Last year was busy! It absolutely flew by, and the early part of the year seems so far in the past. I did a lot of traveling, got a lot of really great work done, and started to embrace my need for some down-time. In 2020, I’m looking forward to doing a little more of all of it. Highlights I got to go on a Zero-G flight to conduct an experiment for work!

This is the first post in a series I’d like to do of little Circuit Snippets: Small little circuits that you can hopefully cut and paste and use in your own designs, as appropriate. Or, take inspiration and modify them and do something new and interesting. (If you do something new or interesting, I’d love to hear about it via social media or email!)

So today’s Circuit Snippet is all about managing reset in systems with multiple boards. I’m a big fan of building complex systems out of LOTS of simpler systems. I gave a talk at the 2018 Hackaday Superconference about it, even. It’s really useful for a few reasons to include a shared Reset line as a sideband-channel in complex system. Let’s look at why this might be useful:

Right now, there are a lot of hot takes in the Open Source community about codes of conduct (CoCs). Linus Torvalds came forth recently, admitting that he was a jerk, and that his jerkiness has excluded technically talented people from contributing to the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel project adopted a CoC! It’s pretty basic, but not so bad as things go.

Why do open source projects benefit from having a code of conduct? Open source projects are the foundation of the internet. In my opinion, open source projects are the key to creating a better world for us all. The ideals of open source, free software to which we can all contribute and improve, from which we can all draw inspiration and benefit, are worth pursuing. Unfortunately, these ideals do not exist in a vacuum.

Structural and cultural issues exist which provide an uneven playing field. We do not all have the same resources, time, and life experiences. Codes of conduct level the playing field, and give opportunities to more people to contribute to open source projects. When more people contribute more diverse ideas to open source projects, we all benefit.

Hi there! Welcome to my new blog! This is a whole big fresh start for me. The last personal blog I ran was on a URL that I felt more and more disconnected from, and I hadn’t really updated it since 2013.

A lot has happened since then, and I’ve definitely tweeted, facebooked, and instagrammed a lot. But I think its time for a return to a slightly older vision of the web. A site that I control, where I can write when I want, what I want, and give it to folks I care about. And hopefully, through some small acts of kismet, other people will find it too!

If you’ve found this place through such happenstance, I’d love to hear from you! By email, or whatever other social media is current when you’re reading this.

So, how am I returning to the old web?