House of Electrons

I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I took on a little programming project for Stevens. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal, I originally figured I would be done by Christmas, and I was, sort of. But then the bugs appeared and I spent the last two months tracking them down.

The first one was an optimization problem. I had a delay loop that worked fine under the old compiler, but the new one's optimizer realized that it accomplished nothing, other than waste time, which is the enemy of optimizers, and so deleted it. So I had to look up the correct incantations and spells to use on this compiler to ensure that it would waste time when I told it to.

There were some little bugs involving some changes to commands and responses, but those were easily dealt with. After all, I could see what was wrong there. There was also a problem with trying to herd a large number of ducks down the same path, but that was more of mental technique than a programming problem.

Finally, last Wednesday, I thought it was all working and shipped it off. Finally, relieved of my obligations, at least until they test it and find something wrong. So Thursday I sat down, and just for grins, rewrote a large section of code that had been bugging me ever since I first saw it. It contained about a dozen nearly identical sections which should have been combined into one procedure. It would need a couple of parameters to stand in for the bits that changed in each section, but other than that it was a no-brainer. So I sliced and diced and cut about 200 lines out of a thousand line file, and I was very pleased with the results.

Friday I hear back from Keith and the program I sent them seems to have a very serious shortcoming. Never mind that it got over the first major hurdle, you have to be able to finish the race, and it wasn't doing that. I went back and looked at it again, and by gum, he was right. Load the program on the actual hardware and it croaks whenever you ask it to do some actual work. However, run the program in the simulator on the PC and it works fine.

I originally blamed this discrepancy on the lack of an analog input board on my set of test hardware. Maybe something funny is going on here. Well, no, it fails when run on a complete set of hardware too. What's going on? I pull my hair. I stew. I mull over possibilities. I think of nothing. Fine. Just for grins, let's try the piece of code I reworked on Thursday. There is no reason it should work any better, but hey, let's just try it anyway. And it works.

There is no reason for it to work any better than the previous version, but work it does, so I ship it off. The code size is slightly smaller, so it occupies less flash memory. It uses less RAM, though the same amount is allocated. It was down around 70-80% of available space in both cases, both before and after, so it's not like it was bumping up against any limits. I can't explain it, but I will accept that it works. Maybe the answer will appear in a circle of fire tonight in my dreams.

Funny Hills

The road to Eugene is pretty much straight and flat as it runs through the Willamette River valley. You can see the Coast range off to the West and the Cascade mountains off to the East, but they are pretty far away. The valley floor is almost entirely farmland. About 25 or 30 miles North of Eugene a range of hills starts up off to the East. They pop up out of nowhere and the closer we get to Eugene, the closer they get to the highway, until just North of Eugene the road slices right through the tail end of the last hill.

We're driving down South today and I notice there's snow in them thar funny hills. You can see snow in the clear cut areas in this picture. Turns out the hills are called the Coburg Hills, which seems to be a big name in Eugene.

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.

Kari Out

At Thursday Lunch

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.

Lock Repair

I've written about repairing this latch plate with wood putty a couple of times. Today I finally remembered to take a picture.

It's got to take to be my ugliest repair job, but it's been over two years, and it's still solid.

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.

Morning Glory Cafe in Eugene Oregon

Drove down to Eugene today to resupply our poor, starving children. Dubious daughter selected the Morning Glory Cafe for brunch. I was thinking pancakes or an omelet, but it turns out to be one of them funny vegetarian joints, and they had neither omelets nor pancakes on the menu. Lots of Tofu this and Vegan that, which is fine if that's what you are after. I settled for French toast, which is usually better than pancakes, but they never give you as much, so it is not quite as filling. The serving size here was adequate, which was good as there was no sausage or eggs to back it up. There was some kind of strawberry stuff (sugar free!) laced on top, but there was also a side of syrup (extra sugar!), so you could go either way, sweetness wise. I tried it without and it was fine, but I was hungry so poured on the syrup.

I noticed that some people were wearing leather shoes. If fact my daughter was carrying a leather purse. I thought this a bit hypocritical (not eating meat, but wearing leather), but then I realized I was in there and I certainly am not a vegetarian. Maybe none of these other people are vegetarians either. Maybe they were all wishing for bacon and eggs but somehow got hornswaggled into coming here. I mean it could have happened. Then I realized that not all vegetarians refrain from eating meat for ethical reasons. Some people may just do it for health reasons, real or imaginary.

Still, the food was good, the prices weren't too bad for Sunday Brunch, and the place was busy. We had to wait ten or fifteen minutes for a table.

Update: There was a sticker on the door proclaiming this place to be a "Hate Free Zone". The busboy was wearing a T-shirt that said "I Hate Seagulls".

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.

Anime Hell

Chris Sobieniak left a comment. When I looked him up I found a cool video, no wait, a bunch of cool videos, too many to post. Go see for yourself on Anime Hell.

Quote of the Day

Diet Pepsi has introduced a new beverage can. Same volume, but taller than the industry average; the rules of geometry being what they are, it’s also narrower than average, and you can predict what happens next:

The National Eating Disorders Association said it takes offense to the can.

Stolen outright from Dustbury.