I’ve just finished my second and third printed circuit board designs and sent them off for production. The Spark Fun guys have a really cheap deal for hobbyists as long as you (1) aren’t in a huge hurry and (2) are willing to accept back what you send them. User beware, you have to proof you designs carefully as they aren’t going to do it for you. Which is why its cheap.

My first board was made for my small six-legged walking robot built by following the mechanical construction described in Karl Williams’ Insectronic book. In addition to the mechanics the book shows you how to make a circuit board using a PIC controller but I wanted to use an Atmel AVR. Plus I added an ultrasonic sensor with a pivoting head which required more pins than what the original design could support. Hence I made my own. It’s a very simple circuit (before laying out the board I built the whole thing on a breadboard in about 30 minutes). It uses an Atmel processor, a crystal oscillator, a bunch of headers and an LED or two. As I said, it’s simple. I really should find some time to take pictures + movies and post them, its a cool little robot.

This time I’m using surface mount packages for most everything on both boards. And these boards are more complicated. In addition to the Atmel processor, both are using a Microchip 2515 CAN controller + a transceiver. The first one is using a chip from FTDI that allows the processor to be accessible from USB. It’s basically going to be a bridge between my desktop or laptop and a CAN network. The second board doesn’t use the USB interface but instead plugs into a nifty little GPS module; this module requires a voltage level shifter to translate to the 2.85v used for serial communications rather than the 5v used by everything else. The idea is to create a board that reads GPS data and writes it back to the CAN network.

The last time I used the the Spark Fun service it worked out very well but I noticed the layout was shifted on the actual board a small amount from what I expected it to be. Fortunately I was very conservative with my traces so the board still works even if its not “perfect”. I used Eagle CAD again for these latest designs and carefully marked out the board size, thinking I must have made an error last time. But the Gerber files that got saved were offset again (and both boards were offset by a different amount). Seems like its a bug in Eagle.

I manually applied offsets and like magic the Gerbers lined up perfectly. The Spark Fun support forums talk about this issue but more about trying to fix it mechanically (and nobody else concludes its an Eagle bug so my conclusion might be hasty). My approach was to place “corner marks” at the four corners of the board directly onto the silk screen layer so it was included in the resulting Gerber files. Then I previewed the files in Pentalogix ViewMate and tweaked by hand until I could see the marks lining up correctly.

As soon as I get them back I’ll take some before and after assembly photos and post them.

The Vancouver Canucks were eliminated from the playoffs tonight in their 5-3 loss to the San Jose Sharks. They played the Sharks last night too, we went to that game, it was our last game of the season. We had 1/2 season tickets this year – 20 games – sometimes we saw good hockey and sometimes so-so hockey and occasionally hockey that stinks. Let’s not talk about the Red Wings game back in March.

There are many possible explanations for the problems this season. There were many injuries, especially to key players such as Dan Cloutier, Sami Salo, Matt Cooke and Ed Jovanovski. There were obviously – despite the claims to the contrary – problems between players. The Bertuzzi vs. Moore incident and its carry-over lawsuits, news coverage, etc. didn’t help at all.

My opinion: the players stopped listening to the coaching staff and management. It didn’t help that the Canucks’ best general manager got booted at the end of the 2003-2004 season. Brian Burke was a great influence on the team; Dave Nonis seems to be a bit of a loser by comparision.

Mark Crawford has been a great coach but he should have pushed to do more rebuilding of the team at the end of the last season. It was clear there were player issues even back then and its even more of an issue today.

Let’s hope these things will be addressed in the off-season. First up: get rid of Bertuzzi. Pay someone to take him if that is what is required. He can be a great player but most nights he is not a great player; typically he is slow, gives up the puck if the wind blows hard, and takes way too many lazy penalties. I expect Naslund to retire but if he doesn’t then consider trading him too. Not because he is a bad player but because he doesn’t play like he wants to win anymore.

Next, evaluate whether Dave Nonis is really the right General Manager for the club. Who knows, maybe he will work out, but now is the time to look around. Better look into getting more depth in goal too. I’d expect Cloutier to be back but Alex Auld probably won’t want to play second-fiddle to him.

I’m sure there will be people calling for Mark Crawford’s head on a platter. We should keep him, he has done a great job and is still a great coach. Probably management will need to put pressure on him but otherwise they should keep him. It’s the players who aren’t delivering, not the coaching staff.

Anyways, the Canucks are hosting the 2006 Entry Draft in June. Maybe they can pick up a few good players. You never know. Time to look forward to the 2007-2008 season.

Paul Graham’s article Are Software Patents Evil is worth a read. He argues that “junk” software patents are less of a problem than “junk” patents on non-software inventions (opposite of popular belief in my circles). He points out the fundemental (and maybe unfixable) problem is the inability of the USPTO to identify obvious vs. non-obvious inventions in a fast-moving technology sector; this much is obvious to anyone. He further explains why innovation at most software companies is unhindered by the whole mess. This part is less obvious but well argued. Another great article from Paul reveals where successful startups find the right Ideas.

Last week was the first week of working at Sophos in downtown Vancouver. I joined this company because they we are a fantastic organization making fantastic products in a growing industry.

The first week was like going back to school – I’m writing C and Perl on Linux and I forgot everything I knew about the Linux / UNIX system and library APIs a long time ago. Fortunately these are great people to work with, and they knew I’d have this learning curve for a couple of weeks.

We are doing pair-programming for most of the work. It’s a full Extreme Programming shop, and that has been really fun so far. I’d tried pair-programming in the past but the problem was never having quite the right set-up: we have special workstations with one computer, two monitors, two keyboards and two mice. Instead of crouching around a single monitor and trading the keyboard back and forth, both people sit comfortably and can immediately switch back and forth with no effort. Its really been a positive experience.

Another great feature of Extreme Programming: having the customer proxy (the guy whose opinion about features counts the most) sitting in the same work area all day long. Got a question about how the feature should work? Grab the customer guy (his name is Marc on my team) and get the answer immediately.

It was a little bit of a risk to join a company so different than my last job but I really think this is exactly the kind of place I like to work. Many times this last week I observed and participated in activites that reminded me of my best memories from development projects are Creo. I’m sure there will be days that I get frustrated too, but I doubt that will happen very often.

Today actually started my second week, and it was a great day. Learned a lot more about how our project is assembled and how the various components interact. I can hardly wait to go back tomorrow!

Today was my last official day of employment at Kodak. As I wrote earlier, I’ve worked there for more than eleven years and now its time to move on.

I walked around the main building on Gilmore for about an hour this morning. I don’t know hardly anyone that works there as all the software developers moved out to separate buildings years ago, but that is where I worked when I first joined the company. I was sort of odd walking around there, both exactly the same as I recall and quite different at the same time. Got a hug and a nice message from Judi on my way out.

Then it was back to to building on Willingdon to clean up. I found a couple of my things in my office that hadn’t yet made their way into either the trash or into my bag to take home. Dave K. sent an email note around re: my departure and so many people stopped by to say hello & goodbye. It’s kind of weird when you get congratulated for leaving the company by people who are still there. :^)

A group of us played board games for an extended lunch. Sean organized pizza. We played a game of Carcassonne; unfortunately I lost big time. There were six people playing so to extend the game time we included the tiles from several expansions: Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, and The Princess & the Dragon. We only really used the rules from Inns; the other expansion rules don’t really work very well but the tiles are great.

Some of us then followed that up with a game of Modern Art which I won with a good lead. I took Ticket to Ride Europe into the office today but didn’t play it; maybe another time.

I think the thing I’ll miss the most is working with my friends. I’m sure I’ll make new friends but it won’t be the same. Thanks to Sean, Michael, Tobias, Phillip, Norm, Andrew, Gordon, Marion and John K. for the games today, it was a great way to say adios.