From time to time I comment on things related to engineers (as opposed to engineering). This is one of those times!

Anyway as you may know, someone tried to blow an airliner out of the sky the other day. What you may not know is that once again the perpetrator was an engineer. I say ‘once again’ because as this opinion piece in the New Scientist discusses, engineers are distressingly common in terrorist groups. Anyway, I suggest you read the article as it addresses some of the ‘obvious’ reasons, while suggesting something insightful about engineers as a group. I also suggest you read the comments as many of them are very thought provoking.

My next posting will be a little more cheerful.

My blogging software tells me that this is the one hundredth posting to this blog. I have to admit I’m somewhat astonished to find that not only have I found so many things to write about, but that the list of topics seems to be growing rather than shrinking. Anyway, rather than post on my (un)usual topics, I thought I’d mark the occasion by letting regular readers know what has been going on and where stack-overflow is going in the year ahead.

First off, I suspect that many of you have noticed that my blog posting rate has dropped in the last month or so. This has been primarily because as part of running my consulting business, I have been working on a major website overhaul which has consumed a lot of my time, but which has just been completed. If you want to see some of things I get involved in, then do please take a look. I’d appreciate any feedback you may have about the site. (It’s unclear if the hosting change has completely propagated through the DNS hierarchy. If you find yourself looking at a mostly blue website, then you are on the new site).

I’d also like to mention some upcoming changes to EmbeddedGurus in general, and this blog in particular. EmbeddedGurus is becoming a popular place and so a redesign is in the works to reflect its increased stature . I suspect that Michael Barr will have more to say on this topic in the near future. With regard to stack-overflow, it’s clear to me that the blog has outgrown its current template. As such, as part of the EmbeddedGurus overhaul I’m hoping to switch to a better template which is not only more suited to my posts, but which will allow visitors to more easily find previous posts, as well as allow them to search the blog.

Finally, to those of you that answered my request for reader feedback a few months back. You have not been forgotten! I hope to incorporate as many of your suggestions as possible in 2010.

As always, thanks for reading.

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Last week saw the release of Windows 7. Looking over the new features, the one that struck me the most was the effort that Microsoft had put into decreasing the boot time of the OS. If the reports are to be believed, then Windows 7 boots dramatically faster than its predecessors – to which I say about time! Almost contemporaneously with the Windows 7 announcement I took delivery of a beautiful new Tektronix Mixed Signal Oscilloscope. It’s a model MSO2024 with four analog channels, 16 digital channels, a huge color display, great user interface, tremendous connectivity etc. Despite all this, I’m disappointed with the product. The reason – it takes 75 seconds to boot. Now if I’m preparing a major debug session, then this 75 seconds isn’t terrible. However, most of the time when I turn a scope on, I’m interested in just getting a quick look at a signal – and then I’m done. For this usage mode, the MSO2024 fails miserably.

Now I’d like to think that this scope is an oddball in this respect – but it isn’t. I purchased a big fancy flat screen TV last year – and it takes about 5 seconds to boot from standby (i.e. powered, yet ‘off’) to being ‘on’. Maybe it’s my type A personality, but I find that time unacceptable (in part because I’m never sure if I’ve actually turned the thing on, or whether the remote control signal missed its mark).

Now without a doubt, these long boot times are a function of large processors, huge memories, complex RTOS’s etc. However, I also think they are equally a result of poor design by the engineers (or maybe poor specification by the marketing department).

Thus the bottom line – think about the boot time of your product. Your end user will appreciate you doing so.

Incidentally, if there is sufficient interest, I may publish some tips on how to minimize boot times in future blog postings.

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If I’m to believe the numbers for this blog, I’m getting both a large number of page views per day as well as a significant number of readers coming back on a regular basis to see what I have to say. While the page view statistics are nice, I actually value the returning reader far more than I do the one-time visitor who drops in looking for a solution to a particular problem. Thus I find myself in a bit of a quandary. While the page view statistics give me a very good idea about what is driving first time visitors to this site, I really don’t have a clue as to why anyone actually bothers to come back, or indeed what they are hoping to see on their next visit. Thus if you are a regular reader I’d be obliged if you could give me some feedback on what you (dis)like about this blog, and perhaps more importantly – what you’d like me to address in future postings. Feel free to use the comment section or to email me if you’d prefer your thoughts to be private. Thanks! Home