Said Svec

I just finished Hardware/Firmware Interface Design: Best Practices for Improving Embedded Systems Development, by Gary Stringham.  Gary sent me a review copy of the book, btw, but I get no money for reading or reviewing it.  Though if you buy the book via my Amazon link, I get a bit of cash.

Anyway – the book is very good.  Gary says, “This book is written by a firmware engineer but is directed primarily to hardware engineers.”  I’ve been a hardware engineer and a firmware engineer, and I think both groups should read this book.

Gary has been in the trenches of firmware/hardware co-design for 20+ years and this book shows it.  The book gives 300+ “Best Practices” which are actually usable and practical – a departure from many software or hardware design books.  Gary talks about low-level concepts like interrupts, register definitions, and debugging, as well as higher level concepts like planning, documentation, and block partitioning across multiple product generations.

Summary: You should read this book if you’re a hardware or firmware engineer.

This is one of the books that I’ll probably revisit a couple of times a year to refresh myself on A Right Way to do hardware/firmware co-design.

‘Nuff said.

I just finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross for the second time.

It’s a scifi novel which starts in the near-future with the first hints of computers augmenting man’s intelligence.  The Singularity draws near as man becomes more integrated with machine  – posthumans are born.  Well, not born, more like evolved.  Humans and intelligence change more rapidly than many can cope with.

The most fascinating idea from the book is that of cognitive forking (my phrase, not Stross’s): people can “fork” threads of their own consciousness to carry out tasks in parallel to their primary consciousness.  When a forked thread of consciousness is done with its task it rejoins your primary consciousness and you instantly know whatever it learned.   Want to research several things at once?  Fork a thread for each task, wait a little while, and voilà!  You’re smarter in 1/Nth the time than if you’d just had your primary consciousness.

The book also discusses what happens to people who are unwilling or unable to keep up with the ever-faster changes in technology and humanity:

“The faux-young boomers feel betrayed, forced back into the labor pool, but unable to cope with the implant-accelerated culture of the new millennium, their hard-earned experience rendered obsolete by deflationary time.”

“Capitalism doesn’t have a lot to say about workers whose skills are obsolete, other than that they should invest wisely while they’re earning and maybe retrain: but just knowing how to invest in Economics 2.0 is beyond an unaugmented human. You can’t retrain as a seagull, can you, and it’s quite as hard to retool for Economics 2.0.”

It is a GREAT book – one of the most original books I have ever read – highly recommended.

You can read the whole book online at Stross’s site.

I also recommend another book by Stross, Halting State.

I just finished the book “Blog Blazers” by Stephane Grenier. My three word review: “Not too shabby.”

I have to admit this book wasn’t exactly on top of my “to-read” pile. I’m not usually a big fan of blogs/books about blogging, podcasts about podcasting, etc. – it’s all too meta for me. But Ian Landsman was offering a free review copy on his blog, and I’m a sucker for free books, so I gave it a shot.

“Blog Blazers” consists of 40 interviews with popular and successful bloggers, including Andy Brice, Bob Walsh, Dharmesh Shah, Eric Sink and Jeff Atwood. Stephane asked each person the same questions, including:

• What defines a successful blog?
• Do you have any tips or advice on writing?
• How do you market your blog?
• What is your best monetization method?

Because each interview followed the same form it became a little monotonous to read in one sitting. I could only take about ten at a time. Many of the answers were repeated by several of the interviewees, which was a bit boring, but the repetition confirmed that their advice is probably good. Or they’re all suffering from groupthink, but I’ll go with the first reason.

As I read the interviews I asked myself, “So what? Will this change anything I do?” I came away with these thoughts:

• Original content vs. commentary: try to write as much original content as possible, as opposed to just commenting on others’ content. For instance, don’t write book reviews. :-)
• Use your own domain, instead of myfreeblog.wordpress.com or myfreeblog.google.com. That’s next on my to-do list.
• A lot of bloggers get found through StumbleUpon – I haven’t used that in a long time, maybe it’s time to check it out again.

Nothing earth shattering, but it’s a lot of good blogging advice. The book also included a number of blog(er)s that were new to me, some of which are now in my RSS reader.

My favorite quote was from Eric Sink. When asked “How long does it take to become a successful blogger?” Eric answered, “The time varies so much that any answer would be incorrect. I’ll just say this: Some things are not under your control. Persistence is.” (emphasis mine)

Becoming internet-famous overnight probably ain’t gonna happen – the best way to develop a good blog is to be persistent about writing good content.

So there you go – it was a decent read, well worth a trip to the library, and maybe even purchasing if you want advice on building your blog.