void blog_init(void)

Hi there, I'm Russ. I decided to start a blog, the lifespan and exact direction of which will be a mystery to even myself...

I'm a programmer with a degree in Computing Science, having spent much of the last 18 years or so stuck deep in the world of interrupt handlers, registers, device drivers and stack frames. Well, not so much these days.. but I still barely find my work takes me 'above' the worlds of C and C++, with detours into Python once in awhile, and almost never into Java/C# or any of that high-falutin' stuff :).

When I'm not at work I find my interests lie in synthesizers, music synthesis, and electronics relating thereto. I've decided to write about my recent excursions into the fields of hardware design and, well, whatever projects I'm working on and/or find interesting on teh tubez.

Though I am not an engineer of any sort, having come from the CompSci side of things, in my years I've learned a thing or two about electronics and circuit design (digital; the analog side I'm still picking up as I go along) through my work with embedded systems and RTOSes.

I have a short attention span. I can't help but think about new project ideas, but to be honest I kind of suck at getting them implemented, so this journal is a way of organizing and setting down ideas. If someone else learns something from my writings I would consider the whole exercise worth it. If any of you dear readers [do I hear crickets out there?] can help me learn something, that of course is also extremely welcome.

Again, I don't know the exact directions this will take, but I can give a good idea of what areas might be visited in future postings:

• Embedded controller projects (esp. Atmel AVR, hopefully ARM and even some FPGA eventually);
• Circuit board design;
• Postings about 'neat' components for the electronics hobbyist designer;
• Embedded software techniques, tips, opinions
• Music synthesis, MIDI, control surfaces and interfaces

A hosted blog seems like the best way to

1. get ideas 'out there' before I forget (short attention span remember?);
2. get ideas 'out there' so other people will pressure me to finish them :)
3. get ideas 'out there' while avoiding web-site-admin minutiae, which interferes with 1 and 2.

[Hmm, seems there is a theme there.]

So.. if you stumbled upon this area I hope you'll find some neat things to think about. Please comment on, ridicule, suggest, ....


-Russ