jgable

OT: This is the first time in a while that I’ve seen the phrase “load-bearing” used in a natural way. :-)

I’m developing BaseRef (https://getbaseref.com), a requirements/risk/test management and documentation SaaS tool focused on medical device startups. There are competitors in the space but most are enterprise tools for enterprise customers. My primary differentiators are reasonable up-front prices, and easy inclusion of traced items in a wiki/notion-like collaborative document editor. It’s not a sexy or original idea, but I think there is a gap in the market for a solid business. I’ve been an embedded software consultant for medical device startups for years, but this is my first SaaS business.

I suppose. My original comment should have been “doesn’t teach you how to program.” It would be great to do it the normal way first, then point out that it’s impossible to do without a contract of behavior in place, then start creating that instruction set and building up from there. It is in fact possible to program computers, so this method would teach what makes programming possible.

It’s funny, when I’ve seen this demonstrated, it’s basically literally impossible to get the right result because the test maker doesn’t define an instruction set that you can rely on. They will deliberately screw up whatever instructions you give them no matter how detailed. A computer has a defined ISA that is specified in terms of behavior. A compiler transforms a language with higher level abstractions into this low-level language. I’ve never seen this “test” done with any similar affordance, which doesn’t really teach anything.

One of the best parties I’ve been to in my life was the reception after a funeral for my wife’s great-aunt. Generations of relatives and family friends, some of whom hadn’t seen each other in thirty years, took over their house from after the ceremony at noon until 10pm that night. It was a rager.

I built a variant to very successfully estimate state of charge for a large battery pack in a production hybrid-electric vehicle.

Often some tweaks from the standard formula are necessary to account for real-world non-linearities, and some creative design work is required to define states in such a way that the Gaussian noise assumption can hold well enough.

Wrightspeed did this a while (10 years?) ago. It looks like they have since pivoted to fully electric powertrains for buses, but when they first started they were doing range-extending hybrid powertrains for heavy trucks. I found an article the describes the system at the time:

  https://www.e-hike.net/tr/content/wrightspeed-unveils-new-turbine-range-extender-medium-and-heavy-duty-electric-powertrains-30

With a range-extender hybrid system, you can keep the turbine closer to its peak-efficiency operating point, since it only has to handle steady-state load while the battery takes up the spikes. Not sure how it would do up a long grade, but I imagine they designed for that.

Allspice - git platform for hardware engineers

https://www.allspice.io/

I’m excited about Slint. It’s great to have a solid Qt alternative for embedded UIs. I doubt I will need to use it on a MCU rather than an embedded Linux processor, but even so, it’s also nice to know that it’s lightweight.

Thanks, I’ll check them out

The “Interrupt” blog by Memfault is another example. They are adored by embedded developers.

"How to See, How to Draw" by Claudia Nice is a good book for learning to draw in a self-guided way. Doesn't take much money -- $20 at any art supply store can get you a decent drawing book and a decent set of pencils.

and Patrick, I can say that you were the first heavy influence on me that pushed me in the direction of solo entrepreneurship. From your writings and podcast I found Brennan Dunn, Amy Hoy, Jonathan Stark, Philip Morgan and others who have inspired me to choose and pursue my own path. Thanks for all that you’ve done, and I aspire to leave the kind of mark on the world that you have left.

It’s funny, I actually find Babish quite educational because his videos are so tightly edited. Explains the techniques and recipe in seven minutes flat. My wife and I have made many of his recipes (that he usually borrows from others) because he makes them so appealing, shows common mistakes, and does it so quickly.

I was fortunate enough to take a workshop with Frankie Manning around 2004 or 2005 at the Atomic Ballroom in Orange County. He was an incredible teacher, and the ladies who got to dance with him to demonstrate moves were absolutely blushing. It’s such a shame that he spent so many years undeservedly in obscurity. I like to think that he knew how much he meant to so many people, but it doesn’t replace what he should have had. A wonderful dancer and a wonderful man.

If it’s 20 pages of useful information and insight that saves someone time, yes. Assuming that’s the case, s/he should charge more.

Given that this pandemic has killed millions, shut down the world economy, and caused untold long term damage to children due to lack of stable schooling: yes, it’s because the precautionary principle is too costly.

Edit: sorry, my comment may have sounded snarky, which was not my intention. World-wide vaccinations do carry a risk. It’s just that such a risk clearly pales in comparison to the very known downsides of the current situation. I am in no way a vaccine expert and cannot comment intelligently on why long-term risks are considered to be low.

This is the guide, which you would normally visit from the homepage. The homepage gives a very clear description of what it is.

I remember the memfault blog post that introduced me to this package. Great find, and I’ve started doing the same on all my embedded dev projects. Thanks!

What is the deal with the commentators emphasizing when the players “fist pump” and pronouncing it strangely? Such a silly gimmick.

This is a neat idea. PSA currently shows a movement heat map over the course of each game but it isn’t interesting either - they are all just very similar looking blobs.

I would love to see slow-motion breakdowns, but that might only be interesting to fans who play seriously. Then again, maybe that’s most fans since it is a more obscure sport?

I’m just glad they finally figured out that dark blue courts and a white ball is the only combination that gives people a hope of seeing the ball on TV. High def viewing helps too, of course, but the old color schemes used before 8-10 years ago made it impossible to see the ball.

Reuters is the best I’ve seen at “just the facts”. Very little sensationalism.

I blocked CNN from my phone because checking it repeatedly all day gave me high blood pressure.

I can help you with the microcontroller and control algorithm side. It’s what I do. If you’re a software developer you can do it yourself with a small amount of guidance from someone like me. Email is my username plus 79 at gmail if you want to set up a quick discussion.

Hmm, sounds like you might be automating tests on the target, scripted from the PC. There's a place for this, but I'd call that automated integration/system testing, not unit testing.

Unit testing was traditionally considered impractical for embedded systems, because the code is so closely tied to the hardware. However, with proper architecture and unit test frameworks that simplify your life, it's quite feasible, and indeed enjoyable.

You write unit tests that exercise your embedded code, compiled for the PC, not the target. This ensures your code is portable.

I use the Unity/CMock/Ceedling framework when I'm writing in C, and CppUTest when I'm writing in C++.

I HIGHLY recommend the video courses taught by the guys at ThrowTheSwitch.org (the authors of Unity/CMock/Ceedling). See https://www.throwtheswitch.org/dr-surlys-school

I read and enjoyed James Grenning's book, Test Driven Development for Embedded C, but it didn't really click for me until I took the video courses mentioned above. In the second course, you code an entire simple but realistic embedded project in TDD fashion.

Test driven development for my embedded systems work. I’ll never go back.

Embedded Systems Consultant for Safety-Critical Applications

Location: Orange County, CA

Remote: Yes

Relocate: No

Technologies: C, C++, Python, RTOS, Bare-metal, ISO 26262, IEC 62304, understanding and interfacing with all kinds of hardware and electronics

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-gable/

Email: jeff@jeffgable.com

I’m very glad this site exists. I have personally found it useful.

However, it suffers from a problem common to these types of sites — namely, there is no obvious organization of the content. Say that I’m a new user who is interested in Linux. Where do I start? The index, the commands, the how-tos... they are all alphabetical. Just like man pages! It’s great that documentation is comprehensive, but that doesn’t make it usable.

Knowledge doesn’t always fit neatly into a hierarchical tree. Sometimes it makes more sense to represent it as a graph. But an alphabetical list only makes sense for people who already know what they are looking for.

Not trying to crap on this project, really, I’m not. But, if your goal is to educate people about the advantages of Linux, you’ve got to give them a foothold and a map of the terrain.

No, I didn't do any research with the LS1. That was just an undergrad project for me, as a lab experiment for the engine class students to run.

Speaking of EtaGen (your third link), two of the founders, Shannon Miller and Matt Svrcek, are from Chris Edwards's group at Stanford. I worked with Matt quite a bit during undergrad. I knew Shannon but didn't work with her much directly. They are doing some very cool stuff. Their generator been in development a long time -- I hope it can go to production soon.

Wow, what a blast from the past. When I first took the IC engines class, it was in that lab from your pictures. During grad school I helped move it over to the fancy new MERL building. I remember doing a project in undergrad to add closed-loop control of equivalence ratio via O2 sensors to the LS1.

During my undergrad and masters, I worked for Chris Edwards, who took over the IC engine lab from Fritz. It was a fun place to be -- running a single-cylinder research engine and a chevy LS1 on the dynos, setting up a miniature turbine engine and a hybrid rocket motor stand for the advanced undergrad thermo class. I arrived too late to meet Fritz, and I never had the pleasure of meeting Ron. I wish I had.