After many bouts of lightning round, we finally got our lightning questions answered by Eric Brunning (@deeplycloudy). Eric is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University specializing in storm electrification and lightning . You can hear some of Eric’s field adventures by listening to his episode of the Don’t Panic Geocast show. The Wikipedia page for lightning will lead you down many strange pathways. Though the Wikipedia Lightning Energy Harvesting page may convince you that it isn’t feasible (though some math might as well, as discussed on this show). For more about lightning interferometry, check out Michael Stock’s in-depth site. You can hear lightning on Jupiter if you listen to the right bands. Neat video of the Milky Way in radio waves reflecting off the moon Elecia really enjoyed The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

Lindsey Kuper (@lindsey) spoke with us about !!Con West, being a new professor, and reading technical journals. The call for speakers for !!Con West is open until November 30, 2018. The conference will be in Santa Cruz, CA on February 23-24. Lindsey’s blog is Composition.al and it has advice for !!Con proposals, advice for potential grad students, and updates on Lindsay’s work. The Banana Slug is the UCSC mascot. Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System by Leslie Lamport, 1978

Chris (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) talk about conferences, simulations, and future episodes. Simulation/Emulation: QEMU and Renode. Chris also noted there were QEMU for STM32 instances such as this one from beckus. For conferences, we named several but had no particularly useful advice. We did recommend classes such as James Grenning’s training on TDD in Embedded Systems and Jack Ganssle’s Better Firmware Faster. There are several (free) machine learning courses available from Udacity including Intro to Machine Learning which was part of the Self-Driving Car series that Elecia took. The future basics episodes were grouped into: Flow of program control (pre-RTOS) Design patterns RTOS information

Anita Pagin gave us an insider’s view of being a recruiter. Anita recently started at Carbon3D and is recruiting for software and hardware. Anita also does career coaching on the side. Given the advice she gave us for free, imagine what she could tell you if you paid her. Finally, Elecia’s favorite list of resume keywords.

Chris Svec (@christophersvec) returns to chat about recruiting for embedded jobs and to help us answer listener questions. Also, he’s looking for engineers to join him at iRobot. Want to get into embedded and don’t know how? We did a show about that: 211: 4 Weeks, 3 Days. Also, there is an EdX class that is popular and a Coursera course that may be useful. You can meet up with Chris at Hackaday Supercon in Pasadena, CA on Nov 2-4. Fulgurites are cooled lightning.

James Grenning (@jwgrenning) returns to discuss TDD, Agile, and web courses.  James was on Embedded.fm episode 30: Eventually Lighting Strikes. James' new company is Wingman Software. His excellent book is TDD for Embedded C.  James suggested Training From the Back of the Room! as resource to people looking to put together a class. He uses and recommends CyberDojo as a coding instruction tool. Before Agile was Agile-for-business, it was Extreme Programming. James recommends Extreme Programming Explained. James will be the keynote speaker at AgileDC in October.

Professor Angela Sodemann of @ASU spoke with us about new ways of teaching, robotics, and haptic displays. Angela’s robotics courses can be found at RoboGrok.com, including the parts kit. Note that they focus on creating usable robotics as well as teaching theory so there is math, code, and hardware.  

Noah Leon made a film: Love Notes to Newton. It features the people who love and the people who built the Apple Newton. We spoke with him about the Newton and about filmmaking. Noah runs Moosefuel Media. He wanted to mention Frank Orlando of OrlandoMedia, the art designer for the film and promotional material. Profits from Love Notes to Newton go to Be The Match, a registry of bone marrow donors. You can sign up for the Newton mailing list at NewtonTalk.net. The book about the Newton development is Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton by Markos Kounalakis. The documentary about Compaq is Silicon Cowboys (Netflix).  

Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) is an author, education writer and maker. She spoke with us about making learning fun (and subversive). Her latest book is The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, out in November 2018. The instrument gloves were the mi.mu (full version) and the mini.mu DIY kit (coming soon to Pimoroni and Adafruit). The mini.mu uses the BBC Micro:bit. Helen worked on earlier books including Mission Explore from the Geography Collective. These are out of print but still obtainable (and may be in your local library). She recommends the book The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. For meeting people in education and technology, Helen is looking forward to the next EMF Camp. As far as tech and education conferences, the BETT trade show is interesting. We mentioned “Phoenix” a few times, that is Phoenix Perry who was on episode 204: Abuse Electricity.

Christopher (@stoneymonster) and Elecia (@logicalelegance) talks about vacations for learning and hobbies then answered listener questions. Chris’ toys include the Prusa I3 Mk3 and the UAD Arrow. Elecia likes Camille Fournier’s book, The Manager’s Path. She also got to plug her own book, Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software.   Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis) at the Seymour Science Center