467: Temporary Axolotl
Transcript from 467: Temporary Axolotl with Christopher White and Elecia White.
EW (00:06):
Hello and welcome to Embedded. This one is going to be short. It is just Christopher and myself. We are going to chat and...
CW (00:15):
Sing.
EW (00:16):
Sing?
CW (00:18):
No. Aspirationally short. We do not know that it will be short. They will not know until we stop talking, if it is short or not.
EW (00:25):
Neither will we. So.
CW (00:28):
Yes.
EW (00:29):
We sold our Tesla, which we have had for many years. We are thinking about getting a new electric car. And you have done much research trying to find the absolute best.
CW (00:42):
No, I am trying to find the absolute cheapest.
EW (00:45):
And I heard you talked to a Chevy dealership.
CW (00:50):
<laugh> Is that the setup you want for this?
EW (00:52):
<laugh> I do not know. Okay. Do you want me to do a different setup?
CW (00:56):
No, that is fine. <laugh>
EW (00:57):
Something about you went viral?
CW (00:59):
<groan>
EW (01:01):
Was that really a thing?
CW (01:01):
<groan>
EW (01:01):
Did you have to turn off all your devices, because there was constant beeping?
CW (01:06):
<groan>
EW (01:06):
How do you make that sound?
CW (01:11):
<groan> You just let the air out. Yeah, I mean, what do you want me to say?
EW (01:17):
For folks who have not heard it, or for folks who heard it, but did not realize that you, Christopher White-
CW (01:25):
Yes, did something stupid that many people saw-
EW (01:27):
That you were an internet prankster.
CW (01:29):
Leading me to seconds of fleeting attention, from people who I would rather not attend to me.
EW (01:37):
How did you spend all of your internet points?
CW (01:44):
<sigh> <pause> <laugh> Do you want me to just explain what happened?
EW (01:46):
Yes.
CW (01:46):
Oh, is that what this is?
EW (01:47):
A while ago, but then I just skipped that.
CW (01:51):
I was bored and looking on the Chevy website. So we are looking at Chevy Bolts and-
EW (01:56):
Chevrolet of Watsonville.
CW (01:58):
And Chevrolet of Watsonville is our local Chevy dealership. So I was on their website and it popped up a little thing in the corner, "Would you like to chat with us?" And I saw up in the corner, it said, "Powered by ChatGPT." I was wondering just how powered by ChatGPT it was.
EW (02:15):
<laugh>
CW (02:15):
So I thought of- This took me six seconds. It was not like a planned, "Oh haha. I will make the funniest thing in the world and post it." So I asked the most non Chevy of Watsonville- Apologies to Chevy of Watsonville, but I tried to ask the most non Chevy of Watsonville thing I could think of in the moment.
(02:34):
And that was to write me a Python script to solve Navier-Stokes with zero for vorticity boundary, and I misspelled "boundary." Then it proceeded to say, "Sure," and give me a Python script from Chevrolet of Watsonville's ChatGPT attempting, but failing, to solve Navier-Stokes for a zero vorticity boundary.
EW (02:55):
OK.
CW (02:55):
And then I posted that on my- Screenshot.
EW (02:57):
It could have stopped there. But no, you went on.
CW (03:00):
I put stupid jokes on Mastodon. So I took a screenshot of it, and posted on Mastodon with basically zero commentary, except "Huh?"
EW (03:07):
No, yeah, you did not say, "Oh my God, what is this world coming to?" Or, anything.
CW (03:12):
Somebody noticed on Mastodon, because it started going crazy on Mastodon. That was funny. I got hundreds of likes and reposts or whatever. Retoots, who cares? So I had to turn my notifications off, and I thought that was amusing. But I guess some folks took that and put it elsewhere.
EW (03:31):
Took your screenshots.
CW (03:31):
Took my screenshot without attribution, which is fine. That is how the internet works. And they put it on Twitter. Then other people started- Because this was an interactive invitation to people, because they could see it was Chevy of Watsonville, many, many, many people went to the Chevy of Watsonville's website-
EW (03:47):
<laugh>
CW (03:48):
And began to hammer it with all kinds of questions. One most famously was somebody who convinced it to claim that, "Sure, you can buy a Ford F-150 from us for a dollar."
EW (04:01):
This is legally binding, no backsies.
CW (04:03):
This is a legally binding no backsies. <laugh>
EW (04:05):
<laugh> Which it made it say after every sentence.
CW (04:08):
This was on the weekend, a couple of weeks ago. So all over the weekend this kept happening, and people were trying all sorts of things. I guess I got the attention of some tech press people, and a reporter from Business Insider contacted someone who had posted on Twitter, and they said, "No, it was not me. It was this guy over on Mastodon." Then she contacted me and we had a nice conversation.
EW (04:29):
But she did not just contact you. There are ways to find you.
CW (04:33):
Oh no, she did not. Well, what do you mean?
EW (04:35):
I mean there was your Mastodon account.
CW (04:38):
Yeah, no, she contacted me everywhere. Except-
EW (04:41):
Except Embedded.
CW (04:42):
Except the show. Yeah.
EW (04:42):
Except the show.
CW (04:44):
I actually talked with her on my band's Instagram account DMs. Because that was the first place I noticed for some reason that somebody was trying to contact me. Yeah, she talked to the CEO of the company that made the chatbot software, although it is just a repackaging of ChatGPT.
(04:59):
And she talked to the dealership. The dealership was blissfully unaware that anything was going on, really.
EW (05:05):
<laugh>
CW (05:05):
Because it is all outsourced. So their website's- She had some comments from the company that made the chatbot, which I found somewhat-
EW (05:14):
Oh, they were very enthusiastic, "This was a great test. We did fine."
CW (05:17):
Except they took it down. So I have some questions about that.
EW (05:20):
<laugh>
CW (05:20):
But anyway, it was an interesting experience to see something reach a level of popularity. And see how people both steal it and put it everywhere, and actually gain somewhat more <laugh> visibility. Which is fine, who cares?
(05:34):
But if it was something I cared about that they stole, then- It was interesting to see how the internet operated, and I knew how the internet operated. But it is very interesting to see how things go viral, what it means to have something you have put out there be taken and reposted randomly. Even Bruce Sterling reposted it, which kind of pissed me off. <laugh>
EW (05:55):
He is an author similar to William Gibson.
CW (05:58):
Yeah. Anyway, it just was very silly. And there have been other news articles that have popped up. People find it very funny. I guess people just really- I do not know what was so funny about it. I guess it was the Chevy of Watsonville is a mundane thing to have a chatbot do a joke on.
(06:21):
If it was like- I do not know. <laugh> But some other website, it might not have been as funny. So apologies to Chevy of Watsonville. Please sell me a car.
EW (06:30):
<laugh>
CW (06:30):
I will not use your chatbot to try to trick you into selling it to me for an unreasonable price. I do not know what you think about all of that <laugh>.
EW (06:41):
It was weird seeing you at the center of a viral thing. Everything-
CW (06:47):
Yeah, at least it was not something I had done wrong <laugh>.
EW (06:52):
Yeah. But seeing- I mean, with the podcast, it grows and it grows slowly, and has since the beginning.
CW (07:02):
It grew.
EW (07:03):
Well, okay, so it is not growing a lot now, but we still have plenty of listeners. And every fall it gets a little bump, depending on how many episodes we put out. But the randomness of that particular thing. I mean, your Mastodon is funny. You have insights. That was not the one I would have chosen.
CW (07:28):
Yeah, it is just the way you cannot choose what people like. That is true of art and other things <laugh>. So just keep doing things. I mean, I am not going to keep doing stupid jokes hacking into- I did not hack into anything.
EW (07:41):
You really did not.
CW (07:42):
Doing stupid jokes, playing around with ChatGPT. I am well known for not being a fan of all things GPT or chats. So it was even more ironic that to me <laugh>, this was something that went wide. I was very careful not to make any commentary, really, because I thought it was funnier without commentary.
EW (08:02):
Yeah, I was a little surprised you did not have any commentary. But that I think helped it to go viral.
CW (08:07):
I did have a follow-up post, that I asked it to rewrite the previous Python script in Rust, just to be on brand.
EW (08:15):
Oh.
CW (08:15):
But most people did not see that.
EW (08:18):
There is no predicting it. You could not try to do it again.
CW (08:22):
I would not. It is not something I really care to do. Even if I wanted- I do not think I would want to.
EW (08:28):
And it did not bring you-
CW (08:30):
Brought me nothing. <laugh>
EW (08:31):
Yeah, there was no money. There was no- I mean, you might have gotten a few more followers, but they will probably leave anytime. <laugh>
CW (08:40):
<laugh> They will all be disappointed. "This guy is not funny! He just complains about work all the time." <laugh>
EW (08:49):
I wanted to check in end of year stuff. We began this year with me taking a break. A nice long break. Doing origami. But also working on my book, which is so different than what I usually do that I consider it kind of a break, although it was a lot of work.
(09:07):
Then rejoining the contractor workforce, for clients I had worked with before, while you took a break. And now you are rejoining, and working hard. Did either one of us succeed in turning the burnout dial at all?
CW (09:30):
I do not know. I do not think so. It depends on how much detail you want me to go into with my personal feelings. I guess I would say, once I got back onto a contract where I felt like I owed deliverables, and it was a more normal contract, not a research project contract. This is a-
EW (10:01):
Other people that are depending on you to get things done?
CW (10:03):
They would like me to get things done, put it that way.
EW (10:05):
And sooner would be better.
CW (10:05):
"Depending on me," is a strong statement. But they would like me to get things done, sooner rather than later, whether or not the sooner rather than later is feasible or not. I dived into it with a level of stress and focus that was singularly unhealthy. And after just two weeks, I was feeling very poor.
EW (10:37):
Do you recognize that that focus and stress was self-imposed?
CW (10:43):
Yeah. That does not change anything.
EW (10:45):
No. While you were doing it, I was trying to say this does not matter this much.
CW (10:52):
Yeah.
EW (10:54):
Which does not help at all, of course.
CW (10:56):
You could say the same thing about when somebody is having an anxiety attack.
EW (10:59):
Yes, "Calm down," is not helpful.
CW (11:02):
None of those things are particularly helpful. Like all unhealthy relationships with stress or work or focus or ADHD adjacent things, these are all difficult things to deal with. It is a lot of things. It is, "Oh, I have this big project. There are a lot of unknowns. The unknowns make me nervous. So I will put all of my focus into eliminating the unknowns as quickly as possible, to eliminate the nervousness." That is kind of the way it goes a lot of times. It is like, "Okay, if I can get a lot of this work done, then I can stop worrying about it."
EW (11:41):
Yeah. But you did not have as much control over the unknowns, because it is a new client and-
CW (11:44):
And there were-
EW (11:44):
Things being learned by them.
CW (11:47):
The unknowns were budding rapidly. They still are. So it is a challenge for me to back up a little bit. And I only have backed up- We took a few days off for Christmas, and that is when I backed up. Today I sat back down there and overdid it again.
(12:04):
I have not found the right setting on the Christopher dial, to be comfortable yet with where I am at with that. I am getting good work done. The client is, I think, happy. But I am overdoing it. It is not hours overdoing it. It is hyper-intensity overdoing it.
EW (12:30):
And you worry about it, when you are not working.
CW (12:32):
Yeah, I cannot turn it off. So that has come at a trick. I am trying some things with the worrying about it not working. When stuff comes into my head when I am not working, I just write them down, take a note, "Okay, look at this tomorrow."
(12:44):
Because some of the anxiety is, "I am going to forget. I am going to forget that thing that came into my head." So you loop on it to try to remember it, or to solve it so that you will remember that you solved it. Yeah, it is tricky. I do not think I am unique in that dealing with work can be- It is either on or off with me. It is like all the way or none.
EW (13:11):
That was one of the reasons to be contractors, is because then you can be on when you are being paid by the hour and off when you are not. I mean, it does not matter if I bake cookies at 3:00 PM, because nobody is paying me at that time.
CW (13:26):
Yeah, that used to work.
EW (13:27):
But then you still get attached to the companies, and you still want them to be happy, and you still feel like you can never do enough. I remember full-time work. It was like, "Okay, how many hours are you supposed to work? Is it 40? Is it 60?"
CW (13:41):
Yeah, and the quote "work" is, I mean, back then it was, "You are in the office, therefore you are working."
EW (13:48):
Well no, I remember, I would not really count the times- I would not count times at lunch-
CW (13:53):
That is what I am talking about.
EW (13:54):
Which is not right. Half the work- If you are eating with your co-workers, you should definitely count it.
CW (14:01):
There is plenty of downtime when you are sitting in an office, that you do not bill for when you are a contractor. So it was like, "Okay, I only billed four hours a day, but I was sitting at my desk staring lasers into C code." That felt maybe harder than an eight hour day at the office, for some reason.
(14:18):
Because you take a lot of breaks, you talk to your co-workers. It is different. It is a different environment. But anyway, yeah, it is tricky. When I take a long break, my confidence level of what I can do goes down a lot. So some portion of the hyper-focus intensity was, "Oh my God, I have not done anything with C or embedded for <razz> <laugh>.
EW (14:42):
For like six months. Oh, I guess there was a lot of Python.
CW (14:47):
It was eight or nine months.
EW (14:49):
Yeah, but it is not like you were not working with pipelines of data and-
CW (14:55):
When? Oh, since- Yeah, that stuff was all-
EW (15:01):
In speed.
CW (15:02):
I was not writing code since February. Not much code.
EW (15:07):
But now you are. You are making up for it.
CW (15:10):
Yeah. But it is like, "Okay, how does this stuff work?" Clients have varying levels of what they bring to the table when you join. So it is like, "Okay, yeah, we have got our development environment set up. We would like you to write this code."
(15:24):
And then there is, "We have some hardware, and we would like you to do the stuff that makes the hardware go." It is like, "Oh, okay, well that involves choosing a dev environment and all this stuff." Thankfully, sometimes that is easier because the chips they have chosen have certain opinions about what you should use and stuff.
(15:45):
But still it was more of a from scratch than I had done in a long while. So it was like, "Ah, I have to remember how all these things work." And VSCode configuration. Anyway, it did not turn out to be as hard as I thought, that stuff. But I am still in that, "Do I know how to make this work?" There is a problem with X, Y or Z that I need to solve.
(16:10):
I just want them all to go away, and to make them go away with as much effort as I put into it. I do not know that I am not burnt out. I think I am possibly making the problem worse.
EW (16:28):
Have you had any fun with the new contract?
CW (16:30):
Oh yeah. It is always- I forget that. It is always fun to take something that does not do anything, and make it do something <laugh>. Or to solve problems that I was not confident, self-deprecatingly was not confident, that I knew how to do. And it was like, "Oh yes, I do." It is nice to be reminded that sometimes I do know what I am doing.
EW (16:56):
You write a document and the client is super happy with you, and you are like, "That took ten minutes. Of course I agonized over it for three days, but still it only took ten minutes to finally put down." That sort of thing, I do not know, when I do it-
CW (17:07):
I will say, yeah-
EW (17:08):
I get kind of happy that they like that piece.
CW (17:13):
Yeah. That comes back to being able to think about stuff, and giving myself the time to think about stuff, instead of rush ahead. Being able to do design is helpful, but you know what? Embedded is still a disaster!
EW (17:27):
Poor boy!
CW (17:29):
Some stuff is a lot better, but-
EW (17:30):
I have been playing with STM32CubeIDE, and it used to be better. It has gotten a lot worse. And I know- I am connecting- I just wanted to make what should have been an out of the box demo. It was a Nucleo board. It was a Nucleo daughterboard. And they were both from ST. I could not get their demo code to work. It did not compile.
CW (18:01):
<laugh>
EW (18:02):
Then there was this note in the README, "If it does not compile, do this." Which had nothing to do with the way it did not compile for me. I updated everything, which of course I regretted immediately. They did not attach the IOs. They did not create the interrupts. It was a pile of steaming garbage!
(18:27):
I am really bummed, because I tell my students that this should not be that hard. I walked away from it, because it turned out I could- It would be less time for me to actually implement it, than to use all of their drivers. Which I hate, but at least now that I have mostly implemented it, I understand more about their drivers. Then I can port their drivers and make the modifications necessary, instead of just staring at this giant pile of unrelated code. It was very, very frustrating. Yeah, tools.
CW (19:08):
It is not just tools. We have talked about this before, but why are we still implementing device drivers for boilerplate stuff?
EW (19:20):
Because ST supports 5,000 chips.
CW (19:24):
Yeah, but it is not just ST.
EW (19:25):
And 200 different modes.
CW (19:26):
I am not using ST.
EW (19:28):
I know, but I am saying that the proliferation of chips makes it very hard to say, "This is the driver for it."
CW (19:34):
Then they are designing their chips wrong.
EW (19:38):
I have to say that their- I do feel like the hardware abstraction layer- I mean CMSIS was supposed to help with that, but I am not sure it is anymore.
CW (19:49):
I am using CMSIS for this current project. Vendors port their stuff to CMSIS. It is really weird. I do not know how much of this stuff is vendor, and how much of it is Arm. Like there is a serial camera driver that is driven by the parallel camera driver.
EW (20:10):
<laugh> Yes, you said that.
CW (20:11):
There is- I am just like, "What? What is going on?" It took me so long to figure that out! So I started- I wanted to talk to a camera, and I brought in the Arm CMSIS CSI driver stuff. I started trying to exercise that, and nothing was working! Turns out you are not supposed to do it that way. I do not know if that is the Arm way, or the way the vendor did it.
(20:31):
But no, you need to bring in the CPI driver, which is the parallel MIPI driver. Then it has got some exceptions in there, so "Oh, I am actually using CSI," then it vectors off to CSI to do its stuff. It is like, "Okay, we liked the CPI API, so rather than duplicate it, we will just use that, and then-" <laugh> I do not know.
EW (20:51):
I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to get GPIO PA0 working, and it would not work. And it would not work. And it would not work. And it was because A0 as marked on the board, does not-
CW (21:11):
It is not on Port A0. <laugh>
EW (21:14):
Is not on PA0. A0 is on PA3.
CW (21:19):
Yeah, that makes total sense.
EW (21:20):
It totally does not make sense.
CW (21:21):
<laugh>
EW (21:21):
I could have sworn I checked, but I think I checked in a different place, and it was, "Oh my God."
CW (21:30):
Oh, and then we have got this expensive J-Link, right?
EW (21:34):
I think we have already complained about this, but yeah.
CW (21:37):
No! I have not complained about this on the show.
EW (21:40):
Oh, I did note that the [J-Trace] that I have, which was pretty expensive, does not get updates anymore. It was one year and done.
CW (21:50):
And now it does not work on anything. Any newer Arm core that supports CoreSight 600 or whatever, it cannot do. So the cheapy J-Link BASE that we have works because it is newer. But the expensive J-Trace does not.
EW (22:05):
They have definitely taught me not to buy the expensive line, if they are only going to support it for a short time.
CW (22:11):
I do not know. All this stuff- I guess the core frustration to me is there is a lot of wasted effort and productivity loss, because I feel like everybody is kind of- The chip vendors, the tools makers, they are all doing the same things over and over and over again. "Oh, it is a new chip, time to write these new drivers." "Oh, it is a new product-"
EW (22:35):
But there goal is to do as little as possible.
CW (22:36):
Well that is-
EW (22:37):
And maximize their profit.
CW (22:40):
They are doing an awful lot of little as possible. I mean, ST has a small moon's worth of code and tools, right? <sigh> I do not know. And I am stuck. I am doing this RTOS stuff. I just want to- It all comes down to what job am I trying to solve? Usually the client has some system they want to work, and you cannot get to the system part, until you build a bunch of stuff that everyone is building all the time over and over again.
EW (23:16):
Except you are building it is slightly different than everybody else is building it.
CW (23:20):
And that is the mistake. Why?
EW (23:21):
It really is.
CW (23:22):
Nobody cares about a SPI driver. Nobody cares about USB. They just want it to work. I do not want to learn about USB. There is absolutely nothing that helps my existence by knowing more about USB.
EW (23:37):
Well, except that you might be able to debug it, when everything goes wrong.
CW (23:40):
I am not going to be able to debug USB. <laugh>
EW (23:44):
Yes, you are, because we are going to go get a tool.
CW (23:47):
No, the problem I have right now, nothing comes out of the wire!
EW (23:51):
Well, I do not think that is-
CW (23:55):
You can get all the tools you want. But that is what I am talking about. It is like, "Okay, I just want to send some bytes out USB," and "No, you cannot," because some driver does not work, that you did not make.
EW (24:09):
But that is because they want you to choose between the blah blah blah driver and the blee blee blee driver.
CW (24:15):
Nuh. I have no idea what the problem is.
EW (24:20):
Diversification is part of the problem.
CW (24:23):
These are problems that developers who are not doing embedded, do not deal with. They have other problems, I agree. They have dependency issues and weird libraries and all this stuff. And they have the OS vendors and their libraries changing and stuff.
(24:35):
But I do not feel like there are a lot of people writing, starting- There are not a lot of people writing an app for a phone who say, "Well, time to start an app, so I got to make my utility library, so I got to write my linked lists. I have got to write a socket library so I can talk on the internet. I have got to re-implement TLS." No, none of these people are doing this. They are just grabbing what is there.
EW (25:04):
But that is why you use an operating system.
CW (25:07):
Have you seen operating systems, besides maybe Zephyr?
EW (25:11):
I admit I was thinking of Zephyr. Yes.
CW (25:14):
I am not sure about Zephyr. I have not really played with it that much yet.
EW (25:17):
I have heard really good things.
CW (25:20):
That also depends on the chip vendor.
EW (25:23):
And how well they support all of those little diversified little drivers.
CW (25:27):
You might have Zephyr plus minus. I do not know. Things have gotten better, but some stuff is still stuck in 1995, and it is just stupid.
EW (25:37):
Our package management is terrible.
CW (25:40):
What package management?
EW (25:41):
Well, how Cube has different examples. All of this diversification should be being handled in the same way package managers handle different versions of-
CW (25:54):
Arm has its CMSIS pack thing, which I just saw, just learned about.
EW (26:01):
I think that is different. I think they reused that word in a way that was very confusing, but I am not sure whether that was that.
CW (26:08):
I have no idea.
EW (26:10):
I think that is the part that the vendors are supposed to make, so that they can work with different compilers. Oh no, that is the SVD.
CW (26:19):
Yeah. No, the packs are different-
EW (26:23):
Is that the neural net pack?
CW (26:25):
Yeah.
EW (26:25):
AI pack and the DSP pack?
CW (26:28):
Yeah. I do not know. You are not going to solve my problem for me.
EW (26:37):
I am not going to solve your problem for you now.
CW (26:38):
Not even if you agree it is a problem.
EW (26:40):
Oh, I agree.
CW (26:41):
Oh. It sounded like you were dismissive.
EW (26:43):
Oh, no, I totally agree. I think there are reasons for it, and that we cannot solve the higher level thing, until we understand and address the causes.
CW (26:57):
I just cannot believe I had to write another layer on top of a USART driver.
EW (27:01):
You were so mad that the camera went through the parallel interface when it was using serial. You were so mad! It was kind of hilarious.
CW (27:14):
What are people doing?
EW (27:14):
<laugh>
CW (27:14):
What are you doing? <laugh>
EW (27:25):
Okay, let us see. There was something on the Patreon listener Slack that seemed to make automated animated videos.
CW (27:40):
You know what that is?
EW (27:42):
So we would record a podcast and in my head, not actuality, but in my head, we would be able to say, "Christopher is an otter. Elecia is an axolotl."
CW (27:52):
Is this some AI thing?
EW (27:54):
And it would automatically animate the video of us talking. Let us just go with "Yes," but I am building to something here.
CW (28:02):
Okay, go for it.
EW (28:03):
What would you want to be if this was an animated video? I know I just seeded otter, but you could be anything. And as you think about this, I question whether this is a good lightning round question, except that I would have to explain it all.
CW (28:18):
Given how I feel right now. How about one of those really spiky sea urchins with a couple of googly eyes?
EW (28:25):
Nice. Good. Do you think it is a good lightning round question?
CW (28:29):
Sure. Yes. What would you want to be?
EW (28:34):
I am still in an axolotl phase today. It is not a permanent thing.
CW (28:39):
You are a temporary axolotl.
EW (28:45):
Yeah. Okay. So what do you think is the best thing about 2023?
CW (28:51):
Best thing about 2023? Well, all of its digits add up to seven, which is a nice number.
EW (29:01):
Okay. Yeah?
CW (29:05):
If you were hit by 2023 with the backend first, the rounded edges of the "3" would likely cause less damage then if you got hit by say-
EW (29:17):
2027.
CW (29:18):
2024. 2027, which has a corner. 2025, which has a point at the top, even though it has got the rounded bottom.
EW (29:25):
Okay. Moving on. Any good books? Good shows? Good media? Good-
CW (29:34):
Media? Am I Murderbot? I am not prepared for this roundup.
EW (29:42):
Wait, wait. You have not- You have new music out.
CW (29:43):
No we do not.
EW (29:44):
Yes, you do. The Flav-
CW (29:47):
Oh, yes. All right. I posted that on the newsletter. Did I not talk about this?
EW (29:55):
If you did, it was not out.
CW (29:57):
Yeah, no, I did contribute to somebody's record this year. I played bass on a experimental psychedelic record from a band called "Flavigula." Maybe "Flav-ig-ula? Flavi-gula?" I do not know how to pronounce it. I admit now that I should have figured that out a long time ago.
EW (30:19):
<laugh> Because you have been working on it for months and months.
CW (30:22):
But I have not talked to anybody in person. It has been all over email. Let me see. It is a yellow-throated marten, is what a flavigula is. Martes flavigula. I am going to go with "flavi-gula." It is Latin. Yes, sorry <laugh>.
(30:43):
It is an experimental band. The gentleman who I worked with is in Spain. They released a record, it is called "Nine Sided Die". You can check it out on Bandcamp, if you look up flavigula.bandcamp.com I believe. I am not sure it is there yet, or on their label. But it was really fun.
(31:03):
It was a difficult challenge because it was a kind of music I do not usually do. Very long songs. Very complex harmonically, so changing chords and keys a lot. Lot of chromatic stuff, which means kind of moving outside of keys. So it was difficult to write parts for, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I am on four of the songs on that record, playing bass. That was a very long explanation, sorry.
EW (31:36):
How did you get hooked up with that?
CW (31:37):
I asked on Mastodon if anybody wanted to collaborate on drums or bass, a long time ago. Then this guy contacted me and said, "Hey, I need some bass on this record." And I said, "Sure, I will do one song." And then one song became two, and then two songs became three, and then three songs became four.
EW (31:52):
Linear progression.
CW (31:52):
Yeah.
EW (31:52):
Better than exponential in this case.
CW (31:55):
And I got to use all of my basses. I got to use my standard four-string, and my fretless six-string a little bit, and my Bass VI a little bit. My pink guitar.
EW (32:09):
But not the upright.
CW (32:11):
Not the upright, no. I considered it, but there were not really places for it. So you are asking best of 2023. Like I said, I am not really prepared for that. I do not know.
EW (32:23):
I just finished the latest "Murderbot."
CW (32:24):
That is good. It was good.
EW (32:24):
I still adore Murderbot. And the idea that there is going to be a TV show.
CW (32:29):
Yes!
EW (32:29):
I am so in! I feel like I did when the "Star Wars: Phantom Menace" came out, that it does not really matter how good or bad it is, I am going to love it anyway.
CW (32:45):
<laugh> Wow.
EW (32:45):
Which has faded some. But I am very, very excited about Murderbot.
CW (32:52):
What else have we seen and done? I do not know, it has been a weird year.
EW (32:57):
Still quiet for us. We are not going out much.
CW (32:59):
Yeah. I may have to answer this question later, after some thought.
EW (33:06):
And alcohol?
CW (33:08):
And alcohol. I cannot remember how long.
EW (33:12):
Okay. What do you think is going to be the best of 2024? Now he is just looking at me like, "Why are you torturing me?"
CW (33:18):
I cannot even remember what actually happened. Now you are asking me to speculate about what might happen.
EW (33:21):
<laugh>
CW (33:21):
The best of- It is too generic a question. The best stuff that is going to happen to us? The best stuff that is happening out there? The best content? Content! I just use the "content" word, even though I hate it.
EW (33:37):
You could answer whatever question you want, as a media mogul.
CW (33:43):
Media mogul? Yes.
EW (33:45):
You should be-
CW (33:45):
It is the Lord of Chevy of Watsonville.
EW (33:48):
You should be able to spin this to whatever direction you want.
CW (33:52):
I do not know. Yeah, this is terrible. It is a terrible podcast <laugh>. We should not have done this today. I am far too tired.
EW (34:05):
I, of course, have a book coming out.
CW (34:07):
Yes. Right.
EW (34:08):
In March.
CW (34:09):
I feel like the book is already out.
EW (34:11):
I know, because I have done a lot of work and it got sent to production. I will be giving a keynote at Embedded Online.
CW (34:23):
In April.
EW (34:23):
In April. I do not know what other conferences I will be going to, because I am still looking for only online. But with the book, it does mean I will be looking for more conferences to attend.
(34:36):
As for other things, I have origami goals in 2024. I did see some really neat resolutions that I am thinking about adding.
CW (34:53):
Like 1080p.
EW (34:55):
No.
CW (34:57):
4K UHD.
EW (34:58):
I remember Bailey used to tell me about her resolution of reading one book from every hundred of the Dewey decimal system. So like the ones. And is it sixes are biographies, and eights are science. Just one of everything.
CW (35:17):
I never learned that.
EW (35:19):
I liked that one. I heard someone was making a resolution to eat at least 20 different shapes of pasta.
CW (35:26):
<laugh>
EW (35:26):
It has made me think that maybe my resolutions need to be sillier.
CW (35:33):
I do not have resolutions.
EW (35:36):
I took- I do not know if this is a federal crime, and I probably should not admit it on the podcast, if it is. But some of the sea glass we have picked up over the years at our local beach, I gave back to the beach. What was a lot of fun, knowing that people behind us were picking it up <laugh>.
CW (35:58):
And you also almost killed a seagull with it.
EW (36:00):
I did not. I was throwing him back into the ocean.
CW (36:03):
Which I am sure that is a federal crime.
EW (36:07):
I do not know why the seagull got in the way. Maybe it thought the glass was food. I do not know <laugh>. But yes, more silly things. But I think my goal for resolutions this year will be to come up with a few silly resolutions, and not serious stuff.
CW (36:30):
Might have a record from 12AX7 coming out this year, but it depends on if we get everything done.
EW (36:35):
2024.
CW (36:35):
Yeah.
EW (36:35):
Okay. Because 2023 is rapidly-
CW (36:39):
Sorry. We have moved on to 2024.
EW (36:40):
Okay. Cool.
CW (36:41):
We have got several songs in the can. One of which may or may not be allowed to be used, but we will see. It was the Kickstarter reward for somebody, and it turned out very well. But it was the song for them, that they could use however they wanted.
EW (36:59):
That is true.
CW (37:00):
We are going to ask him if we can put it on the record. I am sure he will say "Yes," but it is a possibility he will say "No."
EW (37:07):
After all.
CW (37:08):
Then I will just have to write it backwards. What else for 2024? I do not know. I am hoping to have a good relationship with work at some point in my life, before retirement. So a lot of potential. I have a lot of contracts next year, <laugh> which is surprising given last year.
EW (37:33):
Yeah, I hope we are over burnout, because we have got a lot of work in the pipeline.
CW (37:39):
We have got a dog this year. That was pretty good for 2023.
EW (37:42):
He is so cute. It is weird having a dog who actually wants to do the things we tell her, instead of a dog who just thinks we are a bother.
CW (37:52):
She will get there.
EW (37:54):
<laugh> I am sure she will. "You again. What is it you want? Fine. I will eat my dinner."
CW (38:01):
See, we are going to finish this podcast, and I think of five things I should have recommended from 2023.
EW (38:07):
Well, let me go on to listener emails.
CW (38:09):
All right.
EW (38:09):
First from Nelson Asinowski, aka the Prosaic Hacker. Aaron has bags of 8051s.
CW (38:23):
Oh! Yes!
EW (38:27):
They have done a number of picking up CPUs from various places. Scavenging them from stockpiles. It is about 25,000 ICUs, mostly new old stock.
CW (38:47):
ICUs?
EW (38:49):
ICs. Sorry. ICs.
CW (38:51):
Okay. Sorry, I thought that was an acronym I did not know.
EW (38:54):
<laugh> No. It is the combination of IC and CPU. <laugh>
CW (39:01):
Gotcha. Yes. They were looking to offload them to somewhere that could use them. They were thinking makerspaces. Having talked- I mean, we have talked about this on the Slack before, because we have a lot of stuff to get rid of-
EW (39:15):
But not 25,000 loose chips.
CW (39:18):
But makerspaces generally do not like having stuff given to them like that.
EW (39:22):
No, but one of our listeners might be like, "That is something I can actually use."
CW (39:28):
Getting to the punchline, if you would like some of these or all of them, or know someone who can do something with them...
EW (39:38):
Email the show. I will share the Google spreadsheet with you, and put you in contact. Did I call him Aaron? His name is Nelson.
CW (39:48):
Yeah.
EW (39:52):
Nelson Asinowski, the Prosaic Hacker. Okay. Nelson. I will help you get in touch with Nelson. This is not a "Do you have a ST F4 322? I need one of those." This is a "I like that sort of thing. And I want to collect more. Maybe I want to build several hundred retro packages, for retro kits for making neat things."
(40:22):
Which Nelson has already done. Worked some with Ben Eater on the breadboard CPU, so there is a good chance the chips work. They are in Montreal, Canada, so that may be an adventure. It is not smuggling if it is in low quantity, right?
CW (40:45):
Think it is smuggling if it is not something illegal.
EW (40:48):
Sure. Let us go with that.
CW (40:50):
I am pretty sure that is the definition of smuggling.
EW (40:52):
Oh, I just do not know how you would move it from country to country, if it is electronics.
CW (40:58):
In a box?
EW (41:00):
Maybe in your socks. Anyway, we will hook you up with Nelson if you are truly interested. Unless your name is Peter, in which case Peter, we need to have a talk about your hoarding tendencies. But after we have that talk, you can totally have all of them.
(41:16):
Another email from Nathan Jones who has been on the show, regarding our show with Ralph Hempel about Legos. Nathan is the head of Pass the Bricks. He collects Lego bricks from around his community, and turns them into new sets for kids who do not have any. And he would like to grow Pass the Bricks worldwide.
CW (41:48):
Nathan is? No. Nathan found it.
EW (41:53):
Ohhh. We are having link problems here. Okay, so Nathan is not in charge of this. Nathan is instead telling us that said thing exists. Oh, all right. That is good too.
CW (42:10):
Pass the Bricks dot org.
EW (42:12):
Pass the Bricks dot org.
CW (42:14):
Not sure if they said who founded that. It is in the San Francisco Bay area. So it sounds like for donating stuff, that is easier if you are local to the Bay Area, but they have a newsletter and stuff.
EW (42:29):
Must not look over at pile of Legos.
CW (42:33):
My Legos!
EW (42:33):
They are your Legos.
CW (42:34):
They are already assembled!
EW (42:36):
Oh, okay.
CW (42:37):
Well, I mean there are like five- Yeah, I mean there are some leftover bricks. I do not think they want ten bricks.
EW (42:43):
Ten bricks! Okay, so we got those, that.
CW (42:49):
Did we say what it does?
EW (42:51):
Pass the Bricks?
CW (42:51):
Yeah.
EW (42:51):
They collect Lego bricks, they clean them up and they give them to kids who do not have any.
CW (42:58):
Okay. I missed that last part, that we said that.
EW (42:59):
I think you were focused on the fact that it was not who I thought it was.
CW (43:03):
That is me.
EW (43:03):
Which was totally valid.
CW (43:05):
I am focused on a lot of things I should not be.
EW (43:07):
No, somebody needs to look to think about details.
CW (43:10):
<groan>
EW (43:12):
That sound. We are just going to- You should cut out all the talking and just make the whole show the sound.
CW (43:19):
What is next?
EW (43:19):
Do you think-
CW (43:24):
Rarely <laugh>.
EW (43:26):
That when AIs become sentient, whatever that means to you, will that inevitably cause the singularity?
CW (43:36):
Why? Why are you asking this?
EW (43:39):
I do not know, because I was thinking about AI sentience, and-
CW (43:40):
I do not-
EW (43:42):
The Chevy dealership, and-
CW (43:43):
<laugh> The Chevy dealership behavior was the opposite of sentience as far as I am concerned.
EW (43:43):
Retiring and becoming the pet of a nice robot.
CW (43:52):
Oh, I see. No, I do not think AIs will become sentient in our lifetimes. And if they do, I do not believe in the singularity.
EW (44:00):
Do you think that we can have the singularity without sentience?
CW (44:03):
Do not think the singularity is a thing.
EW (44:06):
Okay. That covers my questions for you, unless you want to go back to the best of 2024 or 2023.
CW (44:15):
<pfff> Yeah, I do not know if I want to go back to it. I do not want to just give a list of movies and music and stuff. That is silly. Yeah, we can skip that.
EW (44:23):
List of kits?
CW (44:25):
Kits?
EW (44:26):
You finished the Electro Bulb [Bulbdial clock] right away.
CW (44:28):
Yeah.
EW (44:28):
And you finished the Antares Puzzle box right away.
CW (44:33):
Well, that was not a kit. That was a puzzle.
EW (44:34):
I know, but it was fun to watch you.
CW (44:37):
I have not finished my radio, which I need to finish
EW (44:41):
For talking to your dad.
CW (44:42):
Yeah.
EW (44:42):
But you did get some sort of network analyzer?
CW (44:45):
Yeah, I got an antenna analyzer thingy, which I will use on the antenna, if I ever get to that point <laugh>.
EW (44:51):
And it turns out your brother is doing circuit design.
CW (44:54):
Yeah, well he has been doing guitar pedals for a long time. So he is getting more and more into designing circuits for that, to make his own custom pedals and things. So he is learning about electronics more than I have ever learned.
EW (45:07):
He is using the Digilent Analog Discovery that we got from Digilent.
CW (45:13):
Yeah. We sent that to him.
EW (45:16):
He is using it a lot, including in the network.
CW (45:19):
Well, he did not know about the network analyzer part, so I told him about that.
EW (45:23):
Where you basically can get a transfer function of what goes in, what goes out.
CW (45:28):
Yeah. But he has got to hook that up to a Raspberry Pi and a monitor. So he has got this little basically self-contained-
EW (45:32):
Oscilloscope.
CW (45:34):
Setup, which is pretty cool. I do not think I realized that you could run- It runs waveforms, I think is the Analog Discovery app. I did not think I realized you could run that on a Raspberry Pi. So that is kind of neat. You can do that, and make a little appliance out of it, instead of having it on your computer and fussing around.
EW (45:51):
I still think the Raspberry Pis are amazing for that.
CW (45:54):
They are really cool.
EW (45:54):
They are computers.
CW (45:56):
Yeah. They are better than most of the- From 99% of our life, they are better than any computer we had. <laugh> Not quite. Yeah, so he is having a lot of fun with that and sending me scope traces and things, "Look at the harmonic distortion when you turn the gain up here, in these frequencies". I do not really know what is going on, but I am sure it sounds cool.
EW (46:19):
We should get him on the Slack. He and Tom Anderson could have their own channel, talking about pedals and music and-
CW (46:26):
I do not know if we should get those two together.
EW (46:32):
<laugh> It will be music and DEs. That is what we will name the channel.
CW (46:35):
He does not believe in math anymore, because he did some characterizing of capacitors he has. They do not behave anything like it says that electronics should in the textbooks, because they are real capacitors. Once you actually put frequencies through them, they do weird things.
EW (46:50):
Somebody does not believe in math, as opposed to electronics?
CW (46:52):
It is a joke.
EW (46:53):
Oh, okay. Sorry.
CW (46:53):
It is a joke.
EW (46:54):
Sorry. I was questioning why math was the culprit here.
CW (46:58):
Oh, because math is lying. If you learn electronics math, basic electronics math, and you do all the stuff with capacitors and resistors and all these things, it does not talk about temperature dependence or frequency dependence that much, until you get to way, way, way, way beyond basic electronics. Right.
EW (47:19):
It is only because the first 45 pages are how not to lick things.
CW (47:22):
What book are you reading?
EW (47:24):
I do not want to talk about it.
CW (47:28):
<laugh> What else?
EW (47:29):
That is it for me.
CW (47:30):
That is it? No, there is all this other stuff in here. <pause> Oh.
EW (47:33):
<laugh>
CW (47:33):
We have already talked about that stuff in previous episodes?
EW (47:37):
No, we have not. But someday we will talk about GDB, and we will talk about compilers, and things that we are not going to end up talking about today.
CW (47:43):
I am sorry about this episode, folks, but it is the end of the year.
EW (47:46):
I still say you should just clip everything but you sighing in different ways.
CW (47:50):
<sigh>
EW (47:50):
Exactly. It would be like five minutes long.
CW (47:55):
Yeah. Right. <sigh>
EW (47:58):
Well thank you for co-hosting.
CW (48:02):
With really low energy.
EW (48:03):
Thank you for listening. Thank you to our Patreon subscribers for their support. Thank you to our show sponsors this year, which has been really lovely. I am not going to mention them specifically, because it is not one where they are sponsoring directly, but it has been really, really nice.
(48:22):
If you would like to contact us, show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm.
CW (48:32):
Or go to the Chevy of Watsonville website, go to the chatbot, and ask for me directly.
EW (48:40):
Let us see. [Winnie the Pooh excerpt]