Electronics

My Raspberry Pi should arrive tomorrow. It is a credit card-size computer running Linux.

Spend $2 bills and, when someone comments on it, say “It’s symbolic of my support for the Second Amendment.”

For the geeky types out there, are you watching Raspberry Pi?

Curiosity is on it’s way this morning to Mars for the next eight months. Launched this morning atop an Atlas V vehicle, Curiosity is the size of a small car, several times the weight, and carries many times the scientific instruments of its predecessor rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

I just love engineers.

Ok, it’s true.

Although I consider myself a teacher, I am not an academic.

Some of the engineers I work with design computerized flight control systems such as those that would be considered “fly by wire” or that fly autonomously with no human in control. As such, I’m always looking for ideas on how to make software that is more and more reliable.

Ah, blogging!

The SSID of my personal WiFi hot spot is a type of rare fruit, broadcast is turned off, and the WPA2 passphrase is a complete sentence including punctuation and proper capitalization from one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books.

… are in the computer you are looking at right now?

There is a country, which I will allow to remain nameless, that receives a lot of “off-shoring” of software engineering from US companies. I teach a fair number of engineers from that country and, for whatever reason, I have to say they seem to be grossly under qualified. By and large, in the classroom they ask few questions – that could be a cultural thing, I admit – and in the labs they have more problems than others in following the detailed instructions – again, that could be a cultural issue.