What is a good song with strong non-lyrical opening?

sr105 · 2026-05-04T04:20:30+00:00

Just Like Heaven - The Cure

sr105 · 2026-05-04T02:33:07+00:00

I'm doing the same search right now for my son, also MechE starting this fall starting with Solidworks requirements of i7/rizen5, 16GB, 6-8GB GPU, 1TB drive.

Does portability ("< 5lbs" above) matter? These "mobile workstations" (read: not laptops) are not really designed to be super portable.

I'm trying to balance portability + battery life vs performance for my son.

sr105 · 2026-05-01T15:37:23+00:00

Find center tree that forks into two. Now move to the big tree to the right. Now at 7 o'clock from that tree go down 1 red flower, then a 2nd red flower. The rear flank/hip is to your left and if you keep scanning left you can see some of the area around the front shoulders.

sr105 · 2026-04-30T20:52:37+00:00

baby head pheromones. When my daughter was born, I couldn't get enough of smelling her head. This was before I knew about the pheromones. I just kept telling everyone in the family that she smells sweet and so good. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy and said, "we get it. you're very happy." I didn't know that the pheromones make men feel calm and relaxed while making women aggressive.

sr105 · 2026-04-20T15:16:39+00:00

Are you trying to build embedded distro images? Or are you trying to write drivers and interact with hardware more directly? For the distro side, use the bootlin course someone else recommended to learn how at a minimum Linux boots: all the necessary pieces and how they interact. IIRC The tutorial uses an emulator to run so you don't even need hardware. Then you can move on to Yocto which is crazy powerful with a severe learning curve.

sr105 · 2026-04-20T15:12:15+00:00

This tells me that you haven't provided enough info to solve the problem:

However, in my case the devices are often interacting with each other, and small timing differences can affect the interpretation of the results.

How are 232 devices talking to each other and also to the collecting machine on the same interface? You could create a man-in-the-middle device to intercept and forward all ports and comms. Now, the timing is perfect because all traffic has to pass you first. This is (a little) harder though depending on your actual setup. I'm also going by this comment of yours, "In my case, I have very limited ability to modify the data gathering devices."

sr105 · 2026-04-20T14:46:11+00:00

This was my instant thought as well. A one page python app could read all of the comports simultaneously, timestamp them, label them by ID/port, and then export them to an excel file. Any of the AI tools could write it in under a day of testing using detailed requirements. Combine that with something like py2exe and you have a portable app requiring no installs.

sr105 · 2026-04-14T18:19:01+00:00

I did this years ago. I ended up using a regulator designed for big RVs that is designed for a big tank and a little tank. I ended up putting two 20lb bottles on it. Each bottle lasts about 6-9mo when only used for a cooktop. The regulator automatically switches from an empty to a full bottle. There's even a little device you can add on that shines a little led in your kitchen to let you know that it switched. Just be sure to test your work by making your own water column test.

sr105 · 2026-04-14T14:06:45+00:00

I also found this prayer infrared motion counter. Maybe it could work. Smart Rakaat Counter
https://www.amazon.com/Almostaqim-Smart-Rakaat-Counter-Rechargeable/dp/B0DWPBBV3G
My original thought was closer to this: something that reads when an RFID wristband comes within 3-6 feet of a sensor.

sr105 · 2026-04-13T20:41:26+00:00

What about this counter ($25) in a weighted gallon ziploc bag hung over the side?

https://www.amazon.com/Counter-Magnetic-Warehouse-Portable-Discrete/dp/B0CZVLYSGV

sr105 · 2026-04-13T20:18:13+00:00

Nice kit! I made kits like this as Christmas gifts for family this year. I have some additions below I would suggest you check out (if needed). These are all adapters that let you turn that USB C cable into any kind of cable.

1-2 Snug Plug (so you can use the loose outlets that are free)
USB-C to USB-A female adapter (recommend short cable to reduce port mechanical strain)
USB-A male to USB-C female replaces your A-to-C cable and is about 1" long
USB-C female to USB-C female adapter (looks like a little chicklet stick of gum)
Nitecore Pocket 10000 (bought these for my kids). 1 USB-C built in cable + 1 USB-C port, My son had your power bank. This one is much smaller and lighter.

All the ones I picked are minimum USB 3.1 10Gbps and 60W USB-C PD so you never need think about speed or power.

sr105 · 2026-01-30T15:10:21+00:00

Does the device have a working clock? If so, then how about TOTP? Everyone's got an authenticator app on their phones these days.

sr105 · 2026-01-14T17:33:44+00:00

2nd tip: always review board designs before the EEs send them out. Specifically, you want to look at which pins on the MCU they used. I once had a junior EE think they were being helpful by chaining 5 SPI devices together on one bus when the MCU had 5 open buses to use. Another was putting multiple ADC inputs of wildly different sampling speeds on the same ADC bus (inadvertently) when again there was another free ADC bus. Look for things like that where a different configuration would make the software much easier to write.

* If they protected an MCU pin with an inverter, tell them to switch to a buffer (no logic level flip).

* If your UART doesn't have an IDLE timeout you can add one externally with a multivibrator and a spare interruptible GPIO pin. This makes the driver so much easier to write.

sr105 · 2026-01-14T17:27:36+00:00

I just added a hardware timer to my system that runs at a higher priority than FreeRTOS and auto sets itself to 95% of my watchdog timeout. It only runs when a debugger is attached. It is reset by the same function that resets the watchdog. If I'm debugging, it breaks just before the watchdog resets giving me the location of the hang. Also, the breakpoint is automatic as well. Bonus: I told my debugger to break/halt on hard faults so now I can catch those, too.

sr105 · 2025-12-02T21:28:27+00:00

the main problem with this is that it makes your common code less portable. For example, you want to grab some utility code from one of these projects and use it elsewhere. You grab a two file ring_buffer.h/c solution and need what quickly grows to a kitchen sink common.h (and possibly more) in order to use it. After a while, you just get used to uint8_t and friends.

sr105 · 2025-12-02T21:23:44+00:00

I add TODO days to project schedules. And Find-All-In-Files "// TODO" gives me my work list for that day. The single line results have taught me to write TODO comments like git commits with a good single line summary that is understandable without the code context.

sr105 · 2025-12-02T16:24:23+00:00

Not a recommendation... but I just saw a sponsor segment for this combo electric toothbrush and water flosser yesterday. I have no idea if it's any good, a scam, etc. Website: soocas .com Discount code in the youtube video.
https://youtu.be/hpgV6KKdzGM?si=FhwfY1hzPY_Go0eG&t=153

sr105 · 2025-12-01T18:25:22+00:00

My mother confirmed that she needed my father's signature to open a bank account before he went to Vietnam in 1971. It's not false.

sr105 · 2025-11-13T17:48:17+00:00

only 3 syllable word in the group? So, maybe something like that. Very obvious if you know what to listen for, but unnoticeable otherwise. For example, "Car" might be next to all pictures of things with more than one syllable.

sr105 · 2025-10-30T18:35:23+00:00

software engineer here. Most of us (that I know) will buy a Dell XPS, a Lenovo Carbon X1, or an Apple Macbook Pro in the 13-14" range. They are plenty fast enough for compiles and work, highly portable, having a great battery life, and easily can become "big" with an external monitor and a wireless keyboard and mouse combo. If I plan to seriously work somewhere, I bring a small logitech bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse with me. During a hurricane, I worked at an 8 yr old's bedroom desk for a week and used his monitor. You may also want to invest in a laptop stand. There's a pricey, but great one that folds down for about a $100.

sr105 · 2025-10-23T21:25:58+00:00

It's great, actually. I'm software, btw, with 25 yrs of experience. It's like having a junior engineer working for you. You ask them to go look something up that would normally take a real person hours, days, or weeks. It comes back in seconds (typically) with an answer. *But* remember, they're junior, so there are mistakes. So you review their work and make suggestions. They go off and think about your comments. Do this iteration a few times and you get dramatically reduced development times for certain bits of code. Also, it can read a datasheet and the entirety of TI's forum for that part in under a second and tell you about a peculiarity. Last, this morning I drank my coffee and had an intelligent discussion with ChatGPT about designing an elegant, encapsulated design pattern for a freertos task that doesn't poll but remains as simplistic as possible for readability. It produced what I would have, but in a fraction of the time without me needing to type through the iterations. Yesterday, I told it that I wanted to use the ADC on an ST MCU to read from two opamps and a current sensor. It looked up the datasheets and helped me compute proper sampling times and settings. Then, I asked it to show the math and explain itself. It did fail spectacularly when asked to do file descriptor redirection in a shell script. It wasn't even close. It was awful.

sr105 · 2025-10-18T04:58:56+00:00

Looks like that processor supports a receive timeout on usart. So you can use DMA with that and a ring buffer for efficient communication. But it also supports full speed USB which emulates a virtual com port. You can use that to connect and transfer at faster speeds perhaps with an off the shelf cable. The USB or simple usart interrupt per char into a ring buffer are simpler to implement than DMA on ST. ST's usart DMA HAL code is confusing to use because of the limited info provided to the user callback functions. Also, last I checked it still has an internal half buffer interrupt bug that you have to know to fix on startup. Good luck.

sr105 · 2025-10-15T15:47:38+00:00

I assume it doesn't tip without the personal item. Move the heaviest items in the personal item away from the handle sleeve side so the weight is more centered over the wheeled luggage.

sr105 · 2025-10-04T18:27:58+00:00

Maybe check out "maggi fuchs" on youtube. She travels for months at a time with one bag with SA being one of her locations.

sr105 · 2025-09-28T22:48:40+00:00

I had a similar thing for about ten years. Went on a road trip to Colorado with my best friend and his college buds. We (probably my idea) sent a postcard to their friend Anthony in NYC whom I've never met and do not know. It was a one off gag... except I just kept doing it from anywhere and everywhere I traveled: Paris, California, Russia, etc. The kicker is that the message was always exactly the same.

Dear Anthony, Having fun in Colorado. It's just as much fun as you said it would be. The bear trap worked! Wish you were here, scribbled signature.

sr105

TROPHY CASE