 2010, 3:50 pm

A $99 Sheevaplug, a USB hard drive, and some free software equals an easy to use and VERY LOW POWER home server. What I’m talking about is the Amahi Linux Home Server, or what Amahi calls a HDA, for “Home Digital Assistant.” Each HDA delivers all the functionality you would want in a home server, while being as easy to manage from your web browser.

The Amahi HDA advertises a wide range of features including:

The setup was quick and painless. I reformatted a 750GB USB drive I had been using on my WDTV Live media player and configured one large boot partition and a 2GB swap partition. Using a simple install script, I copied the latest rootfs image to the drive, changed my Sheevaplug to boot from the USB, and just booted into Amahi. I installed the code I received when I setup my Amahi profile and I was up and running.

The Amahi HDA is already configured with and  running the NAS software so my next step was little more than copying my media onto the server. I intend to try more of the other home server features and I will post my experiences. Is this a free competitor to Window Home Server? We’ll see.

Robot Art 7 Mar 2010, 3:08 pm

My first “real job” was working for a machine vision guided robotics startup and ever since I’ve been hooked on robots. OK, there is a bit of boyish love of toys there as well but robots have a magical appeal I don’t feel just writing software. So it’s not surprising that when I recently came across artist Mike Rivamonte‘s metal sculptures of robots and spacemen, I was mesmerized by every tiny detail.

I’m normally not an art lover. That’s my wife’s strong suit and our home is beautifully decorated with her photos, artwork, and collectible finds. Not that I could afford one of these works but I think we could lose one vase for one of these bad boys. Doesn’t everyone’s home need a little retro techno cool?

Snow Leopard Olympic Glory 15 Feb 2010, 12:54 am

Ghanaian olympic skier Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong “The Other Snow Leopard” has overcome some incredible odds just to make it to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. Don’t assume Kwame is the “Eddie the Eagle” of 2010 … the man can ski. Granted, the odds aren’t in his favor but we’re pulling for you Kwame.