Stay ConnectedI am Elecia White alongside Christopher White. We’re here to chat about the interests, careers, and lives of engineers, artists, educators and makers. Our diverse guest list includes names you may have heard and engineers working quietly in the trenches. Either way, they are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and inspiring.
We’d love to share our enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM).
Copyright: © 2013-2023 Logical Elegance, Inc.
Dan Zimmerman (@dmz) spoke with us about voting, voting machines, building trust in software, and transparency.
Dan works for Galois (https://galois.com/ , @galois) and Free and Fair (https://freeandfair.us/, @free_and_fair). He worked on the US Vote Foundation's E2E-VIV Project on the Future of Voting. The artifacts from that project are on github: github.com/GaloisInc/e2eviv.
Dan (and Galois) worked with Microsoft on ElectionGaurd, a suite of tools to help make elections end-to-end verifiable, The tools are open source: github.com/microsoft/electionguard
The Helios verifiable online election system is also open source: github.com/benadida/helios-server
We failed to talk about the DARPA SSITH and FETT programs but if you are still reading the show notes, they might be of interest. We also didn't talk about the National Academies report on Securing the Vote.
In a surprising turn of tables, Christopher White (@stoneymonster) joins the show as a guest to talk about his career, burnout, and musical instruments.
Christopher attended Harvey Mudd College for his undergrad mathematics degree then got a Master's degree in physics at San Jose State University.
Some things he has worked on include:
His current band is 12ax7 (12ax7.fm). The outro music is a track called "Solstice".
Kate Temkin (@ktemkin) explained USB: how to get started, general orientation, useful tools, and when you'd use it in embedded systems.
Kate's website is ktemkin.com. She works at Great Scott Gadgets.
References for USB:
USB Complete by Jan Axelson
USB Embedded Hosts: The Developer's Guide by Jan Axelson
USB Stacks we talked about:
TinyUSB from Adafruit
Cortex libopencm3
For the host side: libusb
Open Source VIDs are available from Openmoko and Pid.codes
Kate recently gave a talk about making USB accessible. Part of the talk was about Luna, an FPGA based USB multitool.
Some open source FPGA tools:
Philana Benton (@TechnoPHILiANA) spoke with us about mentoring: how to be a good mentor, what to expect, and what not to do.
If you'd like to try mentoring, sign up for Philana's DivTekSpace (divtekspace.org). You can do a resume review, a mock interview, give career advice, and/or refer students to your company.
Philana's home page is philanaaurelia.com
We also mentioned imentor.org
Joel Sherrill (JoelSherrill) spoke with us about choosing embedded operating systems and why open source RTEMS (RTEMS_OAR) is a good choice.
Embedded #307: Big While Loop: Chris and Elecia talk about when and where they'd use RTOSs
Embedded #93: Delicious Gumbo: Joel gave an introduction to the RTEMS RTOS
Joel works at OAR Corp (oarcorp.com) on RTEMS (rtems.org). RTEMS runs on many development boards including the BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, and two FPGA boards: ARM ZYNQ-7000 and the Arty Board.
Joel recommends the operating systems book by Alan Burns and Andy Wellens. It comes in many flavors and editions including Real Time Systems and Programming Languages: Ada 95, Real-Time Java and Real-Time C/POSIX (3rd Edition).
NASA Core Flight System (https://cfs.gsfc.nasa.gov/)
Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) (https://epics-controls.org/)
Jay Carlson (@jaydcarlson), author of The Amazing $1 Microcontroller, joined us to talk about comparing microcontrollers and determining our biases. This was an in-depth comparison of different micro features.
Jay is an electrical engineer specializing in electronics design and embedded programming (contact). His blog is new and interesting.
We talked to SEGGER's Dirk Akeman about JLink on #218: Neutron Star of Dev Boards.
Matt Godbolt (@mattgodbolt) joined us to talk about assembly code, becoming a verb, 6502s, exploring compilers, and application binary interfaces.
Compiler Explorer can be found at godbolt.org. The code is on github (compiler-explorer/compiler-explorer).
Matt also has jsbeeb, a BBC Micro (6502) simulator. You can try it out at bbc.godbolt.org. Its code and more information is on github (mattgodbolt/bbc-micro-emulation). Matt recently gave a video presentation about jsbeeb for ABUG.
Some other videos that may be of interest:
CppCon 2016: Jason Turner "Rich Code for Tiny Computers: A Simple Commodore 64 Game in C++17"
Just enough Assembly for Compiler Explorer - Anders Schau Knatten
CppCon 2017: CB Bailey "Enough x86 Assembly to Be Dangerous"
CppCon 2017: Carl Cook "When a Microsecond Is an Eternity: High Performance Trading Systems in C++"
The best compiler book seems to be The Dragon Book.
Hyrum's Law on writing interfaces.
Bailey Steinfadt (@baileysteinfadt) spoke with us about the makerspaces, communities, following many paths, and misbehaving robots.
Bailey works at Dojo Five and Stone Path Engineering.
Area 515 is a non-profit maker space in the Des Moines, Iowa area. They supported their local emergency services with over 6000 face shields. If you are looking for something to do with your 3d printer, look at One Shot Bias Tape Maker and the how to use it video.
Bailey recommended the Makers On Tap podcast and grill mats for soldering. Elecia recommended the You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls as a book she's only picked up once in a bookstore years ago but has thought about as an excuse to pick up new skills.
Doug Harriman of Simplexity (@SimplexityPD) spoke with us about motors, controllers, and designing mechatronic systems.
Simplexity (or if you want to contact them)
Doug recommends Control Systems Engineering by Norman S. Nise. Elecia recommends Notes on Diffy Qs by Jiří Lebl from American Institute of Mathematics list of free and approved math textbooks. They both like the 3 Brown 1 Blue YouTube channel.
If you liked the part about how to choose a motor, you might want to watch Doug's Webinar on DC Motors & Motion Control Systems (you'll have to give your info to see it).
Dr. Katy Huff (@katyhuff) spoke with us about nuclear engineering, effective software development, and the apropos command.
Katy wrote an O'Reilly book describing Python software development to scientists: Effective Computation in Physics: Field Guide to Research with Python. She has been involved with Software Carpentry.
Katy is a professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering. She uses Bell and Glasstone's Nuclear Reactor Theory in her Nuclear Reactor Theory class.
Janelle Shane creates the AI Weirdness blog. (She was also a guest in #275: Don't Do What the Computer Tells You.)
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