Here’s what I’ve been reading today:
Gaming:
Outlast has a map of your brain, and it knows how to make you scream – It is a game I’ll never play, but I’m fascinated by modern horror games + look forward to watching some “lets play” videos of people getting terrified playing it… Oculus Rift at retail: The road to a $300 price point, secret features, and the threshold of success – This iteration of modern VR is spawning some interesting experimentation, e.
Here’s the deal – I scour through a ton of reading material each day and to start tracking my reading, I figured it would be a good idea to capture the articles I actually read. Additionally, figured it would be an good throw-back to the days when everyone used del.icio.us to share everything they spent more then 5 minutes reading. That social aspect has mostly been replaced with twitter and facebook, but there is so much weight from commentary and the pressures of the curated timeline results in much more targeted sharing.
A Dangerous Bias: action over thinking – A caution that it is easy to run into action but there is value in the upfront initiation processes and that they can help guarantee project success. Averages Without Variances are Meaningless – Or Worse Misleading – _A good reminder in light of the revelations on Reinhart/Rogoff that statistics are important and we should be careful in choosing and testing our tools.
A couple of months ago I decided I needed a project I could finish as the watering system seems like it will be forever on the horizon. I’ve wanted to make a vplotter for a while + seemed like it would be something fairly easily finished while giving me experience I could carry forward to the other projects on my plate.
VPlotters are a type of computer controlled drawing device, where the pen is hung vertically from two motors against a wall, resulting in a ‘v’ from the two control points to the pen.
[Editor’s Note] I started this post months ago, but a stressful bit of time at work led to me putting this on the back burner. It has already proven its worth as I remembered none of what I’ve written here + managed to quickly get back up to speed. Hope it proves worthwhile to you!
One of the challenging aspects of moving to programming microprocessors is managing the multiple clocks available.
I’ve got a long technical post coming on the clock system of the MSP430, a topic that I ended up having to become an expert in to get 1-wire working properly, but in the meantime there have been developments in the mspgcc world.
You may recall that I abandoned doing 430 development on Linux in part due to incompatibilities with TI’s compiler (IAR) and the sample code they provided. I’m happy to say that progress has been made, as reported by 43oh.
Between holidays and travel, I haven’t managed to put too much time into my watering project, so here’s a wander into the world of 3d printing to keep your attention.
I travel to Israel for work a few times a year and have thought for a while that I should own a menorah. It being the season for jelly doughnuts, I put in quite a search but everything I came across either seemed tacky and tourist bait or overpriced.