487: Focus on Fizzing
Transcript from 487: Focus on Fizzing with Christopher White and Elecia White.
EW (00:00:06):
Hello and welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, here with Christopher White. We promised you a show full of "NAND to Tetris," and we are not delivering right yet. We will soon, actually end of November. But this is really because of you, actually.
CW (00:00:26):
Me?
EW (00:00:26):
No, no. The listeners.
CW (00:00:27):
Oh <laugh>. It is because of me. Because I am a-
EW (00:00:30):
It is because of me, too. It is because of everyone. But, yeah. So our guest, Shimon, had a microphone that was part of his computer, and there was some question of whether or not it would be good enough. And in the end it was not good enough for your lovely ears. So we decided to postpone until a proper microphone could be used.
(00:00:52):
But "NAND to Tetris" is coming. I am still excited about it. We might even talk about it some today.
CW (00:01:00):
Cool.
EW (00:01:01):
How are you?
CW (00:01:02):
I am okay. I am all right.
EW (00:01:03):
Having fun with work?
CW (00:01:05):
I am okay. I am all right.
EW (00:01:07):
One of my gigs right now is having me learn Webots.
CW (00:01:14):
These are very tiny small robots. It is W E E bots?
EW (00:01:17):
No, it is just one E.
CW (00:01:19):
Oh.
EW (00:01:19):
But it is simulation, physics simulation. Like the ROS Gazebo, except ROS Gazebo is impossibly difficult to use, unless you know how. In which case, it is still pretty impossibly difficult to use.
(00:01:31):
Webots is more what ROS 2 is using. So it is less confusing, a few more easily adapted examples, and there is an online component. So you could just run robots online, or you can download a program and run them locally.
(00:01:50):
You played with it a little bit.
CW (00:01:53):
Yeah, just for a few minutes. Because I had to know what it was. It is a webpage- Well, what you are presented with when you first go there, is just a gallery of robot thumbnail images of 3D renderings, of robot arms and robot cars and robot stuff.
(00:02:08):
You click on one and it pulls up the simulator for it, and it has got all, thousands- Some of them have thousands of parameters, it seemed like, with sliders. You can do stuff flip the arm around. It seemed really nice if you were building some sort of robotic product. Yeah. It was surprisingly cool.
EW (00:02:26):
You can change out the controller so that it is C or Python or C++. Or I think MATLAB, but I am not sure if that is just NumPy. I am so looking forward to playing with this. I know I have a lot of work to do with it, but-
CW (00:02:44):
Yeah. But this is for work.
EW (00:02:44):
First I want to play with it <laugh>, before I get started on the work.
CW (00:02:48):
But this is something you are doing for your newest client.
EW (00:02:51):
Right. Do you want to talk about full-time work?
CW (00:02:56):
If you want to. Sure.
EW (00:02:58):
So I mentioned when we talked to Rick, at the end <laugh> that surprised you, with the idea that I was looking at a full-time job. I have been a contractor for a long time. It feels like a really long time. And I have enjoyed contracting.
(00:03:18):
There are a lot of things I really enjoy about contracting. I work the hours I am contracted to work, and when I am not working, I am not feeling guilty about if I should work. Ideally. Sometimes I do. I like the freedom of always seeing new projects. I am well enough connected in the industry, that I do not worry too much about the next contract, although occasionally it gets in my head.
(00:03:46):
But I do not get to bond with a team.
CW (00:03:53):
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
EW (00:03:57):
I do some mentoring, and I enjoy it. And I do some paid for client companies to help their folks, or to provide a sounding board and directions to their folks, and I enjoy that. And I do some unpaid, which is more along the lines of career development, and I enjoy that.
(00:04:15):
But what if I could have a job where my role was to be a technical expert, and to help engineers in their careers? What if I could be-
CW (00:04:33):
Not a role that exists in most companies-
EW (00:04:35):
Well-
CW (00:04:35):
Except as a side task for very senior people to mentor. It is not a defined role.
EW (00:04:45):
It would also be all of the technical stuff, of architecture and planning and keeping up to date on the industry, so that you can bring in the right technologies for different products.
(00:05:01):
In my head, I was calling it the "fairy godmother role," where I could do the things I do naturally. Like trying to stay up to date with the industry, and trying to read a book often enough to be well-read in the technical industry, and mentoring. And trying to understand tools, so that I can recommend good tools, and steer people away from tools that are not ready yet.
CW (00:05:30):
Somebody who could step back from the whole thing, and not necessarily impose a vision, but at least see everything that is going on. At a level that you could correct imbalances, correct miscommunications. Or-
EW (00:05:49):
And swap between teams.
CW (00:05:50):
To say it positively, facilitate communication.
EW (00:05:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
CW (00:05:50):
And note that, "Oh, you are doing it this way, but did you know that the other team is doing this? Maybe if we settled on this together, you would not have conflict, or whatever."
EW (00:06:00):
At HP when I started, there was the technical track and the management track. And there were individual contributors, which are most engineers. But there were also higher level individual contributors, that were manager level. They had similar responsibilities, they just did not have a team. And then even as you went up to director level, there were individual contributors at that level.
(00:06:25):
Cisco had them, until you got up to fellows who were almost, I think, VPs. Maybe they were directors.
CW (00:06:31):
I do not remember what the level was. It was high. But it was basically you can walk into any meeting, and <laugh> derail it if you would like, kind of level. "I am the technical genius," kind of thing. It was good and bad.
EW (00:06:47):
I do not even know it needs to be technical genius.
CW (00:06:50):
It was also distinguished engineer, which was sort of similar at many companies. Fitbit had technical directors, which was supposed to be the level beyond principal that was at the director level, but it was engineering.
EW (00:07:04):
There used to be a staff as engineer, but now that actually just means regular engineer. It was very confusing to me.
CW (00:07:12):
It depends on the company. I tend to think of it as just a level above senior. I do not know. Staff is sometimes principal, slightly below principal.
EW (00:07:21):
I have been reading too many Space Navy things. So staff sergeant has a particular- Anyway.
CW (00:07:26):
Or the general staff, which are...
EW (00:07:30):
Yeah.
CW (00:07:30):
<laugh>
EW (00:07:31):
An opportunity came up, that looked like it was going to be like this. I have to admit, I got pretty excited. It turned out that the company was not really ready to have somebody do that. And so that went away. I applied to a couple other jobs that looked similar, but actually did not hear back from anyone, except one who just turned me down flat.
(00:07:56):
So when I was contacted by the robotics company, because I had mentioned it on the show and they were familiar with the show, I was like, "Are you even taking contracts?" After what turned out to be my dream job kind of disappeared, and I thought about what am I giving up by going to a full-time, yeah, I am taking contracts.
(00:08:26):
Because I think while there are many things I would like with a full-time job, including really understanding the problems, and not having tools change every month. And the people. Really bonding with the people.
(00:08:41):
Anyway, I took the contract. It is a multi-year contract, so I am contracting for a while. If you want me to be your embedded system fairy godmother, basically it is going to have to be on a contract basis.
CW (00:08:52):
All right.
EW (00:08:53):
But it was-
CW (00:08:55):
You had convinced yourself you wanted to do- There are benefits to full-time that we had both talked ourselves into, which I think that still are true and exist, that are just-
EW (00:09:05):
Medical insurance.
CW (00:09:06):
Purely practical, like medical insurance that does not cost multi thousand dollars a month. But, yeah. Maybe I will go full-time. <laugh>
EW (00:09:20):
You could not even say that with a straight face.
CW (00:09:21):
Yeah. Well, we can talk about my problem some other time. But we are ten minutes in, and we have got a lot to go through.
EW (00:09:31):
Okay. That is true. I am sorry, I just wanted to clarify where I was.
CW (00:09:35):
No, no, no, we can keep talking about that. I was just being- I do not know.
EW (00:09:42):
It was- If I had heard somebody else having a crisis of, "What do I want to do?" it would have been nice to hear that sometimes difficult decisions are difficult because both options are pretty good.
CW (00:09:54):
And sometimes those decisions are taken away from you.
EW (00:09:59):
Yes, this one. But it was still a good mental exercise. It was good for my burnout, actually. To think about the advantages of what I am doing now.
CW (00:10:11):
Yeah. Yeah.
EW (00:10:12):
I think it was bad for your burnout, because the paths you would have taken if I was working full-time are different.
CW (00:10:20):
Mm-hmm. But that is selfish.
EW (00:10:23):
Okay, let us see. The comet! We saw the comet!
CW (00:10:29):
We did see the comet.
EW (00:10:33):
Tsuchinshan–ATLAS?
CW (00:10:35):
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS).
EW (00:10:40):
This was the comet that was-
CW (00:10:42):
Still is.
EW (00:10:44):
That is still- Well, was more visible before the middle of October, and is still somewhat visible. But now there is a full moon, so it is bright, which makes it harder to see.
CW (00:10:57):
And close to the sun, so it is a little challenging.
EW (00:10:59):
Will we see it on the other side of the sun? Do you know?
CW (00:11:02):
I do not know if it has already done that. Or- Yeah. Well, it is hard to see it on the other side of the sun, unless you want to get up at five in the morning.
EW (00:11:13):
Indeed.
CW (00:11:15):
Anyway. But if it does that, it would be in the morning. But I do not know if it already did that, and this is this other side. Yeah, the other way around.
EW (00:11:22):
You took some pictures.
CW (00:11:24):
I did. In 2023 there was another comet. I did some astrophotography of that, breaking out my old astrophotography skills. I have not done anything else since then.
(00:11:34):
This was another opportunity to try that. But this was a little more of a challenge <laugh>. With the comet in 2023, it was very faint, a little smaller in terms of how much it went across the sky. That required long exposures, and something that would track the stars, so that I could take really long exposures.
EW (00:11:54):
And was that eyesight visible?
CW (00:11:55):
No, not really. Not here, anyway.
EW (00:11:57):
This one was.
CW (00:11:58):
This one was eyesight visible. Yeah.
EW (00:11:59):
Although you had to know where to look, at least for me. At least on the nights we went together.
CW (00:12:03):
As it got later, it got easier to see, as the sky glow went down some. But yeah, I just stuck my camera on a tripod and took a collection of five six second exposures, which I have since processed and made one image.
(00:12:17):
Then I got some feedback on Mastodon from someone who said, "Well, you could do better if you process it this way." And I am thinking about spending some more time on it this weekend, or going back out and getting some more photos tonight or tomorrow. But it is very- You can easily get photos with a modern phone.
EW (00:12:34):
That was the thing. The picture I took live, I could barely see it. I kind of knew where it was, partially because I had the binoculars, so I knew where to look. I took my phone and I took a picture. It has got the wide field of view, so even if I was a little off, it did not matter. It came out really good!
CW (00:12:55):
Yeah. You can get some really good photos with newer phones, that have a night mode or a long exposure mode. Like the iPhone has a long exposure mode when it is really dark, and it takes- It basically does what astrophotographers do.
EW (00:13:11):
The stacking.
CW (00:13:12):
It takes many, many photos and stacks them. But it has the information to line the photos up really, really well in real time. It will take three seconds worth of many exposures, but not much longer than that. You can get some pretty good wide photos that way.
EW (00:13:25):
I did not have a tripod, although I did try to steady the camera.
CW (00:13:30):
The camera camera? Or your phone?
EW (00:13:31):
My phone.
CW (00:13:32):
Yeah. Well, phones are- Like I said, they are tracking your motions so they can subtract it out.
EW (00:13:37):
So magical.
CW (00:13:38):
So you can get pretty good photos with the phone. I was trying to get really good photos with an SLR camera. Or actually, it is technically not an SLR, but a camera with a big lens.
(00:13:48):
So I posted that on Mastodon. We linked to it or something, but I am going to reprocess it. It was cool. You can kind of see- The tail is extremely long, and you can kind of see the antitail coming out the front, which I went and looked up.
EW (00:14:03):
What is an antitail?
CW (00:14:04):
There are actually two tails that come off comets. There is the dust tail and then there is a gas tail. They are both- I think the gas tail interacts with the solar wind a little bit more, and the dust tail also does. But the antitail is an illusion. It is actually from...
EW (00:14:23):
You should see his hands moving around wildly.
CW (00:14:25):
It is actually from behind it. As the orbit came around, we are in a different place. We are actually seeing something behind the comet, but it sticks out the front of it like a needle. So it looks weird.
EW (00:14:37):
Yeah, I am just going to nod along.
CW (00:14:39):
Anyway. There are lots of photos you can find online of this comet and see the antitail. But it is not actually something that is coming out of the front of the comet. It is something that- If you imagined an exhaust trail of a car that is turning in front of you, and it came back, so it was pointing against the exhaust trail that it left behind. That is kind of what is happening. Anyway.
(00:14:57):
So yeah. Astrophotography is really hard, especially- It is really challenging when there are any kind of sky problems.
EW (00:15:08):
Sky glow from-
CW (00:15:09):
And the comet is very close to the sun. So it was best to see around between 7:30 and eight I think, seemed to be pretty good. But sunset was at 6:30, so there was still a lot of sky glow. Especially if you are taking long exposures and stacking them, because that all adds up and stuff you cannot see with your eye becomes apparent.
(00:15:25):
And then it was over towards Santa Cruz, Capitola, which there is a lot of glow coming from that too.
EW (00:15:33):
Yeah, and there were lights. In fact, we were at the beach when we did this, and people would come up and say, "Are you looking for the comet?" And we would be able to say, "Yeah, you look over at Arcturus, and then at that height, and then you look over at The Point." Everybody knew where The Point was, because that is local. Then people could see it, and they got really excited. That part was fun.
CW (00:15:53):
It turns out if you can programmatically adjust for that gradient, the brightness gradient and the glow, you can get the contrast to the comet to come out more and see more of it. But it is a real challenge to subtract that in a way that does not screw up, and add a little bit or miscalculate, so you get unevenness. So I am working on that.
(00:16:13):
I played around with it some, and I was able to get way more of the comet tail and the antitail. But everything else in the picture was screwed up. So it is kind of like-
EW (00:16:22):
Blurry.
CW (00:16:22):
Not blurry, just like-
EW (00:16:24):
In movement? In motion?
CW (00:16:25):
No. Nothing motion. Just like the background- Imagine you are trying to subtract a gradient, but you do not subtract it exactly right. So now there are bright and dark patches.
EW (00:16:36):
Lines? Patches? Patches.
CW (00:16:36):
Patches. Yeah. So it is doing that, because I am not subtracting the gradient correctly.
(00:16:41):
Anyway it is funny, because I have a very powerful MacBook Pro with tons of RAM, like 64 gigs of RAM. Doing image processing for astrophotography is the only thing that has ever slowed this computer <laugh> down. So when it is processing, it takes 15 minutes to align and stack the images and do all its garbage. I cannot use the computer during that time, because the browser takes...
EW (00:17:08):
You are using an astrophoto thing? You are not doing a Python-
CW (00:17:12):
No! God no.
EW (00:17:13):
<laugh>
CW (00:17:13):
You kidding? It would take a decade to write the code to do all this stuff. These things do. I am using a program called PixInsight, which is the premier astrophotography processing program. It has got probably 150 different processing algorithms you can use, but there is a certain workflow that most people use.
(00:17:34):
But it is extremely complicated. Not very friendly in terms of user interface. There is no tutorial or walkthrough or, "Here is the thing to do." It is like you are presented with- It is like being dumped into Photoshop and using Photoshop before, and there are all the menu options and stuff. But worse.
(00:17:53):
Somebody suggested a different newer open source one, that I have been playing with. It is a little simpler. It is simpler. I do not know if it is quite as powerful. Because when I just threw my images at it and said, "Stack these," it could not align them automatically like PixInsight could.
(00:18:10):
PixInsight finds all the stars and just says, "Okay, you have got 15 images and the stars move, but I do not care. I will just line them all up."
(00:18:15):
Normally, you have to manually do that with some of the older programs like, "Okay, here is star one to align on. Here is star two to align on. Here is star three to align on. Here is a bounding box of where they probably move. For all the other images, look for those stars and hope to God you can align them." Most of the time that works.
(00:18:33):
But PixInsight, you just throw it at it. It is like, "Yep. I found 500 stars, and I will align on all of those." And it just does it.
EW (00:18:41):
Why can't my phone do this?
CW (00:18:43):
Your phone?
EW (00:18:45):
If it is going to slow down your processor- Even if my phone is not doing such a good job.
CW (00:18:50):
Phone is aligning video frames. It has more information about the motion of the camera, because it has-
EW (00:18:57):
The IMU.
CW (00:18:57):
The IMU. It is not the case- The entire frame is moving on the phone. Whereas sometimes with astrophotos, there are some things that are moving. Like the horizon in this case was not moving.
EW (00:19:12):
Right, but the stars were-
CW (00:19:12):
The stars were.
EW (00:19:13):
A little bit, even though you were only taking four or five seconds.
CW (00:19:16):
So you want to ignore that. Yeah. I do not know why they are good at it. They probably have dedicated hardware and stuff to do some of that, but they are not- The precision that the astrophotography program is trying to achieve in alignment, is not what the phone is trying to achieve. So I think if you zoomed in on those real far, I bet the stars are not so good.
EW (00:19:37):
Oh no, and I do not care, because I was just taking pictures of the comet.
CW (00:19:41):
Right. For astrophotography where people really care, you want everything to be extremely precise. Because the goal is to enhance detail by stacking, not just to enhance exposure.
EW (00:19:53):
I have been thinking some about algorithms. And how algorithms that when I graduated from college years and decades ago, they were new and impossible and difficult. Not like PID. PID has been around forever.
(00:20:09):
But Kalman filters. I worked with a guy around the year 2000, who pretty much had gotten a PhD developing the application of Kalman filters for navigation systems. Some of the work that he was still doing was- We published quite a few papers, and it was super cool.
(00:20:33):
But now Kalman filters are- I am not going to say they are easy, because they are definitely not. But you can find them online and you can find tutorials on how to tune them. And they are not magic.
(00:20:48):
There are other algorithms like that, that are things that just seemed magic and impossible. And now we are finding ways not only of explaining them more easily, but implementing them on small devices.
(00:21:08):
I am not talking about keyword detection using machine learning, because I am tired of that. I am talking about algorithms, not neural networks. Neural networks may apply here, but I just do not want think about them today.
CW (00:21:26):
Yeah, no. It is the same. The astrophotography stuff, very fancy academic stuff, like wavelets, and deconvolution. There is a thing called "Drizzle," that came out of the Hubble Space Telescope, where-
EW (00:21:39):
"Drizzle"? Really?
CW (00:21:40):
You actually can enhance resolution by taking images that shift a little bit one from another, and by doing that- I do not even know exactly how it works.
EW (00:21:53):
I want to shout, "ADC dithering!" But it is probably not.
CW (00:21:56):
I think it is very similar, yeah.
EW (00:21:59):
Ooh. Okay.
CW (00:21:59):
But it is spatial.
EW (00:22:01):
Interferometry is something that used to seem impossibly cool, and now it is like, "Yeah." Put it in an Arduino, it is fine.
CW (00:22:10):
All that OCC stuff I was doing was interferometry. But yeah, <laugh> now it is just a menu item, "Do wavelet decomposition." And the thing is, sometimes you do not even have to understand them. <laugh> Just move the slider around until something looks good.
EW (00:22:32):
Or there are now chips that will- I am thinking more motion control. I was surprised to discover there were so many motor control chips that had built-in algorithms for control. That took in the encoders, and all you had to do was SPI, send it a message to say, "Go here." And it magically took care of it. Now, when those dev boards arrive, I know it is not going to be as magic as I want it to be, but their advertising is that you just poof.
CW (00:23:06):
And that is the way it should be.
EW (00:23:08):
Your robot, it is just Lego blocks.
CW (00:23:11):
As things advance, more advanced things should become easier to use, and become encapsulated. Nobody should be- If you want to build a something- I am not going to say "products," I am getting tired of that word. But if you want to build an artefact, a thing that does something, do you want to build that thing, or do you want to build a motor controller?
(00:23:31):
Because it has motors. Let us say you are building something with motors, and you need motion control. Do you want to build the motion controller, and learn about all that theory? Or do you want to concentrate on the thing you are making? And sometimes that is a choice, right?
EW (00:23:44):
Absolutely.
CW (00:23:44):
And it is a difficult choice that companies sometimes fall on the wrong side of.
EW (00:23:48):
Startups, please buy everything you can. Do not build it.
CW (00:23:50):
If they can afford it. Sometimes there is a cost benefit.
EW (00:23:55):
But if you are trying to make the new widget that fizzes things, you need to focus on fizzing and not all of the other things.
CW (00:24:04):
The fizz widget, but not the- Nope.
EW (00:24:06):
<laugh>
CW (00:24:06):
Okay. So.
EW (00:24:12):
So. I am actually surprised to hear that advice from you.
CW (00:24:15):
I always give that advice.
EW (00:24:16):
Not really from products, but from a personal standpoint.
CW (00:24:19):
Oh, it is totally contrary to my first principles annoyance with physics. Yes.
EW (00:24:24):
That you need to know things from first principles.
CW (00:24:27):
You know, I have been thinking about that. Because you talked to me about that, in regard to the "NAND to Tetris" book. And I said- And you said, "In physics, you had this problem. Let us put it mildly, that-" I had difficult- I am switching pronouns to "I" now, because that was confusing.
EW (00:24:44):
<laugh>
CW (00:24:44):
I had difficulty in basic physics, the college E&M course, college mechanics course. Because it felt like it was taught at a level that you were expected to understand what was going on, but there were no explanations for what was going on. <laugh>
EW (00:25:02):
I wonder if it was a cookbook.
CW (00:25:02):
So, "Here is an integral that computes magnetic flux, and that means this and this." And that was just like, "Here it is." And I would get really stuck on that stuff. That is a bad example, but there were other examples where I would have trouble solving problems, because I did not have...
EW (00:25:19):
The why?
CW (00:25:19):
I did not have a way to remember things. This is the real hard thing. I did not have a way to remember things, so that if I forgot how something worked, I could work it back out. And this does not always apply, but-
EW (00:25:33):
No, no. If I forget how to do multiplication, I can do addition.
CW (00:25:41):
Yes! Yes. And so I think what happened was- It was a combination of things. But I think I did not do enough homework, and there was a lot of memorization. I did not understand that, because from doing calculus, I felt like- When I learned calculus in high school, it was not memorization. It was-
EW (00:25:58):
There were a few rules that you built things up.
CW (00:26:01):
Right. And from physics, it was like-
EW (00:26:02):
You had to memorize the chain rule. But after that, there were not that many things.
CW (00:26:04):
"Here are all these integrals for E and M. Here is all this stuff you have got to remember. Here is this stuff for mechanics. And here is this funky equation that you have got to memorize, to figure out acceleration from this and that."
(00:26:15):
There was not really an opportunity to like, "Oh, from first principles, how do I? If I am faced with this problem and I do not remember the equation, what can I do?" And there was nothing I could do, because the way it was taught and the way I had processed it, there was nothing I could do.
(00:26:29):
When I took physics in grad school, it was built up differently. I did take all the undergrad stuff again, but with a different attitude. Some of the upper division undergraduate courses did not work that way, like the freshman classes, sophomore classes. So I got an understanding from basic stuff about, like, mechanics.
(00:26:53):
If you have got a basic mechanical problem with things in motion, "Okay, now I know these base things. Newton's laws and how that works. Energy and how that works in relation to motion and potential and momentum, and all those building blocks."
(00:27:09):
And I could build like, "Okay, I have got a problem. Well, I can build this equation of motion out of that, without memorizing it." So that felt better, and I felt like I understood stuff. So that was a basic problem. But you said-
EW (00:27:22):
"What about computers?"
CW (00:27:24):
You reminded me of that, and then "What about computers?" And I really never had that problem with computers. I do not know if it was because I did not care. Or because I was so used to computers from a young age, not understanding them at first principle level, but just they were things around me all the time.
EW (00:27:38):
It was a black box.
CW (00:27:39):
Partially a black box. But I kind of understood the Apple II. I knew what RAM was. I knew what a disk drive did, and how that all works. So maybe I already knew the first principles of that stuff by osmosis, and did not bother me so much. I do not know.
EW (00:27:54):
So, we have said this a couple of times, but let me say it slowly, "NAND to Tetris." This is taking NAND gates, and building them up using Boolean logic to create-
CW (00:28:08):
A computer.
EW (00:28:11):
Well, yeah, to create a simple ALU, arithmetic logic unit. And then a little processor. And then making it so that that can have instruction codes and machine code. Which is just the instruction codes, put in another format. And then assembly language that can be compiled to machine code.
(00:28:37):
And then an object-oriented set code that can be compiled all the way through this. And a virtual machine in there, because it is easier to compile things from object-oriented to virtual bytes to machine code. And then a little operating system that can have an input and output and games.
(00:28:59):
So this book, "The Elements of Computer Systems," is really good as a textbook for this whole curriculum. This curriculum is available online, nand2tetris.org, and it has got simulators for everything! The book fine, we will talk more about the book at some point. I did not love it. I did not hate it. It was a textbook.
(00:29:28):
But the curriculum! It has got an HDL simulator. So if you actually want to try building up a NAND gate based system so that you can add two numbers together, it has got it for you. You do not need hardware. You do not have to worry about FPGAs or trying to physically build up the system. It is all simulated.
(00:30:00):
It is like Wokwi, but at a much lower level. As I was reading that, we were having these conversations about, "Well, why do you not need to know how these things work?"
CW (00:30:14):
But for someone who does want things to learn how these things work, that sounds like an interesting-
EW (00:30:20):
Oh. Yeah. There is always that person who is like, "Ooh. Why?"
CW (00:30:23):
That was me.
EW (00:30:24):
"How do pointers work? Well, why do they work that way? How do stacks work?" The book, actually, if you get to the chapter where they start talking about how RAM works as you call functions, it was really good. Much better <laugh> explanation than I have managed to give.
(00:30:44):
I want to recommend it, but I want to recommend it as a year long program, because it was dense. If you do the projects, it is going to be a lot of material. I do not think I could have learned Boolean logic from the material. Or I do not think I could have learned programming from the material.
(00:31:05):
But as a way to take a CS degree and make it tangible and understandable, it would be really magical. Even if you did not understand Boolean logic. You did not have to understand every chapter. Because even though it built on each chapter before it, it also gave you the answers in the next chapter. Or the simulator would give you the answers, if you looked at how the simulator was built.
(00:31:34):
Yeah, I really liked it. And so I invited the professor, one of the co-authors of the book, on the show. And microphone, blah, blah, blah. We already did that part.
(00:31:43):
I have a few listener responses.
CW (00:31:48):
Responses? Oh no! <laugh>
EW (00:31:51):
<laugh> Tony emailed today actually, and pointed me towards an insect detector, the Mothbox, that actually looks at moths and what kind they are. It was really cool to see somebody built that. Which of course was totally unrelated to my desire for a wasp detector. But still, it was fun.
CW (00:32:11):
But somebody did have a wasp detector. Because I posted that in the newsletter.
EW (00:32:15):
Oh, right!
CW (00:32:17):
Our newsletter link finder pointed us to that. Actually it was looking for the Asian hornets, I think, or other harmful-
EW (00:32:29):
A particular type of wasp. It was not a general wasp.
CW (00:32:32):
Yeah. It was a wasp counter.
EW (00:32:34):
Which reminds me, we do have a newsletter. It gives you the show notes in case you missed a show, so you know what it is going to be about. There are usually some links. And then on the weeks where we do not have a show, there is-
CW (00:32:51):
Something random.
EW (00:32:53):
Something purely random. Yes.
CW (00:32:56):
Yes. It is not a long newsletter. Someday we will-
EW (00:32:58):
No. And we will not share your email with anybody else.
CW (00:33:06):
I would not even know how.
EW (00:33:09):
I would.
CW (00:33:09):
That would take too much effort.
EW (00:33:11):
It would take <laugh> far too much effort. I just cannot be bothered.
(00:33:13):
One of the newsletter's set of links was after our show with Antoine, where we did not talk about the greatness of USB enough. Timon wrote a little thing for us in- Well, I do not think he did it for us, I think he did it against us.
CW (00:33:36):
<laugh>
EW (00:33:36):
<laugh>
CW (00:33:38):
I stole it anyway, and put it in the newsletter. Because it was a good collection of ways to learn USB.
EW (00:33:43):
And USB tools. So yeah, that was on the Patreon slack.
CW (00:33:48):
That is when we decided to be wrong about everything, and have people writing in to us to correct us. And then I will just put those corrections in the newsletter.
EW (00:33:54):
Right. It is much simpler. <laugh>
CW (00:33:55):
And then I will not have to write anything. So you can think of the newsletter as the "Letter to the Editor" for the show.
EW (00:34:04):
That would be fun. I wonder if we would get enough people writing endless letters to the editor, and put that as a whole section for the newsletter.
CW (00:34:10):
If you feel like we are wrong, please tell us at length. And yeah, we will just post that. <laugh>
EW (00:34:18):
Can you mention hugs and kisses?
CW (00:34:20):
I do not want to talk about that again. <laugh>
EW (00:34:22):
Okay.
CW (00:34:22):
I mean, you can.
EW (00:34:27):
So Chris and I were watching a TV show. Does not matter what.
CW (00:34:31):
It was "Ghosts," the UK version.
EW (00:34:33):
And the X for hugs and kisses came into the show. It does not matter how. But it was silly. And there was a question of whether an X is a hug or a kiss. Now stop right here. I mean, you do not really have to stop, but right now you have an opinion.
(00:34:55):
Is an X supposed to be a kiss, and an O a hug? Or is an X an hug, and the O is the kiss? You probably are a hundred percent confident in whatever you think is true. What was weird is that Chris and I thought opposite things, both with 100% confidence.
CW (00:35:15):
I mean, <laugh> how else am I supposed to think things? I am me. I am a hundred percent confident, until somebody proves me wrong.
EW (00:35:25):
There are a great number of words that I have no confidence in how I pronounce.
CW (00:35:29):
I have no confidence in anything. But yes.
EW (00:35:32):
We were both surprised that the other was so wrong. And I think it is a good exercise to be wrong sometimes.
CW (00:35:39):
I am frequently wrong.
EW (00:35:41):
In this case, we went to the internet, because we should never really have invented computers. Because how can we argue about trivially stupid things, when there is authority to apply to situations? So it turns out that there is no etymological definitive answer to this, and that probably all Xs and Os are all kisses.
CW (00:36:10):
It was confusing. Yes. Looking up the history of it, we also had it came from several different places at once.
EW (00:36:19):
Yes. It was super confusing.
CW (00:36:22):
So there is no answer.
EW (00:36:23):
There is no answer.
CW (00:36:24):
Everybody is wrong.
EW (00:36:26):
And yet-
CW (00:36:26):
Or, everybody is right.
EW (00:36:27):
Moments ago, you were 100% certain you knew the answer, to which ones were hugs and which ones were kisses.
CW (00:36:34):
We are talking to you, the people in your cars.
EW (00:36:36):
Right. Chris and I have known this for several days now.
CW (00:36:38):
Yeah.
EW (00:36:38):
Why did I start that? Oh, the importance of being wrong. Okay. Yes.
CW (00:36:46):
I actually cannot remember now. What were we talking about? Oh, we were talking about USB, and then people writing in.
EW (00:36:50):
Yes. Okay. So it was the importance of being wrong.
CW (00:36:51):
Yeah.
EW (00:36:51):
Okay. In which we are often wrong. Let us see. Okay, more listener stuff. Last time it was just Christopher and me, he was not enthusiastic about the idea of getting graduate level education in computer science.
CW (00:37:12):
No! That is not accurate.
EW (00:37:15):
<laugh> I want you to insert here, right here, what you said, which was-
CW (00:37:20):
You can quote one sentence from what I said, but I do think I hedged multiple times and said, "I do not know what a graduate degree in computer science entails."
EW (00:37:29):
Or embedded.
CW (00:37:30):
So that my opinion is probably garbage. I do not think I said it that strongly, but pretty sure I said I did not know what I was talking about and needed more information.
(00:37:38):
But I also said that it is a big time investment, and so you need to balance that against what you would be doing instead. I do not think I ever came out and said, "This is a terrible idea. And no matter what anybody says, I cannot be convinced otherwise."
EW (00:37:56):
I am just going to snip that and have it say, "No matter what anybody says, <laugh> I cannot be convinced otherwise."
CW (00:38:03):
Well, I am the one with the podcast editor, so.
EW (00:38:06):
This is true, so who knows what I am saying now. Both Ryan and Nathan had some points about after you take a CS set in order to get the embedded stuff, you need some more school, but you do not really want to do another undergraduate degree, of course.
CW (00:38:26):
Right.
EW (00:38:26):
And there are things that get more detailed and more- Well broader, as well as more detailed, for operating systems and networking and computer architecture and compilers. These are all things that you do not necessarily get a full picture of when you are doing an undergraduate degree.
CW (00:38:44):
Correct.
EW (00:38:45):
If you are lucky you might get to take a compilers course, but it is an upper level course, and it will not be as detailed or as thorough as a graduate level course. Security was another thing that really came up.
(00:38:58):
And programming languages. Four years seems like a long time to learn just one or two programming languages, maybe three. But it is not, because you are taking all these other courses. So Rust and Zig may actually be useful? I do not know. But it definitely is useful for people to be flexible in their programming.
CW (00:39:23):
Oh, sure. But I would not spend a lot of time taking courses in programming languages.
EW (00:39:28):
It is not about the- You are not taking Rust 101. You are taking programming languages as a course.
CW (00:39:36):
Right, right. That makes sense. Yes.
EW (00:39:37):
And learning how to learn programming languages.
CW (00:39:39):
Exactly. Yeah.
EW (00:39:41):
And then of course as a CS person, you do not necessarily get signal processing or DSP or digital design.
CW (00:39:49):
See, part of the problem is none of this stuff- I do not think this stuff existed, when we could have gone to graduate school. It would have been an EE. It would have been a purely EE thing.
EW (00:39:57):
I thought about doing the master's degree at Mudd. They had a little one year extra master's degree.
CW (00:40:04):
But that would have been in engineering, right?
EW (00:40:05):
It would have been in engineering. But there were some- I ended up taking the signal processing courses my senior year. But there was a microprocessors course that I really wanted to take. It was like "NAND toTetris," I think, where you start- But it was all physical, which I am not as excited about, because as soon as you pour your coffee on it, it all just goes bzzzt.
CW (00:40:30):
I do not think you are supposed to have coffee in the lab.
EW (00:40:33):
Anyway...
CW (00:40:37):
The point is. <laugh>
EW (00:40:38):
The point is-
CW (00:40:40):
Go ahead. Go to school, kids.
EW (00:40:41):
Go to school, if you want to go to school.
CW (00:40:44):
There are a lot more options than when we were 20 something.
EW (00:40:50):
John pointed out that probably when you and I think about master's degrees, we are thinking about a two year-
CW (00:41:00):
Terminal master's degree. Yeah.
EW (00:41:01):
Terminal master's degree, that costs as much as two years in college.
CW (00:41:07):
Err. Okay.
EW (00:41:07):
So like 60 K.
CW (00:41:10):
Sure.
EW (00:41:11):
But Georgia Tech has their online program for 10 K, and you can take six years to do it.
CW (00:41:19):
Yeah, that is all fine. My master's degree did not cost that much, because I went to a state school. There is not just the costs. There is the opportunity cost. That is all I am saying. If you can do it while you work, that is great. But I note that the economic environment is different than it used to be <laugh>.
(00:41:40):
So not earning any money for two years and trying to struggle along, when you could also or instead have a job that pays you well, is a choice that you need to make. If you are going to go and fully commit to a master's program and do it in two years or three years, that is the level of intensity that you probably cannot work at the same time. Unless you are-
EW (00:42:05):
Amazing.
CW (00:42:07):
Superhuman, which some people are. And so you are not going to be earning money. You are not going to be putting money away.
EW (00:42:13):
You might be incurring debt.
CW (00:42:14):
You might be incurring debt. You are not going to be saving money, putting money towards 401(k) or whatever, or a house down payment or something. So that shifts you back a few years. That is my major point, is to balance those factors. But you may come out of there and earn so much more afterward, or get better opportunities that it does not matter.
(00:42:36):
But I took forever to do my master's degree, because I did go back to school. Well, I took forever because they made me take the entire undergraduate cycle again.
EW (00:42:43):
Which I thought you should have fought against, but what do I know?
CW (00:42:46):
I would have died. I would not have made it.
EW (00:42:50):
You needed the refresher.
CW (00:42:51):
I needed to take the courses.
EW (00:42:52):
Mm. Okay.
CW (00:42:52):
I had taken physics. I had taken undergraduate mechanics in E and M. That was it. There is a lot more <laugh>. There is a lot more.
EW (00:43:03):
Oh, I see. Okay.
CW (00:43:04):
There are all the upper division courses. There is quantum. There is modern- Anyway. So that took me at least a year, year and a half, to do all of that. Which was pretty fast, because I was not taking any core classes. It was all physics.
(00:43:17):
And then started my master's degree program. So it should have taken me three years, and it took me a lot more because after two years I went back to work, and then my course load went down a lot. But you can do it that way. You can do it that way. But, <sigh> I mean, yeah.
EW (00:43:37):
Okay. We had another person on the Slack ask about becoming a better embedded software engineer. I do not remember the exact information. I do remember my response was, "Pick up a book every once in a while." I think I said, "Quarterly."
(00:43:58):
Some of this is because I have been reading a lot because we have been having some authors on. I try to read their books before they come. I try to at least read half of them, but actually I have not started the next one yet. I have to do- Anyway.
(00:44:15):
It is hard to stay up to date, and it is hard to engage in the practice of learning. And so even if your master's degree is in physics or something that is not necessarily directly related to your work, the practice of learning is worthwhile on its own.
CW (00:44:41):
Mm-hmm. So here is the thing that has probably been unstated, is I did not intend to just go get a master's degree in physics.
EW (00:44:48):
Right.
CW (00:44:48):
I was going to go get a PhD.
EW (00:44:53):
Why were you doing that?
CW (00:44:54):
Because I wanted to do astrophysics. I wanted to get out of software. Like I repeatedly have tried to do for my entire life with no success. I wanted to go do something else that was interesting. And astrophysics was interesting. So that is what I wanted to go do.
(00:45:08):
I burned out on the master's program pretty fast, and decided I did not want to stick for a PhD, because it was really hard. And I was not going to be able to go somewhere close by or anything.
(00:45:16):
And also, everybody who I had in the astrophysics or astronomy or physics PhD I knew, was a software engineer working at a company doing normal, boring software engineering. So I gave up on that. So I did not take it to enhance my career. I took it to shift careers. And abandoned that.
EW (00:45:37):
But if you are a CS person and you want to shift careers into embedded, a master's degree with some CS might help.
CW (00:45:44):
It is a little shift.
EW (00:45:46):
It depends on if you want to do control theory and signal processing, or if you just want to do more along the lines of embedded Linux.
CW (00:45:53):
It is not changing sciences.
EW (00:45:55):
No.
CW (00:45:57):
Anyway, both of us are wrong.
EW (00:46:01):
When I talked to Rick offline about going to full-time, one of the things- I signed up for one of his mentoring hours. Half hour? I do not remember. But it was really useful in general. And then it was also really useful, because we were talking about, "How do you figure out if you want to work somewhere?"
CW (00:46:24):
Ohh <laugh>, that sentence was going to be a lot shorter. Not a lot shorter. One word shorter.
EW (00:46:32):
Oh. <laugh> Christopher is so ready to retire. So ready!
CW (00:46:38):
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.
EW (00:46:40):
No, no.
CW (00:46:41):
I never really thought I would be. <laugh>
EW (00:46:45):
What do you ask as you are interviewing, to figure out if you want to be at this company? Now there is a whole lot of other stuff going on here. Like, do they want you? Do you have other needs for why you have to have a job right this second?
(00:47:04):
It does not matter what it is, but let us just say you are in an ideal situation where you have a good job, that you do not want forever. And you are interviewing for a new job, that you are hoping more aligns with your values, goals, career plans.
CW (00:47:24):
<sigh> I have not interviewed at a company for so long, that I would feel completely unqualified to answer.
EW (00:47:32):
<laugh>
CW (00:47:32):
I have not.
EW (00:47:32):
That is true. That is fair.
CW (00:47:35):
I know my job as podcaster is to opine on everything.
EW (00:47:40):
Every time a podcast comes up in some MTV-
CW (00:47:44):
Pop culture. <laugh>
EW (00:47:45):
Chris and I laugh and laugh. Because it is just so true! It is all so true. Okay, sorry.
(00:47:53):
So Rick, who does not have a podcast, but I will represent here-
CW (00:47:59):
And has interviewed places.
EW (00:48:01):
<laugh> Yes. Gave me some questions that I thought were really useful. "How do projects get started?" It would be nice to know if projects just come in, swoop in from outside, where you do not really get any visibility into the selection process.
CW (00:48:20):
Yeah. Or if there is one...
EW (00:48:23):
Idea person.
CW (00:48:24):
Founder, visionary person who is the one- Only that person's ideas are the ones that get any follow through.
EW (00:48:31):
And it would be nice to hear, "And we sometimes pitch projects internally."
CW (00:48:38):
Sometimes there is a formal process for that. Or a formal or informal process, like many places have- I did not really like them, but they were hack days where everybody get together and they do a little quick project in a day or two and present them.
(00:48:54):
The way it worked at some places you would get buy-in and so, "Okay, that is now a new project. We are actually going to do that." It is cool, but doing something in a day is perhaps not the best way to...
EW (00:49:08):
You are not finishing something in a day.
CW (00:49:10):
No, but-
EW (00:49:10):
You are starting it and presenting it.
CW (00:49:12):
Right. But sometimes ideas take longer to develop, is all I am saying. Okay?
EW (00:49:15):
That is what next quarter's hack day is about.
CW (00:49:18):
If you are thinking ahead to next quarter's.
EW (00:49:20):
The next of Rick's questions was, "How do decisions get made?"
CW (00:49:24):
<laugh>
EW (00:49:26):
"Especially the ones that the executives need to make."
CW (00:49:28):
Yeah.
EW (00:49:28):
For me, that was all about, "How do decisions get made? And how often do they get changed, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth?" Because that is a pet peeve.
CW (00:49:42):
It is a common thing.
EW (00:49:44):
Oh, indeed.
CW (00:49:44):
Used to call it "thrashing."
EW (00:49:46):
Well, yeah.
CW (00:49:47):
It is really demoralizing to the people who are working on stuff, the rank and file engineers. It is really demoralizing because-
EW (00:49:54):
Oh, my goodness!
CW (00:49:55):
Get halfway through on something, and your priority changes. And I get halfway through on that. I went back and forth like that at places six or seven times. It is like, "Okay, I am just going to sit here <laugh> until something settles down."
EW (00:50:07):
At Leapfrog, I got ready to ship products and then they canceled them. There was one year where they canceled my whole line, and one of my coworkers' lines. We just took off from work that day and went to the mall. It was just very, very frustrating and demoralizing, because we had put in so much work.
(00:50:30):
Okay, so next of Rick's questions, "Are there conflicts between departments, and how do they get resolved? Can you give me an example?" This is a good question because if there are no conflicts between departments, they are just lying to you. And an example of how they get resolved. If the engineers always get their way, that is bad. If the marketers always get their way, that is bad.
(00:50:58):
And the last one, "Do you see your leadership following the roadmap they explained?" I have to say, I think the answer is "No," on almost all companies I have ever worked for. Except maybe HP, but that was- Remember this was nineties HP, not HP and Compaq, whatever.
CW (00:51:24):
Yeah. I think it is a mixed bag for my history. But there are certainly ones where it was like, "We have a new roadmap," every six months and they would unveil it with great fanfare. "But we just started the old one." It is like, "Well, that one was no good."
EW (00:51:39):
It is fine if roadmaps change and shift, they should.
CW (00:51:41):
Oh, no, no, these were not shifts. These were like, "We threw the old one in the trash. This is the new roadmap." <laugh>
EW (00:51:48):
Yeah.
CW (00:51:50):
Anyway. Those kinds of questions are useful to try to figure out- They are trying to suss out without saying, "What is wrong with your company?" what is wrong with the company. Because there is always something wrong with the company. It depends on how much you are bothered by, or have trouble navigating, indecision or bad project management.
(00:52:13):
Those kinds of questions are good at getting at, "Okay, how do things generally work here? How does conflict get resolved? How many conflicts are there? Do things generally follow the plan? Or is there no plan? Or is there a plan that people just glance at but gleefully ignore?"
(00:52:33):
Because the wrong answers to those questions, often mean there is a lot of interpersonal conflict and other kinds of conflicts that arise out of people not being in agreement, about what we are building or how to build it.
EW (00:52:51):
Okay. We have one more, from Pedro about skills and expectations. "Did your expectations of a successful career change, from when we were younger? Specifically, did I envision writing a book or teaching, when you were a grad student? Were there times when you reached further than you expected in pay, prestige or passion?"
CW (00:53:26):
Mm. I cannot remember how I thought it would go. I do not know. I do not really know. Did I think I was just going to be an engineer, getting more and more seniority? Did I think I would shift into management?
(00:53:39):
I did shift into management for a bit. I do not know. I had people telling me, "Oh, you have to go into management." This the more senior you got, which I always did not take well to. I do not know. I do not feel like I really wanted to be a CTO or something, or run a company.
EW (00:54:02):
I did. I wanted to be CTO. And I wanted to be a startup founder. Until...
CW (00:54:09):
Till you met one?
EW (00:54:10):
No.
CW (00:54:10):
Oh.
EW (00:54:10):
No. Until I had problems that were unidentifiable, and I spent years dealing with stupid medical-
CW (00:54:29):
All right. Yeah. I do not think I anticipated the shift to consulting, which has now been a long time. That has been good. I do not know if you anticipated the shift to consulting, because you did that first.
EW (00:54:42):
I did not know- This is like in high school, I did not know what an engineer was.
CW (00:54:48):
Yeah. Well, if we are going back to high school, I had no idea what I was going to do.
EW (00:54:52):
In college, I did not really know what an engineering consultant did. There were so many times I did not know what the path in front of me could hold. So I could not envision myself being there. I could see a lot of paths I did not want. I have never really wanted to be CEO. I have never wanted to sell things.
CW (00:55:19):
I have never wanted to process any- Sorry.
EW (00:55:20):
<laugh>
CW (00:55:24):
Yeah, no, I am thinking back to high school. I knew I wanted to go to a science and engineering school, and get an engineering degree. But I did not know what I was going to do with it. I figured I would find something.
EW (00:55:36):
Wanted to build underwater cities.
CW (00:55:37):
Well, yeah. <laugh> I figured I would find something interesting there. I found out that I did not like engineering, very quickly, and went to a different degree. Yeah, I do not know.
EW (00:55:49):
So I actually responded this, a type responded, since this was on the slide.
CW (00:55:53):
Okay. Aha.
EW (00:55:53):
So I will give a little bit of my response from then. The first part, "All of my five year plans have lasted months, not years. Mostly because what I learned, changed what I wanted. Or the things that looked impossibly hard, were not after a few months of dedicated pursuit."
(00:56:18):
"I really had no idea I would write a book. It was accidental. I was pushed a little by a throwaway comment at a Grace Hopper Celebration dinner. Where an Australian CS professor listened to me run down about my career, of ShotSpotter and Leapfrog, you know, verbal, verbal. And said something like, 'All you kinda needed to do for a PhD is write a dissertation.'"
(00:56:44):
I think my book was like that. That comment- Throwaway for her, ended up being something that I heard a lot in my head.
CW (00:56:53):
Yeah.
EW (00:56:53):
And, "Success as I defined it when I was 12 to 20, I achieved beyond my wildest dreams before I was 30. If I went back in time and talked to 16-year-old me, she would not believe the salary possibilities. Or the latitude I have to work on the things I choose and care about."
(00:57:16):
"I am way more famous than I want to be." I never wanted for my name to be known. That was one of the hardest things about having the podcast grow.
CW (00:57:32):
That is okay. It is not growing anymore.
EW (00:57:37):
"I sometimes think now if I try to plan ahead, I do not quite know what I want in my life, because I have gotten so much already. It feels greedy to want more. And it is bewildering to consider what more I could want. Other than books. I always want to read."
(00:58:00):
So plans. It is funny, we talk about companies should have roadmaps. But the truth is I do not really. I am coming off this realization, that I was thinking I might have a roadmap last summer that might be really interesting, and it did not turn out. And now, do I want to make a new one? Or do I want to keep doing what I am doing? Because I do enjoy it.
CW (00:58:27):
Well, you just signed up for three years with a contract. So guess what? You have a three year plan.
EW (00:58:30):
Yeah. Well, I can do other things. <laugh>
CW (00:58:33):
<laugh> Yeah, I know. I think now having thought about this for a minute, I think that tracks with what I remember. But I think what I did not predict- This is me being me again. I was always a cynic when I was a kid, and did not like authority or organizations or things like that, groups of people.
(00:58:56):
But companies were okay for a while, and I enjoyed working at them. So I did not anticipate becoming so down on companies writ large, and the organizations and executive structures and things. I did not expect to start feeling anti-tech. Not anti-tech, but anti-tech application, let us put it that way.
EW (00:59:22):
Anti gratuitous tech?
CW (00:59:24):
No, that is too... There are places for gratuitous things in the world. Harmful.
EW (00:59:33):
Harmful tech.
CW (00:59:34):
Yeah. Or, seeing the consequences of things that perhaps I did not anticipate, that I had worked on in the past. But anyway. Yeah, no. I am not a Luddite, even though that term is misappropriated. But...
EW (00:59:52):
You do believe there is good space for technology?
CW (00:59:55):
Of course. I am sitting in a room of it. I buy probably more technology than the average person who actually likes technology. <laugh> I am not an anti technologist. But I am- Maybe this is just a consequence of getting older and having seen a lot.
(01:00:11):
I am more skeptical. More willing to push back on things that I think should not be pursued, or I think are being pursued not for positive reasons. And more apt to pay attention to the people who are behind things, the words they say and their behaviors and other things, than I used to be.
(01:00:36):
Like, when I was 20, 23 at some company, I did not think much about the CEO, or what they were doing, or anything like that. Or pay structure, or...
EW (01:00:47):
Fairness and justice and diversity.
CW (01:00:48):
Or, why are we selling these to these people? Or this country? Or, what does this product really do? What is it really for?
EW (01:00:59):
It did not matter as much then.
CW (01:01:00):
Yeah, beyond, "Oh, this is fun to work on." You could call it being jaded or cynical or whatever, but I did not anticipate getting to a point where I was actually sick of some stuff in technology. Not just attitudes and things, but actual products.
(01:01:18):
I am tired of hearing about X, Y, or Z. I do not think that is interesting. I wish it would go away. I think earlier it was like, "All tech is cool. We should just be making all kinds of things."
EW (01:01:30):
"Everything has an application. We just have to find the right application for this neat technology."
CW (01:01:37):
Yeah. Yeah.
EW (01:01:37):
Fair.
CW (01:01:37):
Do you want to end on some other note? <laugh>
EW (01:01:42):
Well, I can see that. And yet we are out of time. So I am going to go play with robot simulators, which I think be really fun. The application is neat. I cannot really talk about it, but it is still was really cool.
(01:01:59):
But truthfully, today I am just about the robots themselves being cool, or the robots simulators. The simulated robots being cool. One of the things in the Webot was that you could have a robot that was a motorcycle, and you can have a robot that was a motorcycle rider.
CW (01:02:17):
Oh, I thought you were going to talk about a transformer. Can have a robot that was a motorcycle, transformed into a motorcycle. Are there any transformers on Webot?
EW (01:02:25):
I do not think so, but there is no reason we cannot build one. We just have to figure out the linkages properly.
CW (01:02:32):
Okay.
EW (01:02:33):
Okay. So let us close the show on that. Thank you for listening. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for their commentary and their continuing questions. Thank Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank the dog for being quiet.
(01:02:51):
Thank our sponsors, if we have any sponsors this week. Thank Memfault for sponsoring the show. Even if they did not sponsor this week, they are sponsoring sometimes. So yay Memfault. Thank Christopher for this really pained look he has on his face right now.
(01:03:08):
And of course, thank A. A. Milne for "Winnie-the-Pooh," which I forgot to bring down. So if you will hang on a second, I will go get "Winnie-the-Pooh."
(01:03:18):
[Winnie-the-Pooh excerpt]