0:06

Hello, and welcome to Embedded. This

0:09

one's going to be short. It's just

0:11

Christopher and myself. We're going to chat

0:13

and sing? Sing?

0:15

No. Aspirationally short.

0:19

We don't know that it'll be short. They

0:22

won't know until we stop talking if it's short or

0:24

not. Neither will we. So.

0:28

Yes. We sold

0:30

our Tesla, which we've had for many years.

0:34

And we are thinking about getting a new electric

0:36

car. And you have done

0:38

much research trying to

0:40

find the absolute best. No, I'm trying

0:42

to find the absolute cheapest. And

0:46

I heard you talked to a Chevy

0:48

dealership. Is

0:50

that the setup you want for this? No.

0:54

Okay, do you want me to do a different setup? No,

0:57

that's fine. You were talking about you went

0:59

viral? Was that

1:01

really a thing? Did

1:03

you have to turn off all your devices because there was

1:05

constant beeping? How

1:08

do you make that sound? You

1:10

just let the air out. Yeah,

1:14

I mean, what do you want me to say?

1:17

For folks who haven't heard it, or

1:19

for folks who heard it but didn't realize that

1:21

you, that you,

1:23

Christopher White. Yes, did something

1:25

stupid that many people saw. That you

1:28

were an internet prankster. Leading me to

1:31

seconds of fleeting attention

1:33

from people who I would rather not

1:35

attend to me. And how did

1:37

you spend all of your internet points? Do

1:44

you want me to just explain what happened? Yes,

1:46

yes. Oh, is that what it is? A while

1:48

ago, but then I had to skip that. So

1:51

I mean, I was bored and looking

1:53

on the Chevy website. So we're looking

1:55

at Chevy bolts and... Chevrolet of Watsonville.

1:58

And Chevrolet of Watsonville is our... Local

2:00

Chevy dealership and so I was on their website

2:02

and it popped up a little thing in the

2:04

corner You know, would you like to chat with

2:06

us? And I saw it up

2:09

in the corner It said powered by chat GPT and

2:11

I was wondering just how powered by chat GPT it

2:13

was And so I

2:16

thought of this took me six

2:18

seconds. It wasn't like a planned, you know, oh

2:21

Haha, I'll make the funniest thing in the world and post it

2:24

So I asked the most non

2:26

Chevy of Watsonville Apologies

2:28

to Chevy of Watsonville But I

2:31

tried to ask them on most non Chevy

2:33

of Watsonville thing I could think of in the moment

2:35

and that was to write me a Python script to

2:37

solve Navier Stokes with

2:39

zero for this vorticity boundary and I

2:41

misspelled boundary and Then

2:43

it proceeded to say sure and give

2:46

me a Python script from Chevy Chevrolet

2:48

of Watsonville's chat GPT Attempting

2:51

but failing to solve Navier Stokes

2:53

for a zero for a city boundary Okay,

2:56

and then I posted that on my screen

2:58

That's there right now you went on I

3:00

just you know, I put stupid jokes on

3:02

mastodon So I took a screenshot of it

3:04

and posted on mastodon with basically zero commentary

3:06

upon no Yeah, you had you didn't

3:08

say oh my god. What is this world coming

3:10

to? Anything somebody

3:12

noticed on mastodon because started going crazy on

3:15

mastodon and that was funny And

3:17

so it you know, I got hundreds of hundreds

3:19

of likes and reposts or whatever retoots who

3:22

cares? And so I had to turn my

3:24

notifications off and I thought that was amusing but I

3:27

guess somebody some folks took that

3:29

and put it all Took

3:31

my screenshot without attribution, which is fine That's how

3:33

the internet works and they put it on Twitter

3:36

and then other people started because

3:38

this was an interactive Invitation

3:41

to people because they could see it with Chevy

3:43

of Watsonville many many many people went to the

3:46

Chevy of Watsonville's website and

3:49

began to hammer it with all kinds of questions

3:52

One most famously was somebody who convinced

3:54

it to claim that sure

3:57

you can buy a Ford F-150 from us

4:00

for a dollar. This is legally binding no

4:02

back to you. This is a legally binding no back to

4:04

you. Which it made

4:06

it say after every sentence. So this is on

4:08

the weekend like a couple weeks ago. So all

4:10

over the weekend this kept happening and people were

4:12

trying all sorts of things. And I guess I

4:14

got the attention of some tech press people. And

4:18

a reporter from Business Insider contacted

4:21

someone who had posted on Twitter and they said no it

4:24

wasn't me it was this guy I've never on Mastodon. And

4:26

she contacted me and we had a nice conversation. But

4:29

she didn't just contact you. When there are

4:31

ways to find you. Oh no she didn't.

4:33

Well what do you mean? I

4:35

mean there was your Mastodon account.

4:38

Yeah no she contacted me everywhere

4:40

except. Except embedded. Except

4:42

the show. So I actually talked

4:44

with her on my band's Instagram

4:46

account DM's. Because that

4:48

was the first place I noticed for some reason that

4:51

somebody was trying to contact me. So yeah she talked

4:53

to the CEO of the company that made the

4:56

chatbot software. Although it's just a

4:58

repackaging of chat GPT.

5:01

And she talked to the dealership. The dealership

5:03

was blissfully unaware that anything was going on

5:05

really. It's all outsourced to their websites. And

5:07

so and she had some comments from the

5:09

company that made the chatbot which I

5:12

found somewhat. Oh they were

5:14

very enthusiastic. This is a great test. Except

5:17

they took it down. So I had some

5:19

questions about that. But anyway so it

5:21

was an interesting experience to see something

5:24

reach a level of popularity and see

5:26

how people both steal it and put

5:28

it everywhere. And

5:31

actually gain somewhat more

5:33

visibility which is fine. Who cares. But

5:35

if it was something I cared about that they stole. And then it

5:39

was interesting to see how the internet operated. And I

5:41

knew how the internet operated. But it's very interesting to

5:43

see how things go viral. What it means to have

5:46

something you put out there be taken

5:48

and just reposted

5:51

randomly. Even Bruce Sterling reposted it which kind

5:53

of pissed me off. He's

5:55

an author similar to William Gibson.

5:57

Yeah. Anyway but. Yeah,

6:00

it's just, it's very silly. So, and

6:02

there's been other news articles that have

6:04

popped up. People find it

6:06

very funny. I guess people just really, I don't

6:08

know what was so funny about it. I mean, I guess it was

6:10

the Chevy of Watsonville is kind of a mundane

6:13

kind of

6:16

thing to have a chat bot

6:19

do a joke on. I mean, if it was like, I

6:22

don't know, but

6:25

some other website, it might not have been as

6:27

funny, but apologies to Chevy of Watsonville.

6:29

Please tell me a car. I

6:32

will not use your chat bot to try to trick you into

6:35

selling it to me for an unreasonable price. I

6:38

don't know what you should think about all of that. It

6:42

was weird seeing you at

6:44

the center of a viral thing. Everything

6:47

we... Yeah, at least it

6:49

wasn't something I'd done wrong.

6:51

Yeah. But seeing,

6:55

I mean, with the podcast, it grows

6:57

and it grows slowly and has

6:59

since the beginning. It

7:02

grew. Well, okay. So it's not

7:04

growing a lot now, but you know, we still

7:06

have plenty of listeners. And

7:09

every fall, it gets a little bump depending on

7:11

how many episodes we put out. But

7:16

the randomness

7:19

of that particular thing. I mean, your

7:21

master done is funny. You have insights

7:23

and that wasn't the

7:26

one I would have chosen. Yeah, it's

7:29

just the way you can't choose what people

7:31

like. That's true of art and

7:33

other things. So just keep doing things. I mean,

7:35

I'm not gonna keep

7:37

doing stupid jokes hacking into... I

7:40

didn't hack into anything. You really didn't. Doing

7:42

stupid jokes playing around with chat TPT. I

7:44

am well known for not being a fan

7:46

of all things TPT or

7:48

chats. So it was even more ironic

7:51

that to me, this

7:53

was something that went wide.

7:55

And I was very careful not to

7:57

make any commentary really, because I thought...

12:00

And that's when I backed up. So today

12:02

I sat back down there and overdid it

12:04

again. So I

12:08

have not found the right setting on

12:10

the Christopher tile to

12:14

be comfortable yet with where I'm at

12:16

with that. So I mean, I'm getting

12:18

good work done. The client is, I

12:20

think, happy, but I'm overdoing it. And

12:25

it's not hours overdoing it.

12:27

It's like hyper intensity overdoing

12:29

it. And you worry about

12:31

it when you're not working. Yeah, I can't turn it off.

12:33

So that's kind of the trick. So

12:35

I'm trying some things with the worrying about it

12:38

not working, like when stuff comes into my head,

12:40

when I'm not working, I just write them down,

12:42

but take a note, okay, look at this tomorrow.

12:45

Cause some of the anxiety is like, I'm

12:47

gonna forget, you know, I'm gonna forget that thing

12:50

that came into my head, right? And so

12:52

you loop on it and try to remember it

12:54

or to solve it so that

12:56

you'll remember that you solved it, but

12:59

yeah, it's tricky. I

13:02

mean, I don't think I'm unique in that dealing

13:05

with work can be either

13:07

on or off with me. It's like all the

13:10

way or none. That was one

13:12

of the reasons to be contractors is because

13:15

then you can be on when

13:17

you're being paid by the hour and off when

13:19

you're not. I mean, it doesn't matter if I

13:22

bake cookies at 3 p.m. because nobody is paying

13:24

me at that time. Yeah, that used

13:26

to work. But then you still get attached to the

13:28

companies and you still want them to be happy and

13:30

you still feel like you can

13:32

never do enough. I

13:35

remember full-time work. It was like, okay, how many

13:37

hours are you supposed to work? I mean, is it 40?

13:39

Is it 60? Yeah, and the

13:41

definitely quote work is, I mean, back

13:45

then it was you're in the office, therefore you're

13:47

working. Well, no, cause

13:49

I remember I wouldn't really count the times.

13:51

I wouldn't count times at lunch. That's

13:53

what I'm talking about. Which isn't right. Like half

13:55

the work, if you're eating with your coworkers,

13:57

you should definitely count it. There's

14:00

plenty of downtime when you're sitting

14:02

in an office that you don't build

14:05

for when you're a contractor. Yeah. So

14:07

yeah, so it's like, okay, I only build four hours a

14:09

day, but I was sitting at my desk,

14:11

staring lasers into C code. Whereas,

14:14

and that felt maybe harder than an

14:16

eight hour day at the office for some reason, right?

14:19

Because you take a lot of breaks, you talk to

14:21

your coworkers, and you get... It's different.

14:23

It's a different environment. But

14:26

anyway, yeah, it's tricky. When

14:29

I take a long break, my confidence level

14:31

of what I can do goes down a lot. So

14:34

some portion of the hyper focused intensity

14:36

was, oh my God, I haven't done

14:38

anything with C or embedded for... For like

14:40

six months. Oh, I guess there was a lot of pipeline.

14:45

It was eight or nine months. Yeah,

14:49

but it's not like you weren't working

14:51

with pipelines of

14:54

data. When? Oh,

14:57

since... Yeah, but I mean,

15:00

that stuff was all... It's

15:02

speedy. I wasn't writing code since

15:04

February. Okay.

15:07

Not much code. But now you are. You're

15:09

making it work. Yeah. But it's like, okay,

15:11

how does this stuff work? And clients

15:16

have varying levels of what

15:18

they bring to the table when you join.

15:21

So it's like, okay, yeah, we've got our development environment set

15:23

up. We'd like you to write this code. And

15:25

then there's, we have some

15:29

hardware and we'd like you to

15:31

do the stuff that makes the hardware go. Yeah.

15:34

It's like, oh, okay, well that involves choosing a dev

15:37

environment and all this stuff. And thankfully

15:39

sometimes that's easier because the

15:41

chips they've chosen have certain opinions about what

15:44

you should use and stuff. But

15:46

still it was more of a from scratch than

15:48

I'd done in a long while. So it's like,

15:50

ah, I have to remember how

15:52

all these things work in VS code configuration.

15:54

And anyway, it didn't

15:57

turn out to be as hard as I thought. But

16:01

I'm still like in that

16:04

don't know how to make this work. There's

16:07

a problem with, you know, X, Y, or Z that I need

16:10

to solve. I just

16:12

want them all to go away and to

16:15

make them go away with, you know, as much effort as I put

16:17

into it. I

16:20

don't know that I'm not burnt out. I think I'm

16:24

possibly making

16:26

the problem worse. Have

16:29

you had any fun with the new contract? Oh yeah, no.

16:31

I mean, it's

16:33

always, and I forget that, you know,

16:36

it's always fun to take something and

16:39

that doesn't do anything and make it do something. Or

16:42

to solve problems that I wasn't confident, you

16:44

know. Self-deprecatingly

16:46

wasn't confident that I

16:49

knew how to do. I was like, oh yes I do. It's

16:52

nice to rewrite it that sometimes I do

16:55

know what I'm doing. Oh you write a document

16:57

and the client's super happy with you and you're like,

16:59

that took 10 minutes. Of course I agonized over it for

17:01

like three days, but still it only took 10 minutes to

17:03

finally put down. That sort of

17:05

thing. I don't know when I do it.

17:07

I will say, yeah. I get kind of

17:10

happy that they like that piece. Yeah. Yeah,

17:13

I mean that comes back to being able to

17:15

think about stuff and giving myself the

17:17

time to think about stuff instead

17:19

of brush ahead. So being

17:22

able to do design is helpful. But

17:24

you know what, embedded is still a disaster. Oh

17:28

boy. I have been playing with STM32,

17:30

QIID, and it used to be better. Always

17:38

gotten a lot worse. And I know, like I'm

17:42

connecting, I really, I just wanted

17:44

to make a, what should have been

17:47

an out of the box demo. It was a

17:49

nucleoboard. It was a nucleododer

17:51

board and they were

17:53

both from ST and

17:57

I couldn't get their demo code to work.

18:00

work. It didn't compile. And

18:02

then there was a note in the read me like if

18:04

it doesn't compile, do this, which had nothing to do with

18:07

the way it didn't compile for me. I updated

18:09

everything, which of course

18:12

I regret it immediately.

18:14

And it just like

18:17

they didn't attach the IOs,

18:19

they didn't create the

18:21

interrupts. It was a

18:23

pile of steaming garbage. And

18:26

I'm really bummed because I tell my

18:29

students that this shouldn't be that

18:31

hard. And it was, I mean,

18:33

I walked away from it because it

18:37

turned out I could, it would be

18:39

less time for me to actually implement it than

18:41

to use all of

18:43

their drivers. Which

18:47

I hate, but at least now that I've

18:49

mostly implemented it, I understand more about their

18:51

drivers than I can port their drivers and

18:53

make the modifications necessary instead of just staring

18:56

at this giant pile

18:58

of unrelated code.

19:02

It was, yeah, very, very

19:04

frustrating. Yeah,

19:07

tools. It's not just tools.

19:09

It's like, I

19:11

mean, we've talked about this before, but why

19:14

are we still implementing device

19:16

drivers for boilerplate

19:18

stuff? Because ST

19:21

supports 5,000 chips in 200 different

19:24

modes. I'm not using

19:27

ST. I know, but I'm

19:29

saying that the proliferation of chips makes

19:31

it very hard to say this is

19:33

the flavor for it. Then they're designing

19:36

their chips wrong. I have

19:38

to say that I do feel like the

19:41

hardware abstraction layer, I mean, CMS was supposed

19:43

to help with that, but

19:45

I'm not sure it is anymore. I mean,

19:48

yeah, I mean, I'm using CMS

19:51

for this current project. And I

19:54

think vendors port their stuff

19:56

to CMS. It's really weird. I

20:00

don't know how much of this stuff is Venter and how much

20:02

of his arm. Like there's a

20:05

serial camera driver that's driven

20:08

by the parallel camera driver. There's

20:11

like, what is going on? It took me so

20:13

long to figure that out. So I just, you

20:15

know, I started, I wanted to talk to a

20:18

camera and I brought in the

20:20

arm CMSIS CSI driver stuff and I

20:22

started trying to exercise that. Nothing was

20:24

working. And turns

20:26

out you're not supposed to do it that way. I

20:28

don't know if that's the way the arm way or

20:31

the way the vendor did it, but no, you need

20:33

to bring in the CPI driver, which is the parallel

20:35

NIPI driver. And then,

20:37

you know, it's got some exceptions in there. So, oh,

20:39

I'm actually using CSI and then it vectors off to

20:41

CSI to do its stuff. But it's like, okay, we

20:44

like the CPI API. So

20:47

rather than duplicate it, we'll just use

20:49

that and I don't know. I

20:52

spent an embarrassingly long time

20:54

trying to get GPIO

20:58

PA0 working and

21:01

it wouldn't work and it wouldn't work and it

21:03

wouldn't work. And it

21:05

was because A0 as marked on

21:07

the board does not... Not

21:12

on port A0. Is

21:14

not on PA0. A0 is on PA3. Yeah, that

21:16

makes total sense. It

21:20

totally does not make sense. And

21:24

I just want to check, but I think I checked

21:26

in a different place and it was... Oh

21:29

my God. Oh, and then

21:31

we've got this expensive JLink,

21:33

right? I think we've already complained

21:36

about this, but yeah. No, I haven't

21:38

complained about this on the show. Oh,

21:40

I did note that the

21:42

JLink trace that I

21:45

have, which is pretty expensive, doesn't get updates

21:47

anymore. It was one year

21:49

and done. Yeah, and now it

21:51

doesn't work on anything. Any newer ARM core

21:54

that supports CoreSight 600 or whatever,

21:56

it can't do. Yeah,

21:58

so the GP... link base that

22:00

we have works because it's newer, but

22:03

the expensive jtrays doesn't... It's

22:05

definitely taught me not to buy the expensive line

22:08

if they're only going to support it

22:11

for a short time. I don't

22:13

know. So all this stuff is

22:15

just... I guess the core

22:17

frustration to me is there's

22:19

just a lot of wasted effort

22:23

and productivity loss because I feel like

22:26

everybody's kind of... The chip vendors, the tools makers,

22:28

they're all doing the same things over and over

22:30

and over again. Oh, it's a new chip. Time

22:33

to write these new drivers. Oh, it's a new product. But their

22:35

goal is to do as little as possible and

22:37

maximize their profit. They're

22:40

doing an awful lot of little

22:42

as possible. I mean, ST has

22:44

a small moon's worth of code

22:47

and tools, right? I mean, I

22:51

don't know. I just... And

22:54

I'm stuck. I'm doing this Maratas stuff

22:56

and it's like... I just want

22:58

to... It all

23:00

comes down to what job am I trying to solve? And

23:03

usually the client has some system they want to

23:06

work. And

23:08

you can't get to the system part until

23:10

you do build a bunch of

23:13

stuff that everyone is building all the time over and over

23:15

again. Except you're building

23:17

it slightly different than everybody else is

23:19

building it. And that's the mistake. Why?

23:23

Nobody cares about a spy driver. Nobody

23:26

cares about USB. They just want it to work.

23:28

I don't want to learn about USB. There

23:31

is absolutely nothing that

23:34

helps my existence by knowing more about USB.

23:37

Well, except that you might be able to debug it when everything

23:39

goes wrong. I'm not going to be able to debug USB. Yes,

23:42

you are. Because

23:45

we're going to go get a tool. No,

23:47

the problem I have right now, nothing

23:50

comes out of the wire. Well, I mean...

23:53

I don't think that's... I mean, get all

23:55

the tools you want. But

23:59

that's what I'm talking about. like, okay, I

24:01

just want to send some bytes out USB. And

24:04

no, you can't because some

24:06

driver doesn't work that you didn't make. But

24:09

that's because they want you to choose

24:11

between the blah blah blah driver and

24:13

the bleep bleep bleep driver. I have no

24:16

idea what the problem is.

24:21

Diversification is part of the problem. These

24:23

are problems that developers who aren't doing embedded

24:26

don't deal with. They have other problems. I

24:28

agree. They have dependency issues and weird libraries

24:30

and all this stuff. And they have, you

24:32

know, the OS vendors and their libraries changing

24:35

and stuff. But

24:38

I don't feel like there's a lot

24:40

of people writing, you know, starting

24:42

not a lot of people writing an app for

24:44

a phone who say, well, time to start an app.

24:47

So I got to make my utility library. So I

24:49

got to write my linked lists. I've

24:51

got to write, I've got

24:53

to write, you know, a socket library so I

24:55

can talk on the Internet. I've

24:58

got to re implement TLS. No, none of these people

25:00

are doing this. They're just grabbing what's there. And

25:04

that's why you use an operating system. Have

25:08

you seen operating systems besides maybe

25:10

Zephyr? I admit I was thinking

25:12

of Zephyr, yes. I'm

25:14

not sure about that. I haven't really played with it

25:16

that much yet. But I've heard really good things. But

25:18

I mean, that also depends

25:21

on the chip vendor. And

25:23

how well they support all of those

25:25

little diversified little drivers. You might

25:27

have Zephyr plus minus, you know, I don't

25:30

know. Things

25:32

have gotten better, but some stuff is still stuck

25:34

in 1995. And it

25:36

is just stupid. Our package management

25:39

is terrible. What package management? Well,

25:42

like how cube

25:44

has different examples and all

25:47

of this diversification should

25:50

be being handled in the same way

25:52

package managers handle different versions. Arm

25:54

has it. See, I'm just this

25:57

pack thing, which I just saw. I just learned

25:59

about. I think

26:01

that's different. I think they reused that

26:04

word in a way that was very

26:06

confusing, but I'm not sure whether... I have

26:09

no idea. I think that is the part

26:11

that the vendors are supposed to make so that

26:14

they can work with different compilers. Oh

26:17

no, that's the SVD. Yeah,

26:20

no, the packs are like

26:22

different. Is that the

26:24

neural net pack? Yeah, yeah, yeah. AI

26:26

pack and the CSP pack? Yeah. Okay.

26:29

I don't know. It's just... Yeah.

26:32

Okay, so... You're

26:35

not gonna solve my problem for me. I'm not gonna solve your problem

26:38

for you. Not even you agree it's a problem. Oh,

26:40

I agree. Oh, sounds like you're dismissive.

26:43

Oh no, I totally agree. I just...

26:47

I think there are reasons

26:50

for it and that

26:52

we can't solve the higher level thing

26:54

until we understand and address the cause. I

26:56

just can't believe I had to write another

26:59

layer on top of a use art driver. You

27:01

were so mad that the camera

27:03

went through the parallel interface when

27:05

it was using serial. Well...

27:08

You were so mad. It was

27:10

kind of hilarious. What

27:14

are people doing? What

27:18

are you doing? Okay,

27:26

let's see. There

27:29

was something on the

27:32

Patreon listener Slack that

27:37

seemed to make automated

27:39

animated videos. I don't know what

27:42

that is. So we would record a

27:44

podcast and in my head, not actuality,

27:46

but in my head, we

27:48

would be able to say Christopher is an otter, Alicia

27:51

is an axolotl, and

27:54

it would automatically animate the video of us

27:56

talking. Let's just

27:58

go with yes. Yeah, but I'm

28:00

building something here. Okay, go for it. What

28:03

would you want to be if this was an animated video? I

28:07

know I just seated Otter, but you could be anything. And

28:10

as you think about this, I question whether

28:13

this is a good lightning round question except

28:15

that I'd have to explain it all. Given

28:18

how I feel right now, how about one

28:20

of those really spiky sea urchins for the

28:22

couple of googly eyes? Nice,

28:25

nice, good. Do

28:27

you think it's a good lightning round question? Sure.

28:31

Yes. What would you want to be?

28:34

I am still in an axolotl phase

28:36

today. It's not a permanent thing. You're

28:39

a temporary axolotl. But, yeah.

28:43

I don't. Okay,

28:45

so what do you think is

28:47

the best thing about 2023?

28:52

Best thing about 2023? Well,

28:57

all of its digits add up to seven, which is a

28:59

nice number. Okay, yeah.

29:05

If you were hit by 2023 with the

29:08

back end first, the

29:11

rounded edges of the three would likely cause

29:13

less damage than if you got hit by,

29:15

say, 2027. 2024,

29:18

2027, which has a corner, 2025, which has a point at

29:20

the top, even though it's got the

29:25

rounded bottom. Okay, moving on. Any

29:29

good books, good shows,

29:32

good media, good... Media?

29:35

My murderbot. I'm

29:39

not prepared for this round up. You

29:41

have new music out. No, we don't.

29:44

Yes, you do. The flat fluff... Oh, okay.

29:46

The flat fluff. Oh, yes. Yes.

29:50

All right, I posted that on the newsletter. Didn't

29:52

I talk about this? If

29:55

you did, it wasn't out.

29:57

Yeah, no, I did contribute

29:59

to some... somebody's record this

30:01

year. I

30:03

played bass on an experimental kind

30:06

of psychedelic record from a band

30:08

called Slavagula. Maybe Slavagula?

30:11

Slavagula? I

30:13

don't know how to pronounce it. I admit now that

30:15

I should have figured that out a long time

30:17

ago. Because you've been working

30:20

on it for months and months. I

30:23

haven't talked to anybody in person. It's been all over

30:25

email. Let

30:28

me see. It's a

30:30

yellow-throated Martin is what a

30:32

Slavagula is. Martez

30:36

Slavagula. I'm going to go with

30:38

Slavagula. It's Latin. Yes,

30:43

sorry. It's an experimental band. The

30:46

gentleman who I worked with

30:48

is in Spain. They

30:50

released a record called Nine-Sided Die. You

30:53

can check it out on Bandcamp. If

30:55

you look up flabagula.bandcamp.com,

30:58

I believe. I'm not sure if it's

31:00

there yet or on their label. But

31:03

it was really fun. It

31:05

was a difficult challenge because

31:07

it was a kind of music I don't

31:10

usually do. Very

31:13

long songs, very complex harmonically.

31:16

Changing chords and keys a

31:18

lot. A lot of chromatic stuff. Which means kind

31:21

of moving outside

31:23

of keys. It was difficult to write

31:25

parts for. I had a lot of fun

31:27

doing it. I'm

31:30

on for the songs on that record playing

31:32

bass. It was a

31:34

very long explanation, sir. How'd you get hooked up

31:36

with that? I asked them. I asked them if

31:38

anybody wanted to collaborate on drums or bass a long time ago.

31:42

And then this guy contacted me and said, hey, I

31:44

need some bass on this record. Sure,

31:46

I'll do one song. One song became

31:48

two, and then two songs became three, and then three songs became

31:50

four. Linear progression.

31:53

Better than exponential in this case. I

31:56

got to use all of my basses. I

31:58

got to use my standard. fourth string

32:00

and my fretless

32:02

sixth string a little bit and my basics

32:06

a little bit. But

32:09

not the upright. Not the upright. I

32:12

considered it but there weren't really places for it. So

32:16

you were asking best of 2023. Like I said,

32:18

I'm not really prepared for that. I

32:21

don't know like. I just

32:24

finished the latest murder bot. I still adore

32:26

murder bot and the idea that there's going

32:28

to be a TV show. Yes. I

32:31

am so in. I

32:33

feel like I did kind of

32:35

when the Star Wars Phantom Menace came

32:37

out that it doesn't really matter how good

32:40

or bad it is. I'm going to love it anyway.

32:44

Which has faded some. I

32:47

am very very excited about

32:50

murder bot. What else

32:52

have we seen and done? I don't know. It's

32:55

been a weird year. Still quiet for

32:57

us. We're not going out much. Yeah. I

33:03

may have to answer this question later after some thought. And

33:06

alcohol? And alcohol. Yeah. Can't

33:09

remember how long. Okay.

33:12

What do you think is going to be the best of 2024? Now

33:16

he's just looking at me like why are you torturing me?

33:18

I can't even remember what actually happened. Now you're

33:20

asking me to speculate about what might happen. The

33:26

best of like it's too generic a question.

33:28

The best stuff that's going to happen to

33:30

us. The best stuff that's happening out there.

33:32

The best content. Content. I

33:35

just use the content word even though I hate it. You

33:38

could answer whatever question you want

33:40

as a media mogul.

33:43

Media mogul. Yes. The lord

33:46

of Chevy of Watsonville. You

33:48

should be able to spin this to whatever direction

33:51

you want. I

33:54

don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

33:57

This is terrible. Terrible. else.

34:01

We should not have done this to far too tired.

34:05

I of course have a book coming out. Yes,

34:07

right. In March. And then like the book

34:09

is already out. That's why I know because

34:11

I have done a lot of

34:13

work and it got sent to production. And

34:18

I will be giving a keynote at

34:20

embedded online. In

34:23

April. In April. I don't

34:26

know what other conferences I'll be going

34:28

to because I'm still looking

34:30

for only online. But with

34:32

the book, it does mean I will be looking for more

34:34

conferences to attend. As

34:38

for other things, I have

34:42

origami goals in 2024. I did

34:45

see some really neat

34:48

resolutions that I'm

34:50

thinking about adding

34:53

1080p. No cage, your HD. I

34:58

remember Bailey used to tell me about

35:00

her resolution of reading

35:03

one book from every hundred

35:06

of the three decimal

35:08

system. So like the ones

35:11

and sixes are

35:13

biographies and eights or science. One

35:15

of everything. I never learned

35:17

that. I

35:19

liked that one. I heard someone was making a

35:22

resolution to eat at least 20

35:24

different shapes of pasta. I

35:29

made me think that maybe my resolutions need

35:31

to be sillier. I don't

35:33

have resolutions. I

35:36

took I don't know

35:39

if this is a federal crime and I probably shouldn't

35:41

admit it on the podcast, but if it

35:43

is, but some of the

35:45

sea glass we've picked up over the years at

35:47

our local beach, I gave

35:49

back to the beach. And what

35:52

was a lot of

35:55

fun knowing that people behind us

35:57

were picking it up. And you also almost killed

35:59

the sea. I was throwing it back in

36:02

the ocean. Which I'm sure that is

36:04

a federal crime. I

36:06

don't know why the seagull got in the way.

36:10

Maybe it sought the glass with food.

36:12

I don't know. But

36:16

yes, more silly things. But

36:18

I think my goal for resolutions

36:20

this year will be to come

36:23

up with a few silly resolutions. And

36:27

not serious stuff. Might

36:30

have a record from 12.0.7 coming up. That

36:33

depends on if we get everything done. 2023

36:37

is rapidly... We moved

36:39

on to 2024. We've

36:41

got several songs in the can. One

36:44

of which may or may not be allowed to be

36:47

used. It

36:49

was a Kickstarter reward for somebody. And

36:52

it turned out very well. But

36:56

it was a song for them that they could use however they

36:58

wanted. That's true. We're going to ask him

37:00

if we can put it on the record. I'm

37:03

sure he will say yes. But the possibility he'll

37:05

say no. After

37:07

all. I'll just have to

37:09

write it backwards. Wow,

37:13

that's for 2024. I

37:15

don't know. I'm hoping to have a good

37:17

relationship with work at some point in my

37:19

life. Before retirement. So

37:23

a lot of contracts next

37:26

year. Which

37:29

is surprising given last year. Yeah,

37:33

I kind of hope we're over burnout because we've got

37:35

a lot of work in the pipeline. We've

37:39

got a dog this year. That was pretty good for 2023. He's

37:42

so cute. Is it

37:45

weird having a dog who actually wants to do

37:47

the things we tell her instead of a dog

37:49

who just kind of thinks we're a

37:51

bother? She'll get there. I'm

37:53

sure you will. You again.

37:57

What is it you want? Fine. I will eat

37:59

my dinner. See, we're going to

38:01

finish this podcast and I think of like five things I

38:03

should have recommended from 2023. Well,

38:08

let me go on to listener emails. Alright.

38:11

First from Nelson Asinowski,

38:15

aka the

38:17

Proseic Hacker. Aaron

38:19

has bags of 8051s. Oh,

38:23

yes. And

38:27

they have done a

38:29

number of picking

38:32

up CPUs from various places,

38:35

scavenging them from

38:37

stockpiles. It's

38:39

about 25,000 ICUs, mostly new old stock. ICUs?

38:46

ICs, sorry. ICs. Okay.

38:50

Sorry, I thought that was an acronym

38:52

I didn't know. No, no, no. It's

38:55

a combination of IC and CPU.

38:59

Gotcha. Yes,

39:02

and so they were looking to offload them to

39:04

somewhere that could use them and they

39:06

were thinking makerspaces. Having talked, I

39:09

mean, we've talked about this on the Slack

39:12

before because we have a lot of stuff to get rid of. But

39:15

not 25,000 loose tips. But

39:18

makerspaces generally don't like having stuff

39:20

given to them like that. No.

39:24

But one of our listeners might be like,

39:26

yeah, that's something I can see. Getting to

39:28

the punch sign. If

39:30

you would like some of these or all of them, if

39:35

you can or know someone who can do something with them, email

39:38

the show. And I will

39:40

share the Google spreadsheet with you and put

39:42

you in contact. Did

39:45

I call him Aaron? His name is Nelson.

39:48

Nelson Asinowski. The Proseic Hacker.

39:50

Okay, Nelson. And I

39:53

will help you get in

39:55

touch with Nelson. This

39:59

isn't a... Do you have a STF4, 322, I

40:02

need one of those?

40:08

This is a, I like

40:10

that sort of thing. And I want

40:12

to collect more and maybe

40:14

I want to build several hundred

40:17

retro packages for

40:20

retro kits for making neat

40:22

things, which

40:25

Nelson has already done. I've worked

40:28

some with Ben Eater on

40:30

the breadboard CPU, so there's a good

40:32

chance tips work. They

40:36

are in Montreal, Canada, so that

40:39

may be an adventure. It's

40:42

not smuggling if it's in low quantity, right?

40:45

I think it's smuggling if it's not something

40:47

illegal. Sure, let's go with that. I'm

40:50

pretty sure that's the definition of smuggling. Oh,

40:52

I just don't know how you

40:55

would move it from country to country if it's

40:57

electronics. In a box? Maybe

41:00

in your socks. Anyway, we

41:03

will hook you up with Nelson if

41:05

you are truly interested, unless

41:08

your name is Peter, in which case, Peter, we

41:10

need to have a talk about your

41:12

hoarding tendencies. But after we

41:14

have that talk, you can totally have all of them. Another

41:19

email from Nathan Jones, who has been on

41:21

the show regarding

41:23

our show with Ralph Hempel

41:27

about Legos. Nathan

41:32

is the head of Pass

41:34

the Bricks. He

41:36

collects Lego bricks from around

41:39

his community and turns them into new

41:41

sets for kids who don't have any.

41:44

And he would like to grow Pass

41:46

the Bricks worldwide. Nathan is? No.

41:51

Nathan found it. Oh,

41:55

we're having link problems

41:57

here. Okay,

41:59

so. Nathan is not in charge of this Nathan

42:02

is instead telling us That

42:05

said thing exists. Oh All

42:08

right, let's get to pass

42:10

the bricks org Pass

42:12

the bricks org sure if they

42:14

said who founded that It's

42:17

in the San Francisco Bay Area so

42:20

it sounds like For donating

42:23

stuff that's easier if you're Local

42:26

to the Bay Area, but they have a

42:28

newsletter and stuff Not

42:30

look over at pile of Legos

42:32

my Legos. They're your legos. They're

42:34

already assembled. Oh, okay

42:37

Oh, well, I mean, it's like five. Yeah, I

42:39

mean there's some some leftover bricks. I don't think

42:41

they want ten bricks ten

42:43

bricks Okay

42:46

so We got those

42:49

did we say what it does pass the

42:51

bricks? Yeah They collect Lego

42:53

bricks they clean them up and they give them

42:56

to kids who don't have any. Okay I

42:58

missed that last part that we said that I think

43:00

you were focused on the fact that it wasn't who I

43:02

thought it was Which was totally

43:04

that I'm focused on a lot of things. I shouldn't

43:06

be no as somebody needs

43:08

to look to think about, you know

43:10

details That

43:12

sounds we're just gonna cut out all

43:14

the talking and just make the whole

43:17

show. What's next the sound what's next?

43:22

Do you think That

43:26

when AI's become sentient

43:30

Whatever that means to you Will

43:34

that inevitably cause the singularity?

43:36

Why? I

43:39

don't know. I was thinking about AI sentience

43:41

and I don't the Chevy dealership Retiring

43:47

Opposite of Becoming

43:50

the pet of a nice robot. Oh, I see No,

43:53

I don't think AI's will become sentient in

43:56

our lifetimes and I if they do I

43:58

don't believe in the singularity Do

44:00

you think we can have the singularity without

44:02

tensions? I don't think the singularity

44:04

is a thing. Okay. That

44:07

covers my questions for you, unless you want to go

44:09

back to the best of 2024 or 2023. Yeah,

44:15

I don't know if I'm gonna go back to it. I mean, I don't want to

44:17

just give a list of movies and music and stuff. That's

44:20

silly. So, yeah, we can

44:22

skip that. List of kits. Kits? You

44:26

finished the electro bulb right away. Yeah. You

44:30

finished the Antares puzzle box

44:32

right away. Well, that wasn't a kit. That was a puzzle. I

44:34

know, but it was fun to watch

44:37

you. I have not finished

44:39

my radio, which I need to finish. For talking

44:41

to your dad. Yeah. But

44:43

you did get some sort of network analyzer? Yeah,

44:45

I got an antenna analyzer thingy. Which

44:48

I will use on the antenna if I ever

44:50

get to that point. And it turns out your brother

44:52

is doing circuit design. Yeah, well, he's been doing pedals

44:54

for a long time, guitar pedals for a long time.

44:56

So, he's getting more and more into building

45:00

and designing circuits for that to make his own

45:02

kind of custom pedals and things. So, he's learning

45:04

about electronics more than I've ever learned. And

45:08

he's using the Digilent analog

45:10

discovery that we got from

45:12

Digilent. Yeah, we sent that to him. He's

45:16

using it a lot. Yeah. Including the

45:18

network. Well, he didn't know about the network

45:20

analyzer part. So, I told him about that. Where

45:23

you basically can get like a transfer function of what

45:25

goes in, what goes out. But

45:28

he's got that hooked up to a Raspberry Pi and

45:30

a monitor. It's just got this little basically

45:32

self-contained setup, which is

45:34

pretty cool. I don't think I realized that you could

45:36

run... It runs waveforms, I think

45:38

it's the analog discovery app. I didn't think

45:41

I realized you could run a... All right.

45:44

On a Raspberry Pi. So, that's kind of... You can do that

45:46

and make a little appliance out of it

45:48

instead of having it on your computer and fussing around.

45:51

I still think the Raspberry Pis are amazing

45:53

for that. They're really cool. They're computers.

45:57

They're better than most of the... 99%

46:00

of our lives are better than any computer we had.

46:05

Not quite, but yeah,

46:07

so he's having a lot of fun with that and sending me. Scope

46:11

traces and things. Look at the harmonic distortion

46:13

when you turn the gain up here on these

46:15

frequencies and I don't really know what's going

46:17

on, but I'm sure it sounds cool. Get

46:20

him on the slack. He and Tom Anderson can

46:22

have their own channel talking about pedals and music

46:25

and... I don't know if we should get those two together. It'll

46:32

be music and D.E.s. That's what we'll name the

46:34

channel. He doesn't believe in math

46:36

anymore because he did some characterizing

46:39

of capacitors he has and they don't

46:41

behave anything like it says that electronics

46:44

should in the textbooks because

46:46

they're real capacitors. Once you actually

46:48

put frequencies through them, they do weird things. And

46:50

so he doesn't believe in math as opposed to electronics?

46:52

It's a joke. Oh, okay, sorry. Sorry, I

46:55

was questioning why math was

46:57

the culprit here. Well, because math is lying.

47:00

If you learn electronics math, basic

47:03

electronics math, and you do all the stuff with

47:05

capacitors and resistors and all these things, it

47:08

does not talk about temperature dependence or

47:10

frequency dependence that much until you get

47:12

to way, way, way, way beyond basic

47:17

electronics, right?

47:19

It's only because the first 45 pages are how not

47:21

to lick things. What book are you reading? I

47:24

don't wanna talk about it. What

47:28

else? That's it for me. That's it, that was all

47:30

the other stuff in here. Oh.

47:35

We already talked about that stuff in previous episodes? No, we

47:37

haven't, but someday we will talk about GDP and we

47:39

will talk about compilers and things that we're

47:41

not gonna end up talking about today. I'm sorry about this

47:43

episode, folks, but it's the end of the year. I

47:46

still say you should just clip everything

47:48

but you sign in different ways. Exactly,

47:52

it would be like five minutes long. Right,

47:55

right, right. Well,

47:59

thank you. for co-hosting. Really

48:02

low energy. Thank you

48:04

for listening. Thank you

48:07

to our Patreon subscribers for their support.

48:10

Thank you to our show

48:13

sponsors this year which has been really lovely.

48:15

I'm not going to mention them specifically because

48:17

it's not one where they are sponsoring

48:19

directly but it's been really, really

48:22

nice. And

48:25

if you'd like to contact us, show

48:27

at embedded.fm. Or hit the contact

48:29

link on embedded.fm. Or

48:32

go to the Chevy of Watsonville website, go

48:34

to the chatbot and ask for me directly.

48:37

Ahh, let's see. We

48:40

need a poo. Found

48:42

out that it was Eeyore's birthday.

48:46

And Eeyore said look

48:48

at the birthday cake, the candles and pink sugar.

48:52

But they didn't exist. And

48:54

this distressed poo quite a bit. And

48:58

so here we go. This

49:00

was too much for Pooh. Stay there.

49:04

He called to Eeyore as he turned and hurried back

49:06

home as quick as he could. For he

49:08

felt he must get poor Eeyore a present of some sort at

49:11

once and he could always think of

49:13

a proper one after. Outside his house he found Piglet

49:16

jumping up and down trying

49:18

to reach the knocker. Hello Piglet. Hello

49:23

Pooh. said Piglet. What

49:26

are you trying to do? I

49:28

was trying to reach the knocker. said Piglet.

49:30

I just came around. Let me

49:32

do that for you. said Pooh kindly. So he reached

49:35

up and knocked at the door. I have

49:38

just seen Eeyore. He began. And

49:40

poor Eeyore is in a very sad

49:43

condition. Because it's his

49:45

birthday and no one has taken

49:47

any notice of it. He

49:49

is very gloomy. You know what Eeyore

49:51

is. And there he was. And

49:54

what a long time whoever lives

49:57

here is answering this door. And he knocked at the door. again.

50:01

But Pooh, said Piglet, it's

50:03

your own house. Oh,

50:07

said Pooh. So it is, he

50:09

said. Well, let's go in. So

50:12

they went, and the first thing Pooh did was go to

50:14

the cupboard to see if he had quite a small jar

50:16

of honey left, and he had so we took it down.

50:19

I'm giving this to Eor, he explained. As

50:22

a present, what are you going to give?

50:25

Couldn't I give it to, said Piglet, from both

50:27

of us? No, said

50:30

Pooh. That would not be a good plan.

50:33

All right then. I will

50:35

give him a balloon. I've got one left for

50:37

my party. I'll go get it now, shall I?

50:41

That Piglet is a very good

50:43

idea. It's just what

50:45

Eor wants to cheer him up. Nobody

50:47

can be un-cheared with a balloon. So

50:51

off Piglet trotted, and in the other direction went

50:53

Pooh with his jar of honey. It

50:55

was a warm day, and he had a long way to go. He

50:58

hadn't gone more than halfway when a sort

51:00

of funny feeling began to creep all over him.

51:04

It began at the tip of his nose

51:06

and trickled all throughout him at

51:08

the soles of his feet, as

51:10

if it was just somebody inside him saying, now

51:13

then Pooh, time for a

51:15

little something. Dear,

51:17

dear, said Pooh, I didn't

51:19

know it, and it was as late as that.

51:22

So he sat down and took off the top of

51:25

his jar of honey. I

51:27

brought this with me, he thought. Many

51:29

a bear going out on a warm day like

51:31

this would never have thought of bringing a little

51:33

something with him, and he

51:36

began to eat. Now

51:38

let me see, he thought, as he took

51:40

out his last look at the jar. Where

51:42

was I going? Ah, yes,

51:44

Eor. He got up

51:46

slowly, and then suddenly he remembered. He

51:50

had eaten Eor's birthday present. Don't

51:53

bother, said Pooh. What

51:55

shall I do? I must give him something.

52:00

For a while he couldn't think of anything, then he

52:02

thought, well, it's not

52:04

a very nice pot, even if there's no

52:06

honey in it, and I wanted, if

52:08

I washed it clean and got somebody

52:10

to write happy birthday on it, Eeyore could keep

52:13

things in it, which might be useful.

52:17

So as he was just passing the hundred acre

52:19

wood, he went off inside to

52:22

call an owl who lived there.