On Publishing and Writing and Documenting

Reading I was telling my daughter the other evening that it is important to know how to spell, and just as important to know how to write (and write well). She’s going into 5th grade, so such a lecture may be a bit premature. No worries. This lecture will be a repetitive one. As I…

The Art of Editing, or Should Writers Use the Singular “They”?

Originally posted on Change It Up Editing:
I recently completed line editing a dystopian novel. After going through my edits, the author wrote to me with several questions, prefacing them with this statement: “I made the mistake of not pestering my last editor on details like these. I’m not making that mistake again.” He was…

Met a Real-Live Author Today

What’s a Real-Live Author? I suppose many of us, even those of us who fancy ourselves wannabe writers, tend to think of authors as the people with books that are published by Real-Big Publishers. In more generous terms, an author is probably anyone who writes stuff. Such a definition, of course, is a little feel-good.…

First Column is Out!

Developer@Life

Since SDJ tweeted it today, I suppose it’s okay to announce… I’m pretty excited to have a regular column appearing in Software Developer’s Journal. My first column will contain an introduction–who I am, what I do, and what I hope to write about. Along with it, there will be a column on interview advice, including…

Ack! Singular Nouns with Plural Pronouns

When Thomas Jefferson wrote “…all men are created equal,” was he deliberately excluding women? Of course he wasn’t! In his time, ‘men’ was a gender neutral and acceptable reference to mankind–male and female. Okay, I grant you that given the state of women’s rights, including voting rights, in Jefferson’s time, some may argue that he…

How About a Book Club at Work?

The other day I had a thought–Why not start a book club at work? I read a lot, and I generally like to have two books going at a time. One book is fiction (just for fun). The other book is something related to my career, whether it is technical/software, business, or leadership related. A…

Wired: Tech Time Warp

Fun. (Found via Eric Crane.) Tech Time Warp of the Week | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

Serial Comma

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook, “Having a change of heart. Thinking of adopting the Oxford comma.” It got me thinking (and distracted).

Exercise Boosts Productivity

Software engineers aren’t the only ones who spend much of the day sitting. But we certainly do a lot of it. This is just one case, but I can certainly attest to this: Being physically fit absolutely helps with focus and productivity at work.

The Planets Song

What does this song have to do with work? Nothing! But also, everything! Not long ago my oldest daughter was learning about the planets. She had to memorize them in order staring with Mercury and ending with Neptune (and I still can’t help but want to stick Pluto in there–we all have some form of…

Demultiplexer with Arduino

After my (somewhat failed) Charlieplexing experiment, I ordered a 3-8 line decoder (demultiplexer) to attempt an 8 bit LED counter in a much easier way. At some point I am wanting to created an LED matrix board, and this will require at least 32 LEDs. Unfortunately, the demultiplexer I ordered is an inverting demultiplexer. This…

Charlieplexing

For fun, I was going to create an 8 bit binary counter with my Arduino Uno. An obvious, simple way to do something like this would be 1-1 wires all grounded to the Arduino. That’s all fine and nice, but pretty soon you have a mess of wires. Also, its not a very challenging way…

Arduino/IR

Using an IR receiver diode and Arduino Nano I made a very simple program to read inputs from an old Toshiba DVD remote (which I decoded using the same receiver). Both the receiver and the remote operate on a 38kHz carrier frequency. This is important. Its very basic–If I see code 0xA25D807F, I turn on…

Soldering

Back in the day I worked at Raytheon. Most of the people I worked with were electrical engineers with many years of experience–And many of them took great pride in their ability to solder. There were a few debates over who was better at the craft. Until very recently, short of making blobs of solder…

The Stephen King Universe Flow Chart

As a constant reader (I love Stephen King), I absolutely love this post

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Tessie Girl: The Stephen King Universe Flow Chart

Shrinkify Arduino

Definitely something I’m going to try…

Down On The Corner – Arduino

#include <Wire.h> #include <LiquidCrystal_I2C.h> LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x3F,16,2); // LEDs const int pin1 = 13;       const int pin2 = 12; const int pin3 = 11; const int pin4 = 10; const int pin5 = 9; const int soundSensor = A0; // the piezo is connected to analog pin 0 int sensorReading = 0;       void setup()…

First Arduino Project – Distance Control Shutter Release

I picked up an Arduino last weekend after my friend Eric introduced me to it (this is the same friend who got me hooked on Mac). I couldn’t wait to order it on Amazon, and just decided to spend a little more on it at Radio Shack to have it in hand. Exactly one week…

Rupert Christmas Tree, 2009

I made this a while ago now. Every Christmas it gets a few more hits, and now its up to just over 6,000.

Writing

Like all software engineers that I’ve ever met, I have a few other interests. One of those is writing (although I argue that the ability to write, and to do so well is an important skill in the life of a software developer). My favorite book about writing fiction is Stephen King’s On Writing. He’s…

Blue Ridge

Blue Ridge

A Pro Experiments With His iPhone

Professional photographer Dean Howard spent two weeks in Vietnam with only his iPhone. Surprising results. [Leaving my DSLR at Home]