Natuerlich, Jacob is the main result. But going back to work, that was a very interesting year...

Due to Jacob's sleep habits, especially early on I had some debuffs: -90% to short term memory, -30% to long term memory, -50% to IQ (Hello GWBush how are you Sir?b), -99% to spare time.

In 2013 my main job was to support industrial embedded customers in EMEA. In 2014 I kept doing that, but with less steam because I started a cool project that became a big product and program recently. As I was the first engineer on this project all I was doing was gradually letting ppl who are better than me to decide on the project details. I was really lucky that the engineer #3 in the project was so brilliant that he carried it alone for the months when I was almost incapable of intellectual work. On non technical side, the product manager who joined in Q1 is just brilliant in mediating between so many teams and groups involved. I hope to learn a lot from him.

In sports, I did not do any freediving in the open seas since November 2013. Every weak I go to a swimming pool to swim 1.5km freestyle and couple of times 30m dynamic without fins. Now it seems very easy for me so I guess I can do 40m, but flip turn takes too much oxygen.

My wearable Linux development box

works for 31.5 hours from an 1ah battery and weights just a few grams (not counting the battery).

Some may say that it is limited because there is no screen connection, but I work in a command prompt any way, and my mobile have a good screen that ssh/vnc to an Edison box that fits in my pocket.

Just posted an article about Intel IOT devkit. I think it is the most fair subjective view on it from the development team available online, good it is in Russian and I can always blame google translate if my colleagues read it :)

1. I was working whole weekend again.

Intel IoT Dev Kit Architect. #intelmaker pic.twitter.com/49tFrHUcx5

— Ajay Mungara (@mungara) October 18, 2014

Julia did not like it, despite days off this week.

2. Was glad to see that with ~10% of participants and with ~20% of those who finally built things I could speak Russian.

3. Bugz!!!

In the previous post, I've wrote how plans do not quite work with reality. If it started this way, the spiral never goes back on track.

Here is the plan (P), and the reality (R).
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The robot movie was shot in a controlled environment. Now I've taken it to Maker Faire Rome to be shown on stage and at a booth.

Here is the plan (P), and the reality (R).
( Read more...Collapse )

Some of the stuff I was working on recently in a professional video:



Going to show it tomorrow in Rome if it works (was broken in transit).

If anybody would like to develop an IoT app on Saturday/Sunday October 18th in Munich, and take home some cool h/w you'll be using for building this stuff,

you may register at the link.
I'll be there most of the time.

The best in depth explanation of the technical differences between Intel Galileo gen 1 and gen2

is located not at the official web site, but here. The official web site contains schematics, datasheets, etc, but it is too boring.

Having a meaningful feedback from a smart end user is one of the best resources a product development team can utilize when defining a new revision of a product. Recently one of the end users of a product I am working on wrote two posts on an official support forum. The first post was full of very good technical advises on the product, and our team will definitely take it into account for the next release. My colleague had replied with a sincere words of gratitude.

The second post was more metaphorical and contains some points that I would like to argue with. As the support forum is not a right medium for flames, I'll post it here.

"[Decision making about the product] is dominated by Genius Engineering Geeks*, who usually talk to other GEGs at their customers."
Yes very well spotted! Why is it bad?

"don't assign strategic guidance of this project to someone who has a PhD in kernel performance analysis..."
Wow! It was very difficult to guess but job well done! Indeed a lot of work I did in recent ~10 years involved kernel performance analysis for several RTOSes and Linux. The good thing is now there are new ppl in the core team who "can appreciate the beauty of artichokes (see below)

"Hand it to one of your (few, if any?) employees who can barely parse an array, schedule a couple of blinking LEDs and say "Hello World!" on a serial port,"
I disagree. Actually I wish everyone who call themselves "s/w engineer" is able to parse an array, but unfortunately there are still ~10% who could not. Seriously, I am not quite getting how being a mediocre engineer would help in developing a product.

"but is passionate about wasting his childhood on a ZX81 (Timex Sinclair 1000 in the US) or a VIC20."
Very good example. I would not say I was wasting my childhood when I was programming i8080 (actually KR580xx) and then Z80 when I was 8. In fact that was a very good experienced that helped me to become a decent s/w engineer who does not have problems in "parsing arrays and sending hello_world to serial".

"Also, think philosophically. When writing software, be inspired by the beauty of calligraphy, novels and art books. Hardware-wise, relate to charming or yummy natural wonders like roses and artichokes."
Sorry I am not getting that. How/and what you measure? Reminder: if you can't measure, you can't build.

"If in doubt when designing electronic wizardry, let yourself be guided by these three "G"s: be technologically graceful, gentle and generous."
Sorry I am not getting that. How/and what you measure? Reminder: if you can't measure, you can't build. That would be especially funny for a big multicultural team where everyone has own measures of gracefulness, gentleness and generosity.