The supression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge. There is no place for it in the endeavor of science.
– Carl Sagan (Cosmos Episode 4)
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Didn’t expect to find any books on our outing yesterday, but I had a pleasant surprise. Last week I finished my previous book on embedded Linux, which was a great case-study-esque intro, and Embedded Linux Primer will likely be a wonderful follow-up. Some of the chapters that caught my eye:
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C was a surprise as well. To be honest, I’ve never done much unit-testing for PHP or other web apps. And I’m not sure of the best ways to perform testing for C apps given the added step of compilation, so this book should prove quite valuable. Even if my next job doesn’t require TDD experience, it should help me write better code.
Continue reading… that continuous spiritual deadening that the chirp of a child who you’re legally obliged to look after, in your right ear, constantly, and not letting up, and not letting you sleep …
– From YLNT - That’s Babies
Continue readingWhat follows are thoughts while reading Embedded Linux - Hardware, Software and Interfacing. Really enjoyed it.
It walks through planning for an automation system for a winter resort. Currently at chapter 6 and there’ve been a few things I’ve not done before.
Right away I discovered you could use gdb remotely with gdbremote. Great for remote debugging of cross-compiled applications.
I’ve done cross-compilation, albeit indirectly using buildroot, but I was still aware of what went on behind the scenes, aka: compiling gcc and glibc multiple times, the first being a way to bootstrap and create a more “pure” versions tailed specifically for the target platform.
Continue readingThe article hits home (click the title). And when you’re a creative type giving things away for free it can make you feel run-down and used.
I’ve had a few thoughts for infusing my Flam Swiss “brand” with more value. Producing more content that teaches is one idea. Wish I could say I had others.
Continue readingHad the energy and focus to make more progress on my ideas for redis last night. See my previous post here if you don’t remember what those ideas were.
The only things left to do:
So, it’s 95% working! Once I fix those things, “make test” should pass, and then I can get on with the task of benchmarking my changes against the main branch.
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Passed the most important milestone of my life last evening. I beat Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the 1992 adventure game. Been playing it on my OLPC XO.
Not sure which game I’ll start next. Maybe Full Throttle, Sam n Max, or another. Probably just go in order by release date.
Continue readingHad an idea for reducing the memory footprint of redis sets. A redis set may be encoded as an intset (if the set contains nothing but integers) or a hash table. But if a set contains integers and other values, you lose out on the benefit of intsets (speed and memory efficiency) and in some cases you have to wait while redis converts your intset to a hash table. This may not be a big penalty, but it all depends on the order in which you add items.
Continue readingBuilding upon Working Best at Coffee Shops, a great article with several possible explanations about why so many find it more enjoyable and often, more effective, to work in noisy public places.
Another possible explanation:
That working in an unpredictable, yet pleasant, environment keeps your energy levels up. Each person that walks through the door heightens your senses, provides a shot of adrenaline, and otherwise keeps you buzzing. And of course, there’s often a window with a nice view, which for me seems to benefit problem solving similar to pacing around an office.
Continue readingIt was a week ago that I first felt the inevitability of my change of heart, and Sunday the camel’s back broke. I’ve since stopped offering my drumline music for free.
The initial decision to offer my music at no cost wasn’t hastily made. At first, I priced my music between $3 and $10, which is what I thought it was worth, and had a few takers. Then I began split-testing to evaluate the effectiveness of “pay what you want” as well as “pay what you want with some proceeds going to charity”, with no takers. It caused me to reflect upon my audience, which is largely high school drummers, and the fact that they they most certainly don’t have much income to part with. So, given my audience and the state of public school music programs, I decided to be generous and offer the music for free to those who need it.
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