Chris M.

We had a case where some small ants were showing up in our kitchen. I put down some ant bait and thought it could be interesting to look at a time lapse of the ants gathering the bait over a period of several hours. I've got an old GoPro Hero 4 that can record a time lapse at 4k, so I set that up on a little GoPro tripod thing, plugged in a battery pack and started recording. Several hours later I started editing and quickly realized that I had missed a few things in terms of preparation, oops! Let me point out a few of them here in the hope that you can avoid these issues if and when you record a time lapse. Inconsistent lighting As soon as I started editing it became apparent that pretty much each frame differed greatly in brightness. I'm guessing this was due to clouds. It took hours in post-processing to adjust add key frames to adjust the brightness thousands of frames. While the final result looked much better, avoiding the issue entirely with consistent brightn...

In February, 2014 I wrote an article about Apple's lack of support of NFC and their use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based iBeacons . Well, I was totally wrong! Samsung introduced NFC support in the Galaxy S3 in May 2012. Apple held out until September 2014 when the iPhone 6 was released with NFC support. Since then Apple Pay, using NFC functionality on the iPhone to make payments, has gotten huge.

Mental models are a valuable tool for engineers. I do engineering as a day job. Often diagrams, drawings, and other visuals will be created to help convey information to customers and facilitate discussions. Visuals, while always leaving out some details, and in fact the challenge of creating visuals being knowing what details to leave out, helps immensely with audience engagement. gitGraph commit commit branch feature commit commit commit checkout main commit commit merge feature A random git feature branch development model diagram A visual's layout, colors, blocks, arrows etc are far easier to consume than a wall of text. In spite of their relative simplicity when compared to text, they can be constructed to represent complex systems, relationships, processes etc. We create a lot of visuals to help convey information to others, are we using them enough when conveying information to ourselves? st...

Hello! I wanted to record some thoughts I had on predictions for ths coming year, if only to provide a record to check against in the future. Hope you enjoy and feel free to drop a comment with your thoughts! #1. Intel announces a new ISA to compete with ARM >30% - Not particularly likely in 2022 but more likely in 2023 and beyond Apple is selling a TON of Macs with M1 processors and these processors are very fast. TheRegister writes Arm's market share in PC chips was about eight per cent during Q3 this year, climbing steadily from seven per cent in Q2, and up from only two per cent in Q3 2020, before Arm-compatible M1 Macs went on sale. Apple's ARM based processors use an ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) that is newer and better designed than the x86 one used by Intel and AMD. While switching ISAs is a huge undertaking, users of the x86 ISA have higher power consumption and larger silicon area to perform the same operations. #2. Recognition for SAR-CoV-2 / C...

Hertz goes with Tesla The news that Hertz is purchasing 100,000 Tesla's has pushed the stock above $1000 its market cap over $1 trillion. This deal was an excellent move by Hertz and about the best one to get into the EV game that they could have made. #1. The Tesla Brand Tesla is a household brand, yet it has no advertizing budget. Tesla is also struggling to keep up with vehicle sales, achieving a 73% increase in vehicles shipped between 2020 Q3 and 2021 Q3. Hertz has gained a unique association with the Tesla brand. Interested in renting an EV or a Tesla? Hertz is that company now. #2. Worry free trips due to Tesla's charging network Charging on trips is one of the most stressful parts about having an EV, although this is getting better each year. No one worries about driving someplace and not finding a gas station but finding a charging station is a real concern with an EV, even in 2021. When I got a Tesla Model S in 2016 there were far fewer charging sta...

As programmers we often work several layers above cpu instructions, working with tools that make our lives simple, easy, and stress free! Hahah, of course that isn't the case. We face different challenges at different levels in the system. It really is amazing to think about what goes into a typical appliation level software stack, for example: These millions+ lines of code that a Linux, Windows, or web application is running on top of means the details of the hardware and processor are abstracted to a far away land. Processor features and the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) often don't matter from a functional perspective. Tools, OSes and other systems take care of lower level details. You might choose a particular processor or processor family for specific attributes, but often as long as you've got a compiler and other tools for that processor you don't really care what ISA is being used. Goal Care about CPU and ISA? Application develop...

JLCPCB is an offshore (Chinese) low cost quick turn PCB manufacturer that can also perform PCB assembly (SMT components only). I've had a half dozen or so boards built by them so far and their SMT assembly service has saved me countless hours of populating SMT passives (resistors, capacitors, inductors) under the microscope. Here are some things I've learned while using jlcpcb that will likely save you a TON of time and effort. #1. JLCPCB's parts library is NOT the same as LCSC's JLCPCB (PCB fab + assembly) is related or owned by the same company that owns LCSC (parts supplier, think DigiKey, Mouser, Arrow) BUT JLCPCB's parts library is only a relatively small subset of LCSC parts . You'll want to search JLCPCB's parts catalog for parts, these are the only ones that JLCPCB can populate on your PCBs. Don't do what I've done and put together a BOM for a PCB using LCSC parts and then find out that 90% of these parts aren't availa...