Embedded

In this in-depth technical discussion, Dr. Ken Lunde helps Elecia understand how to internationalize her (memory constrained) device. CJVK Information Processing, Ken’s excellent O’Reilly book on internationalization [Note: there is a 40% off print and 50% off ebook coupon in the last few minutes of the show.] Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP) Images of the bone ideograph that is different between Chinese and Japanese (U+9AA8) can be found on Wikipedia. Other sources of information:  Ken’s CJK Type Blog at Adobe Unicode specification, surprisingly readable though large  An introductory tutorial  Elecia found helpful Open source type faces Source Sans Pro OpenType font family (for UIs) Source Code Pro OpenType font family (for programming environments) Adobe’s open source projects and Ken’s contribution to those: Adobe Blank is a special-purpose OpenType font, making webpages wait to load fonts until they have the correct one AGL and AGLFN (Adobe Glyph List) maps glyph names to Unicode values CMap Resources are used to unidirectionally map character codes CSS Orientation Test are lightweight and special-purpose OpenType fonts that map all Unicode code points to glyphs that indicate their orientation based on the writing direction. Kenten Generic OpenType Font  provides glyphs suitable for typesetting emphasis marks in Japanese. Mapping Resources for PDF are used to derive content from PDF files that include CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) information.  You can also reach Ken via lunde "at" adobe.com  

 Jen Costillo surfaced briefly from her startup-induced blackout to share her wisdom about manufacturing consumer products. They discussed new product development and working from (and making modifications to) Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA. Jen and Elecia pined for this (probably not really a two pack) microscope.

Listener Jim Gf posed an interesting question about how to tell if you are a good embedded software engineer. Producer Christopher White joins Elecia to fail to give an answer. While they mention the embedded C test, they devolve into "why would you ask that question?", impostor syndrome, and methods for dealing with it.  (Normally our podcasts are recorded during the day but this one was after a long, fairly grueling day for the co-hosts. You may hear the clink of glass as we drank a nice Pinot Noir from Hahn Winery.)

 Jeri Ellsworth joins Elecia to talk about about co-founding Technical Illusions and their virtual and augmented reality product CastAR. Jeri gives an in-depth introduction to virtual reality, augmented reality and motion sickness. They also talk about hardware engineers working with software engineers, the CastAR's Kickstarter, children's toys, and tagging sharks for science.

 Jordan Hart from Digital Media Academy joined Elecia to discuss ways to make science, technology, and engineering fun for kids through Minecraft, Arduino robotics, and music.   DMA video: Robotics and Electrical Engineering with Arduino  TED talk: The child-driven education which describes the "method of the grandmother" teaching style. Georgia Tech online CS Master's degree Sincere apologies to fans of Gottfried Leibnitz, he had a truly amazing career that went well beyond calculus, read about it on Wikipedia. 

 Rob Mitchell and Elecia discuss management, what they like about project schedules, and lessons learned on the path from engineer to manager.

Phil King of Weekend Engineering returned to give Elecia advice on how to fabricate a board, both in a professional capacity and for garage projects.  EaglePCB is a commercial package which is also available as a free, noncommercial version for small 2-layer boards. Other open source packages mentioned include Kicad and gEDA. Some board fabricators provide free tools that work only with their fab houses (such asExpressPCB).  Digikey's SchemeIt  provides a way to get a PDF schematic (and a BOM), but falls down by not providing a way to generate a net list, a critical part of board fabrication. PCB West is this week at the Santa Clara convention center. How Printed Circuit Boards are Designed (1960 Edition)   Hildy  Licht electronic assembly and manufacturing

Karen Field (@karenfield) and Elecia talk about 2014 DesignWest, the embedded systems conference, and how to submit your idea for a session. 2014  DesignWest is March 31 - April 3, 2014. Call for abstracts is open, submit your idea! Speaker benefits include speaker room, speaker party, full conference pass, conversation starting badge for networking, plus resume fodder.

Elecia White and Amy Button discuss Amy's dream of going to Mars, her previous role in training astronauts to handle disasters, and her current work on a magic box of rocks that will keep Orion's air breathable.    Mars One  Amy’s applicant page (with video) Nixon's moon disaster speech Amy's favorite other applicant

Elecia White spoke with Elizabeth Brenner about devices that can be used to help families worry less about grandparents who live alone (and 87-year-old neighbor friends named Dolores).  Life Alert is the big name in senior push-button call systems. Life Call are the "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up" people. (See the commercial!) Life Call and Lileline have accelerometers to detect falls. Twilio allows programs to send and receive phone calls and text messages using its web service APIs.  If This Then That (ifttt.com) connects channels to allow an event to trigger other events (i.e. "failed to twitter today" -> text family) . Fibit API for connecting Fitbit data to other applications. We didn't talk about this but it is a similar idea: Goodnight lamp.