You may think from the title that I’m writing about Rabbit microprocessors – but no I’m actually intending to talk about bunnies. What you ask do rabbits have to do with embedded systems? Well read on and find out…

If you have ever had a vegetable garden then you will know that they are magnets for rabbits. Furthermore, you will soon find out that it takes extraordinary efforts to keep the rabbits out, as they have a tremendous ability to circumvent all sorts of fences.  When faced with such a problem, it is sometimes advisable to build a rabbit patch. The basic idea is this – you plant your garden and put a fence around it, and then on the outside of the fence you plant a second vegetable garden that is purely for the rabbits – i.e. a rabbit patch. The rabbits feed on the rabbit patch and leave your real garden alone because they would have to exert effort to get to it – and they don’t need to as there needs are satiated by the rabbit patch.

So what has this to do with embedded systems? Well let me describe a scenario to you that is almost certainly all too familiar to anyone that has been doing this for a few years.

It’s dog and pony show time and marketing is coming to pronounce judgement on your latest creation. Now if you are fortunate, the folks in marketing are a pleasure to work with. However from time to time, you run into someone who is incapable of attending a dog and pony show without offering criticisms / complaints. (I’m talking about the sort of person who would have criticized Michelangelo’s David at its unveiling). When faced with such an individual, I have found that the answer is to build the embedded system’s equivalent of a rabbit patch. It works like this. You intentionally put into the demonstration something that obviously isn’t quite right. Come time for the dog and pony show, the complainer latches on to the ‘problem’, and proceeds to explain in detail why it is wrong. You sit there and graciously accept the pearls of wisdom dispensed to you. You can then proceed to the meat of the presentation and get some useful work done.  The meeting ends and our protagonist walks away happy – and you have managed to actually have a useful and productive meeting. Naturally the fix to the ‘problem’ is a flick of a compilation switch.

So now you know what a rabbit patch is. I encourage you to use it sparingly. I also encourage you to watch out for it being used on you! I have sat in on a couple of presentations where I’m pretty sure a rabbit patch has been deployed. Fortunately I’m also pretty sure the rabbit patch wasn’t for my benefit…

On a personal note, I’m expecting to return to my normal blogging schedule. The long awaited hardware test may actually make an appearance soon.

It’s that time of the year again when I look back over some of the more amusing search terms that drove people to this blog. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

C shoot yourself in the foot codes

The cynic in me immediately thought that the search would be better if he reversed the logic and looked for C constructs whereby you can’t shoot yourself in the foot.

Can electrical engineers do embedded systems?

A profound question. I have already given my thoughts on this matter.

IT consulting no technical skills

No wonder so many consultants have a bad reputation!

How to goof off at work without being caught

No wonder some employers have a jaded view of their employees!

Well written code doesn’t need debugging nigel jones

Yikes! Just for the record I will state unequivocally that all code needs debugging.

Can sprintf be sued in isr

Presumably this was a typo. However the use of sued just seems so much more appropriate when it came to sprintf and interrupt service routines.

Want c code projects to put fake experiance (sic)

I’m not sure whether to admire the guile of this person or to shudder at the thought of someone with fake experience working on a medical device.

Normal folks and the nerds in embedded system

I actually thought this was fair enough. I know my kids think I’m weird.

I’m not completely useless! I can be used as a bad example!

That’s what I call a positive outlook!

Bad stack overflow experience

Is there any such thing as a good stack overflow experience?

Tools to write to eeprom of msp430

Good luck with that – the MSP430 doesn’t have any EEPROM

Are people on stackoverflow all dicks?

My favorite term of the year. I consoled myself by assuming that the searcher was actually thinking of the people at the other stack-overflow. Having said that, I don’t think the people there are dicks either.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I will return to my usual fare with my next post.

I heard from Jeff Gros the other day asking if it’s possible to subscribe to all the comments posted on this blog. Given the quality of the comments that are posted here, I thought it was an excellent request. Anyway, the answer is yes.  Just follow this link.

Regular visitors will no doubt have noticed a rather dramatic change to the visual appearance of this blog. EmbeddedGurus has grown dramatically in the last year and so we’ve moved to a better platform (WordPress) to manage the growth. Although the switch over from Blogger has been relatively painless, it’s still necessary for me to manually check all my previous posts making sure they are right. I should have this done in the next few days at which point I will resume regular blogging.

If you’ve posted a comment to my blog in the last week or so it may not have made the transition – for which I apologize.
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One of the interesting things about writing a blog is looking at the search terms that result in people visiting the blog. The vast majority of the search terms are quite reasonable. However, every once in a while a term pops up that brings a wry smile to my face. With that being said, I thought I’d share with you the ‘best’ search terms of the year. The terms appear below, together with my take on them…

Stay away from embedded systems
What can I say? This just conjured up images of someone’s mother telling them that going into embedded systems would be the ruin of them. It certainly was for me.

Crazy enough to use unsigned
I guess I must be a raving lunatic then.

Clueless consultant
I winced when I saw this. I’ll just note for the record that at least it wasn’t paired with my name!

Personality as it relates to programming eprom
Huh?

Why is c so complicated?
A profound question indeed. So many responses came to mind, but at the end of the day none seemed adequate…

Should I correct grammer and spelling on my blog comments?
Not withstanding the irony that ‘grammar’ is misspelled I found this to be an unintentionally revealing insight into the minds of those that blog!

With that I will say goodbye to 2009 and welcome to 2010. I hope 2010 is a better year for the industry as a whole and for my readers in particular. I’ll be back to my ‘regular’ topics with my next posting. As always, thanks for reading.

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