Articles on random topics in Programming, Systems Administration, Academia and Industry by Mark Dennehy
Well that didn’t go too badly. General course overview and a probably over-long “what is an embedded system” lecture. No-one overtly fell asleep at any rate. And everyone enjoyed the videos of the explosions.
So what the heck, enjoy – Ariane 5 Flight 501. An example of what can happen with unsafe datatype casting 
Next talks are on the hardware used in embedded systems, starting with the microprocessors and microcontrollers.
Why Joel Spolsky was wrong about ‘duct tape programmers’ being good programmers.
Okay, I’ll grant you, it doesn’t look that impressive. That’s just the basic ‘Blinky’ first-step demo for the Keil MPC2400 board. Basic light chaser using the pot to set the speed of the blinking.
However, it’s a bit more fun when I note that the Keil environment was run from within Virtualbox on my Debian laptop and it still used the USB JTAG connection to connect to the board and it all worked without a hitch on the first try.
Apart from the obvious convienence this means to me (I don’t have to dual-boot to programme the board, I can run the exercises from within Linux, which I prefer), it’s just downright impressive that Virtualbox is that far along.
Well, maybe not to you young kids, but to someone who was in college when the web came along, this is impressive
Last time I checked, on October 2 I get to vote for either “Yes” or “No”.
I’m pretty sure the options will not include “Cori”, “Libertas”, “Ganley”, “Cowen”, “Kenny”, “McKenna” or anything on those lines.
So it’d be really nice if every flipping story written on the upcoming referendum would focus on the choices available, instead of trying to convince me one way or another on the character of the lobbyists. Because unless I get to vote on them, hearing about how they love their mothers or hate kittens is just a waste of space…
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