Embedded - 300: Introverts Disperse!

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Christopher and Elecia talk about the upcoming Embedded 300 party (Sept 7th!), podcasting, and listener emails. Please RSVP for the party. If you didn’t hear the link in the show or don’t recall it, contact us. Thank you to iRobot for sending us Root Robots as prizes! Embedded Patreon Merchandise! We send the Samson Meteor as our guest mic. Thank you for listening!

Hello and welcome to Embedded. That is the 300th time I've said that. That's not true. That is so not true because we didn't used to be called Embedded. But I'm Elysia White, here with Christopher White. And this is our 300th episode. Is it an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza? Yes, go ahead.

Oh, you can't see it. You can't even hear it. I'm singing in my head. Well, one of the first things we want to talk about is the party. It is in Aptos on September 7th, 2019. Aptos, California is just south of Santa Cruz. And yeah, you should come. You should totally come. And what's even more important if you're coming is you should RSVP now. Embedded300.eventbrite.com. If you don't remember, you can just ask. We have many ways you can contact us.

There are maybes, so if you aren't quite sure but you think you might come, you can log in as a maybe and I'll count you half credit or whatever. What should people expect if they do come? Well, it would be great if you brought a hack or maybe did something cat themed, maybe with an outfit. And the main reason to do that is so that because we're all introverts, we're all introverts, trust me on that, except for like you, Alvaro. Rude. introverts trust me on that except for like you alvaro rude and um so this this gives us a way to say hello you know i i like your cat ears uh what did you build sort of the questions it's just

an icebreaker you don't have to invent something awesome like a origami cat that purrs when you pet it. Or other super awesome thing. What are you bringing, Christopher? I don't know yet. I had an idea, but it required learning to do something I don't know how to do and probably buying something to do that. I seem to recall with Hats and Hack, we considered the show as our hack, and that was enough. Which, you know, don't shy away because you don't think your hack is good enough. I promise the bar will be low. It's mostly a hangout.

We don't have events planned or games or competitions or obstacle courses or lightning talks or it's, it's folks getting together and talking about whatever they bring. Right. Right. We talked about having lightning talks, but I'd rather just hang out. I don't want it to be super formal. I just want to,

you know, say hello and thank you for listening to the show. And Oh my God, can you believe that it's gone on for this long? It's gone on for this long. It's gone on for this long. That's what you usually say about an ailment. It is free to attend. There will be food. There will be drink.

And honestly, I know. Just one. Just one drink. Just one drink, so get there early. No, that's not true. There'll be cake. The more of you who come, the more cake I can order and the more ridiculous pictures I can ask them to put on top of it. So that's the main reason

for asking you all to come. And for those of you like me who is like, you must be kidding, I'm not going to a party. No, You don't have to come to the whole thing. I'm cool if you hit the beach, pick up some stickers, show off your hack, and then back to the beach. Introverts, you know, unite. You don't have to plan to stay the whole time. Introverts disperse. Oh, that's true. That's better. We can meet briefly and then wander off to our own corners. And we do have some prizes,

which you do have to attend to be eligible for. You don't have to like cats in order to attend or to be eligible for prizes. There will not be any actual cats. I do not believe there will be any actual cats. Unless a mountain lion crashes the party. In which case, it's a totally different party at that point. It's a mountain lion party. In which case, it's a totally different party at that point. It's a mountain lion party.

We did get some Root Robots from iRobot, and they are super cute, and they are just nice ways to learn how to develop code. Maybe those of you who are listening to this don't really need them except to try them out. But if you have a kid or a niece or a nephew or just a club you think might like it, they are cute. They're kind of hackable, right? Well, I mean, they're programmable. The idea is you program for them and you can do all kinds of things. What if I want to program them in Rust?

Then you write the iPhone app that programs them in Rust. I don't think I can target the iPhone app that programs them in Rust I don't think I can target the iPhone in Rust anyway, cool so low-key, casual but it will be fun because there will be lots of food and there will be lots of drink

and there will be lots of smart people and if you if you come up to us and say hello oh this is important we do not probably know who you are so just do not be offended

if I do not recognize you especially if I've never met you especially if I've never met you I don't know if we're having name tags that might be a good idea but yeah just introduce yourself

and that's all cool. And remember that you hear us in your head. I hear me in my head, too. And we're relatively friendly, except when we're cranky. But in real life, we're not quite this gregarious. Right. right and if you can't be there you can send stickers which we'll put out

and we'll be checking our PO box a lot send me an email and I'll tell you the address and I think it's going to be a good time. I'm always really hesitant about parties. And this one looked like it was going to be super huge, and now it looks like it's going to be super medium, which is great. And if a few more people come, that would be great too. I think it will be fun.

Yeah. Okay, so let's see. What else do we we have uh oh i have this thing to support the show yeah you should totally support the show you should do patreon if you can afford it if you can't afford it maybe tell people you like the show so that other people will listen and i don't know why this is sort of building our multimedia empire. Pretty small empire. Yeah, and I don't know where we're going with it. So, you know.

We have merch. We have merch. I finally got it together and made a Zazzle store with mugs and T-shirts. The mugs are really cute. The ones with the green on the inside turned out really well. And the t-shirts are okay. We had a bunch of them on there, and then I ordered some for us, and the quality was not as good as I liked.

So we took off the ones that I didn't like, which sadly was most of them. They're for people who need a t-shirt now. We'll probably do another run of Teespring. Yeah, maybe. I think so. And Zazzle has coupons all the time. So if you think, oh, the mug's too expensive, it wasn't that long ago there was a 50% off coupon. So you just kind of have to look or follow me on Twitter and I'll tell you when it happens. We don't get a huge amount from that either, right?

No. It's like 5% or something. It's more that people wanted it. Yeah. And I'm cool with that. I figure it's sort of advertising for the show, which is sort of advertising for a business that we don't want anybody to give us work. Are you sure? Oh, well, that's true.

Maybe we do want work because you quit. Yes, I did. I quit. I mentioned it in two podcasts ago. I know, but it was kind of in passing. Yeah, so I'm back in the consulting world. It's great. I had a project and it had a lot of things to do.

And I was like, oh, Christopher, you should do this. And now, unfortunately, I gave him the interesting part. You can take it back. Yeah. If one of you could hire Christopher to do something interesting, I can have my toys back. This is not really a demand for, a cry for job help, but you can always contact us if you need something. And if we can't help you, we might find somebody who can. I mean, our company has more bandwidth now that I am not full-time somewhere.

That's true. I asked the Patreon Slack what the show should be about because, I mean, it's 300. I mean, I was like, should it be about cupcakes? Should it be about ice cream? Should it be about, I don't know. Gerard Butler. Who's Gerard Butler? He was in 300, the movie.

There's a movie? Yeah. About our podcast? No. Who plays you? Me. Anyway, they said, they gave four thumbs up to philosophical show-related navel gazing. Oh, great.

Okay, well, commence. Go ahead. What kind of mics do we use? I think the question gets longer, so should I go through the whole equipment train? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe we should go through the equipment train that we have now and the minimum equipment train that we recommend for other people.

Yeah. We didn't start out with this. No. So we were just starting out. I think, so I do a lot of music, so I had equipment at that point. I think we used just some SM57s, which are kind of like... The Arduino's version of microphones? Not quite.

I mean, they're good. They're not amateur mics. They're the workhorse mic of everything. Like 90% of the time you see a microphone on stage or whatever, it's an SM57, and they're about $70 or $80. They're dynamic microphones, which means they don't need phantom power. And I had a bunch of them lying around because I recorded drums and I need about six or seven of them. So use those in some stands. And I think early on I did buy a specific audio interface for podcasting because I didn't want

to use my music one because it was too complicated. I don't remember, but I had a small, I think it was a four-input interface, something like that. I think you might have gotten a two initially, and then I invited people over. Focusrite has a line called Scarlet, and they come in various sizes from two inputs to four inputs, all the way up to, I think, 16 inputs. And they're not super expensive. I think the four-in input was a couple hundred bucks. That went USB into my computer and that was basically it. We had some pop filters because

the SM57s don't have any kind of plosive filtering built in. So you have to get a pop filter. And we used that for quite a while. But we got the overhead arm mics really soon. We didn't have floor mics for very long. Once we got going, I didn't want to use my 57s anymore, because they're not the best mics for kind of voiceover. They're more for singing and music and recording guitar amplifiers and things and drums. So we got some specific microphones for podcasting from Rode. Rude?

I don't know. It's got a funny, you know, sweet zero. It's the second letter. It's making like a flipendo. Yeah. So they're called Rode Procasters, I think. And they were also dynamic mics like SM57s, but they're more designed for broadcast. They have a different EQ curve,

a little more bassy kind of emphasis. And they had overhead boom mic, boom stands, which we're continuing to use and use those. And then we used that for a long time until I decided I didn't like that mic for my voice. And I bought a Shure SM7B, which is, again, a dynamic mic. You can see a sense of trend here.

It's specifically used by broadcasters and radio. It's a pretty common mic for radio and stuff like that. And at that point, I upgraded the entire interface back end, so I have specific mic preamps. Usually when you buy a mic, an interface it has xlr inputs which go into they have to be amplified before it can be digitized and sent to your computer um and so those analog amplifiers are called microphone preamps and they're of middling quality when you buy them as part of your USB interface. Because, you know, if you're paying $200, everything's the $200.

The electronics for the sampling and the digitization and interfacing with your computer and the microphone preamps and the buttons and everything. So everything's kind of medium quality. For the SM7B, it requires a huge amount of gain. It's not a very sensitive microphone. And the built-in preamps, I had to turn all the way up for me on that, and it was kind of noisy. So for music and for this, I bought a thing from Focusrite called an ISA Pre, which is two high-end microphone preamps.

It has some filtering and stuff and lots of gain. And then that goes into a Mark of the Unicorn audio interface, which is a 1248, which has 12 inputs, which we don't need for the podcast, but I do sometimes for music. And the nice thing about

the Mark of the Unicorn interface is it both is Thunderbolt and it also has Ethernet. And most audio interfaces are USB, which means you are limited where you put your computer and you're set up by how long a USB cable you can manage. With this one, you can run Ethernet,

which means it can be as far away as you want it to be. In our case, all of our music, all of our music, all of our audio equipment is way across the room, 15 feet away. And I don't have to look at it or touch it. And I just sit at our desk with my computer and it's hooked up to the audio interface via Ethernet. And that's very nice. Beyond that, that's the whole electronic setup. Well, we switched me over to a Shure as well. And we switched you to a Sub 7B after I went nuts and ordered five mics from Amazon and did a bake-off.

It was funny. He had me read Jabberwocky and we recorded each one and then blind tested them. It was kind of interesting that the Rode Procaster was not our favorite. No.

I think that was the last. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah, and then for software, I record into Logic Pro on a Mac, and I have a ton of post-production stuff that I have for removing noise. Usually I do the most work on guests because that's an uncontrolled environment. Even if they have a good mic, they often don't have a great room. So there might be some reverberation or something that's irritating or some background

noise that they can't control, air conditioning or a window. So I have a lot of post-production software that I can remove a lot of stuff with or at least tamp it down so it's more pleasant. Yeah, I was on another show and they were talking about guests and it wasn't necessarily for podcasters, but they were talking about general what kind of mic you should get. And then the recommendation was you should record in your closet with a bunch of pillows around you, which I mean would give good sound, but would be a little awkward. Yeah, this room itself is not great. There's a lot of glass in here, and I have a lot of acoustic baffles that I can move around. But even though we have in-studio guests, I have to do a lot of work to deal with reflections

from one person's mic to another person's mic. It's fixable, but I'm lazy. Well, it's hard to cover the glass, because then you don't get to see outside. Well, that glass is fine, but I could put the drapes down, but the other glass is pointless. Yeah, and the repair software is called Isotope RX, and it can do all kinds of things, some of which I've never tried, like adjust inflections and things like that. The next time we have a guest who does all up talk. Yeah, I'll switch it to all down talk.

What makes a good microphone? Well, that's kind of like what makes a good car. It depends on what you're doing it for. And even if you know what you're doing it for, it probably depends on the voice or the instrument that's going into it and the room that it's being used in. A lot of podcasters start out with something like a Blue Yeti. Which I have strong opinions about. Strong, strong opinions.

They're good mics. They're great mics. Podcasters starting out don't have good mic technique and they don't have good rooms and they don't have good stands that yeti mic stand is trash the stand is bad but they're condenser mics and condenser mics are the the uh the other kind besides dynamics there's another one but nobody would use that for a podcast and condensers tend to be kind of higher end, but they're very sensitive, which is great for, you know, if you're recording in a studio trying to record an acoustic instrument. It's not so great if you're in a room with ambient noise,

with somebody who's not used to microphone techniques, so they might be a little far off the mic, might be getting more reverberation or mouth noise so i tend to like dynamics for just for just vocal speaking especially start if you're starting out yeah and the blue yetis sometimes our guests have them and they are really great mics but they can sound phenomenal but you have to be they have to be set up right and used properly so when i have a guest, when I have worked out that we're going to have a guest, I ask them what kind of mic they have. And if they don't have a mic that I find suitable, I send them one,

which we'll talk about in a minute. But if they say they have a blue Yeti, I say to you, what kind of stand do you have? Can I send you a stand? And I basically beg to send them a stand because I just, they're good mics. It's all right if they're not touching the thing it's on, they're not typing or they're leaning there, then it's okay.

Nothing can couple through it. But the way the stand that comes with it works, it just transmits any kind of bump that the surface it's on gets hit with. So they're really irritating that way. And you can't just put books on top of your desk and then do it. No, anytime you touch your desk, anytime you touch your floor. Anyway. The nice thing about them is, I was talking about audio interfaces,

is they're all in one. The audio interface, the preamp, the microphone, it's all in the mic package, and you just plug a USB cable into the port, and you're done. Which is great if you're the only one recording. If you have two people recording, then suddenly that becomes not so easy to deal with. We have some other stuff. We've done field recording. We have a Zoom recorder for that, which is a little battery-powered audio interface that records to SD. And that works pretty well. Yeah, if we were just starting out, that might be the thing I'd start with.

Because you can plug in mics to it. Yep, they have ones that you can plug four into. So you can have a big roundtable podcast and away you go. So for guests, when I send them a mic, usually I send them a Samson Meteor. The reason for that mic is we had a number of criteria. One, it had to be USB because I'm not asking anyone to have specialized things for their computer. USB is totally the way to go. It has a headphone jack so that people can hear their own voice.

When we're podcasting, we need them to be pretty close to the mic. And so as we start, I say, what I want you to do is to get really uncomfortably close to the mic and then move your head back slowly, like an inch a second and count as you go back. So we get something like one, two, three, four, five, six. That was a little exaggerated. And, uh, and then that, and then we say, okay, we want you to be around two or three, which is usually much closer than they think. And, uh, after they finished building some sort of stand out of books, uh, we then talk about, we then talk about what? Oh, then we talk about the show mostly. Okay. So being able to hear yourself is important for keeping close enough. And so you can actually make sure you're maintaining about the same level of volume the whole time, because what you don't

want is a podcast that sounds good, sounds good. and then they turn over here and it doesn't really sound good anymore. And then they forget to turn back. Yeah, the thing about these mics, you can set it up. If you have a good studio that's dead, you can put the mic further away and turn the gain way up. And so it's very comfortable then. They can be six or seven inches away from the mic. Turn their head around and it's not going to matter as much

because the angle of their head versus the capsule of the mic isn't quite as different as if they're right in front of it. The problem is most people aren't recording in professional studios. We aren't recording in a professional studio. So in order to get good sound, you need to be closer to the mic so the signal noise is higher, so that you get a little bit more proximity effect, and so your head actually blocks the sound that's coming from behind you that's reverberating off the wall behind you or the window. So that's kind of one of the things with mic technique is for bad rooms, you've got to turn the gain down a little bit and get a little closer.

And I do recommend the Samson mic. It's a nice price point point and its stand is nice. It's like 60 or $70. It, you know, it goes on sale sometimes for 49 and sometimes I can only get it for like 70. Uh, but it comes in a couple of really adorable colors and form factors and it looks nice on your desk and it's not huge. The Yeti is kind of huge by the way.

It is huge. It's bigger than almost any professional condenser you can buy. It's like a football. I don't understand. It weighs a ton, too. And is the Samson a condenser? Yes, it is. Okay, it is a condenser.

I know we looked for a while not to get condensers. It's hard to find the USB dynamics for some reason. And so our guests sound pretty good. And I recommend having something like that for meetings if you do a lot of teleconferences. Because your voice comes through much clearer and you sound a lot more authoritative. And you'd be surprised how much people listen to you when they can really hear you. Yeah, social engineering for Hangouts. Next question.

What do you use for calls? Skype. We always use Skype. We have tried Mumble. I have used Hangouts and Zoom on company stuff. We've tried Face. We've used FaceTime in an emergency, and it is bad. It is bad.

Skype tends to just work, although we do special tricks. Do we? Yeah. So we don't just record the call on my computer. We have a separate computer that's dedicated to being the Skype connector. Right. So that, we have a little HP cheapy thing that came, that has like a 32 gigabyte sd for the drive

and that runs skype and goes straight into the audio interface as if it was a normal mic uh and then so when i'm editing it's just in there with logic as if somebody was in the room and then we have that track but then we often ask guests to record their voice locally which is pretty easy if you're on a mac it's's easier if you're on Windows, but it requires a little bit more steps, so I let people off the hook with that. And then we get that track from them, and I interleave it in.

That usually gives the best audio quality for guests. Sometimes we don't get that track, and we have to use the Skype audio, and I have to EQ it a little differently to make it sound good. But that trick of having a separate computer means that Skype isn't interfering with the computer that's recording. I don't have to think about it differently.

Yeah, you turn off Dropbox syncing and backups when we record because that's one of those things. You don't want to do it. Yeah, so I think you could record... Overly complicated is what we do. Yeah. Well, it's all simple now. It's all hooked up and I just push a couple buttons.

Yeah, he says that. And then our guest, a recent guest showed up quite early. Oh, well, there's physical things I have to do if there's guests in the studio. I have to switch some mics around. I have to do some cable runs. It's not quite as simple if there's somebody in studio. I have to switch some mics around. I have to do some cable runs. It's not quite as simple if there's somebody in the studio. That's okay. I didn't have quotes

or lightning round on, so it wasn't just him. Okay, so I think that covers that. And most of that was from Bailey. And it is true that Patreon dollars go primarily towards buying mics. we do have enough uh of

those dollars that they pay for i think all of the hosting at this point most of it i think yeah and it is paying for part of the party and oh yeah i don't think we're sorry about that okay well someday you'll find out more about that unless he clips this, in which case you might not. Let's see. What did other people want to talk about? As far as things, navel gazing goes, Chris Speck asked a really good question. What has surprised you about the show? And our immediate response was that anyone has ever listened to it that's a big one

that was the big one uh i mean to to be honest that we've continued doing it 300 is a long time it is and it's a lot of work we keep telling people we've you know thought we'd do six or 12 and then that would be fun and and then we just kept doing it um but then we have people like monk where i actually learned oh no i'm not saying we should stop i i think okay so the number of cool people we've met and people who have become friends through the show i remember hearing on npr before we started the show that you don't make friends after you turn 30. Unless you have a podcast. And I have to say it has introduced me to many interesting people, some of whom I'm friends with, some of whom I just know I could be friends with

if we were co-located and it was a little simpler. But it's amazing that, yeah, I definitely found more of a community. Yeah, and I think building that community was a surprise. I mean, it's not a huge community. It's a couple hundred people on the public Slack and a few thousand people who listen. And, you know, that's a good little community. And everybody seems to be positive people for the most part, with the exception of me. I am always surprised when I am somewhere maybe talking to a client and someone says, Oh, God. I listened to your show.

That happened to me. As you were leaving Fitbit, yeah. Yeah, a bunch of people said they listened to the show. People had never mentioned it while I worked there, pretty much universally. But a couple of times other people quit and they said, oh, I listened to your show, keep up the good work. And I was like, what? You never said anything before. Well, now I'm leaving so I can say something.

I never said anything about it at work and nobody ever said much about it to me. So it was interesting when I was leaving that a bunch of people said, oh yeah, enjoy the show. It was good to hear, but also I preferred not having that part of my work experience. Just pretend you didn't listen.

It's still easier to believe there's only a dozen listeners. It's really a lot easier. The other thing that has surprised me is something I realized not that long ago. Recording never got easier. No, it was a diminishing return. It may actually be harder than

when we started out, because I feel more of an obligation to do a good job. This show aside, of course, because this is just... I do more work editing than when used to when we started out. Yeah. I used to let the noise gate do most of the work. Now I edit a lot of it.

You'd think we'd start phoning it in sometime soon. I think this is the time. I think this is the episode. Yes, clearly. But, I mean, I get nervous, though. What? I never get nervous. Really? You get nervous? I don't know that I get nervous so much as afterwards I'm all gross sweaty.

Maybe you shouldn't be. Maybe people didn't want to know that, but... Maybe we should switch seats. Maybe that's the hot side of the room. No, because I'm freezing right now. It's only when there's a guest that you get nervous. Yeah, mostly only guests. Okay. I guess because I'm trying so hard to make sure I do everything to make them sound good

and to make them comfortable. No, it's stressful. It's stressful because unlike, I mean, we edit it afterward, right? But we still feel like we have to keep talking and keep the conversation flowing. When you're out with somebody for lunch or something, you're just having a normal conversation. There's pauses and nobody cares if, you know, somebody stares at their phone for 30 seconds or 45 seconds. With a podcast, it's supposed to be a flowing conversation for an hour, hour and a half. And that's hard to do. It's best when the guests just know what they're talking about and also are people who like to talk. Because then you come in, you ask them like one question and they go for 10 minutes. Then while they're talking, you review your notes and think of the next question. And that's really really easy it's a little bit harder when when guests are a little more recalcitrant and uh you have to dig a little harder yeah uh and then then

it's then it's a lot more work and that that's harder for both of us i mean nothing nothing against those those kinds of guests not everybody sits down and extemporizes endlessly um and sometimes those conversations are the best because we do get opportunities to dig in a little deeper than when if somebody's just going off for 20 minutes. Well, sometimes the people who have it all planned are hard for me because You have a plan. I have a plan. And it's supposed to be a conversation, not a lecture.

And so I try to, you know, break in sometimes and that doesn't always work well, but. I can just cut their mic. I know you've offered before. Put a clock up like debate rules. That'd be kind of fun. But yeah, it's, it's uh it is a lot of work and you do a lot of work that i don't do like finding and booking guests oh that was one of the things that surprised me is that

i thought about 200 episodes ago that we kind of were like we're gonna run out of people to talk to like it was gonna get harder and harder and harder to find people and book people because eventually we will we would have gone through everybody we were interested in talking to in the silicon valley um well in the beginning it was people came over to our house exactly occasionally did sky didn't really start skype until much later when we wanted to get kind of a broader range of guests um but now now it's mostly skype and only a few people come over that's because we moved and i'm in no danger of running out of people to talk to no i don't think so there's there's always interesting people and i admit i do a little bit more work trying to find good women guests and a diverse guest pool.

And so that's more work than necessary, but it's necessary to me. So I'm willing to put in that work. But yeah, no, I have guests. I'm not saying I have guests booked out six months, but I have my eye on a few people. And I have a few people I want to come back because I don't think we finished the conversations. Yeah, we're not in danger of running out. And I have questions about flex circuits right now that I don't just want the five-minute version. I'm ready for the deep dive into flex circuit technology.

Christopher doesn't seem interested. They're bendy circuits. I mean, that's it, right? Okay, so I've been interested in origami. I think we mentioned this and the curved crease origami, which is a different form. There isn't a lot of curved crease origami mixed with regular straight line origami yes which is a different form there isn't a lot of curved crease origami mixed with regular straight line origami and you can do more 3d things as well as making them compact by by doing straight lines and i think the overlap between those three things curved

crease origami regular origami and flex. And maybe the future of flex circuits, not necessarily the plastic really ones we have now, but the future. I think there would be something fun there, but I'm still thinking. Let's see, the Patreon listeners also were interested in us doing a clip show. Nope. And my only, yeah, that would be so hard. And then I was like, well, maybe we should do a lightning round clip show. Nope. And my only, yeah, that would be so hard. And then I was like, well, maybe we should do a lightning round clip show

that we can have like 10 people with me asking have you pet a penguin? And everybody would say, no, no, no. I legally cannot tell you that. No, no, no. And then there would be, have you ever pet a pangolin? And they'd be like, what the hell is a pangolin? What the hell is a pangolin? What the hell is a pangolin? No, no.

Probably just have to find all those cases where you ask those. It's not every time. It would take days. I guess we had all the notes. I could search the notes. I wouldn't trust the notes. Well. I mean, the notes are what I plan, not what happens.

No, the ones. Lightning round, usually we do. The final ones, we have the right ones. And then there was the idea of making a clip show for things that we didn't actually clip. I mean, like making a clip show with new clips of previous guests. And that was very complicated. It was almost worth it, but, you know, we have a party to plan. I don't even understand how we do that. Well, we would call up Andre, and we would ask him a question,

and we would make sure it was funny, and then he would answer in great detail. And then we would say, oh, but we didn't play this because it was too long. And then we would call up pretty much everybody else. If you want something like that, go listen to number 200. pretty much everybody else do this thing. Yeah. No, if you want something like that, go listen to number 200. There were like 45 people on that episode. It wasn't quite that many.

No. I like that Chris Gamble has the tag at the very end. Yes. It's just awesome. Wait, there must be more. No. What? Oh, talk about how things, tech, has changed since the first episode.

I've done so many things since then. I haven't. Yeah, you have. I don't think either one of us were working for Fitbit yet. I was. On episode one? Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Started in 2013, right? It was about six years ago. Started contracting in 2012. Okay. So. It was changed. Not, I think we've answered this question in various ways in the past, but the only

thing that seems to have really changed in terms of development is the focus on machine learning. Yeah. And I have gotten really changed in terms of development is the focus on machine learning. Yeah, and I have gotten really interested in machine learning. But it seems to pop up in more and more projects and people are thinking about it. Beyond that, I mean, the tools

are the same. Processes are basically the same with just more stuff. I'm not using as many pay-for IDEs as I used to. Yeah. I'm doing a lot more with GCC and Visual Studio Code. Yeah. And I'm doing a lot more Linux, but that's separate.

Yeah, yeah. But I didn't pay for MPLAB. Somebody else did, though. No, I'm still on the free version. All right, all right. Until we get to release, and then we'll talk about it. My laptop has a much worse keyboard than it did. We both got new laptops, and I was so mad because I wanted a new Mac

because it's like the only computer that I ever had that didn't self-destruct. And then I didn't get one because I couldn't handle that bar, and it turned out to be right because the keyboard sucks. Yep. I don't think much has... Security has not changed. Security hasn't changed. Nobody's improved that.

Processes are faster, cheaper. It's only been six years. Not that much changes in six years, cheaper. It's only been six years. Not that much changes in six years now. I feel like six years ago the maker community was in full force, but it still wasn't as widespread as it is now.

I think a lot more people are willing to call themselves makers. There's a lot more resources. There's a lot more maker-directed platforms and things, definitely. Yeah. Back then it was pretty much Arduino. And now Embed came soon after that. Embed was a little before, but it was still kind of...

Adafruit stuff. Python has become more... Oh, yeah. I've gotten a lot better at Python....useful before, but it was still kind of... Adafruit stuff. Python has become more... Oh, yeah. I've gotten a lot better at Python. ...useful and embedded than it was. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a lot... I don't feel like there's anything new or blockbuster that jumped in. It's just everything else, everything kind of just developed organically.

So, pretty boring. Maybe we're just not visionary enough. Let's see, I guess that comes with this, what would you say that sounds innocuous, but if you said it, everyone would know you were being held captive? What does that have to do with anything?

I don't know. I mean, this way we can communicate with our listeners in case we're ever in trouble and kidnapped and are forced to record. Or kidnapped and let us record a podcast. I see. I mean, in that case, I have access to my computer. I just send an email. What would you say?

Well, somebody really smart said, I took a new contract writing Rust on risk fee. I believe it's pronounced risk-ve. Risk-five. Is it pronounced risk-five? Yeah. That seems like something that would indicate that we are not free. And I love IAR.

Okay, so I do have some listener emails that I think are new. Well, we can answer them twice. Stop me if you've heard this. Stop it. Great. Stephen wanted to know, how much influence do you typically have on a final product on a scale from contributing in every product design meeting to being handed an immutable functional spec?

He says, I suspect it's very different between a toy startup and a medical slash aerospace industry, but he'd like to hear our experience. It depends on the size of the company and your role. And this is why I work for little companies. Yeah. Smaller companies, you're going to do a lot of that. At smaller companies, I had a lot of influence on those. Well, I was in the meetings. I got to say things doesn't necessarily translate to having influence, but, um, and you, you certainly have a lot of influence at small companies you've worked for, even the ones

you're contracting with, right? Oh yeah. You have to direct a lot of it because you may be the only, the only embedded person there. Sometimes I'm the only one who's ever shipped a product so that's that's cool too um bigger companies you get to do less and less of that kind of thing and you're kind of forced to specialize or own a small portion of the the system um but if you're if you're in the right role, you can cross that boundary. If you're a systems engineer,

those folks tend to straddle a line between hardware and firmware and kind of overall product architecture. And you can make a lot of design decisions there, influence which kinds of parts are used and how a whole system comes together. But it depends on your role within the company. And when you're that kind of person, you tend to not be writing a ton of code.

You're attending a lot of meetings, writing documents, and maybe writing some test code or prototype code or stuff like that, but you're not necessarily contributing to the product in a big company because people tend to silo those roles and you don't get to kind of stomp all over everything. Which is good and bad. Yeah.

I do have a contract that they gave me a spec, but it wasn't immutable. And I have a fair amount of freedom of pushing back on things that need to be pushed back on. But it is a spec, and I'm writing to the spec and redlining it as I go. And I know that there'll be a meeting in my future where I have to explain all the red lines. And that's not going to be pleasant. And they're going to say, but we should do it the old way. And I'm like, the old way was not better. My way is better.

My way is better. My way is better. Yeah. I got to name a product. Yes, but did you do that on purpose? I'm not sure. I don't remember. I think I was making a joke, but it's still for sale. It's a medical device. It's kind of terrifying.

Yeah, even the medical, he asks, I suspect it's very different between this toy startup and medical aerospace uh even the small medical companies had a huge influence over like what the ui looked like and how it worked and uh i worked with the electrical engineer at one place to influence the whole design inside and you know it didn't didn't have much influence on the industrial design or anything like that, but

a lot of the choices. But at Cisco, no. Yeah, that's the company. Fitbit later on, no. Early on, Fitbit was a little easier to... Should we go on to the next one?

Burning Toaster, I believe, is how this person would like to be identified. Is interested to know more about building systems on embedded devices. In their application, they have a tool chain that runs on a host machine and a multi-step process to compile all of it using make files. The question, how would they go about Dockerizing it? And is there a point of spending time to put your build for embedded systems into a Docker container? I've done this. Do you want me to? I mean, I'm going to say I use Windows and then run away from Docker. Yeah.

I've used a development environment that was based around Docker. I found it extremely cumbersome, and that may have just been the way the people who set it up set it up. There is a huge advantage to having the same tool chain easily accessible to everybody and not having to go through a big how-to document of, okay, first install this, and then you apt-get this, and then you pip install this, and then you edit this config file. There's always chances for mistakes there, and then people have things that are out of sync, and then you get the issue where somebody's like, well, my build didn't work. Well, mine works fine.

Have you tried this? And that's always a big pain. So you want everybody to have the same tools and configuration. So I understand where the impulse is coming from. Docker is a pretty heavyweight thing to do that with. And performance, I think there's a performance hit a lot of the time when you're using Docker. That may or may not be true anymore, or I may just be imagining that, but I felt like there was. But it can be kind of resource intensive. But you can do it, and you can look into doing it. It's not that hard, I think.

The alternative is to use something called Conda, which I've also done in the past and had great success with. Or C-Stuff? Huh? Not Anaconda. Conda, which I've also done in the past and had great success with. Or C stuff? Huh? Not Anaconda. Conda. Okay. Conda is kind of like Anaconda, but it works for everything. Well, Conda came out of Anaconda. Yeah.

And we used Conda extensively to get tools and stuff. And I don't remember how to set it up. It's probably harder to set up the Docker, but once it's set up, it's kind of like VirtualInf and Python where you're just kind of activating something, changing directories, it's pointing some directory pointers around so that you get the same tool chain and path set up. And the cool thing about it was that everybody had the same thing.

They could update to the new versions that maybe the DevTools people were releasing with a simple command. It was really kind of nice. So I'd recommend looking at Conda if you just want to have tools situated so that everybody's using the same versions and everything. It's a lighter weight than Docker. On the other hand, if you are building a medical product or something like that, you might want to go for a virtual machine because then you have your operating system. If you're building an important aerospace or medical thing,

you want to have a golden laptop. Yeah, well, you've got to lock all that stuff down, yeah. But virtual machines are pretty good if you have a lot of people. I mean, they get big and they're not great for everyone, but they're a little more gentle on Windows users. Fitbit did that for a long time. Most developers had Mac laptops for a long time. Most developers had

Mac laptops for a long period. Well, still do. But when we were using IR, there was no IR for Mac. So basically everybody lived in a VM or had the VM off to the side doing compilation. And that worked fine.

That's another way to do it. As long as you can suffer through VMs. It's funny. It used to be Christopher who was like, every client has their own VM. It's the way to live. And now. And you made me use VirtualBox. And then I made him use VirtualBox.

Which is the worst. Just had it set up badly. So bad. I've used VMs for years. And they've always been great, but I've always used Parallels. Fusion was good for a long time, but it got worse. But, man, VirtualBox, that's, yeah. The new IAR?

No. It's the new Windows Vista. I don't know. It's not that great. Maybe it's just my Mac. Maybe it worked great for everybody else. But, yeah. Sorry, VirtualBox people.

One more question. And it doesn't... Oh, this is from Brandon Y. This question is eight pages long. No, I wasn't going to do that one... Oh, this is from Brandon Y. This question is eight pages long. No, I wasn't going to do that one. Oh, okay. I might mention it, but I wasn't. No, this is the recently graduated with a BS in doubly embedded systems,

entering a master's program in doubly, wondering if you see a lot of software embedded engineers with graduate degrees, master's or PhDs, and what are the pros and cons of pursuing a graduate degree? I feel like we've answered this one. We've answered this one a few times, but let's do it again. Sure, I see some. Christopher has a master's degree in physics. Related to embedded yeah um and then he was

pursuing a phd and realized that i didn't get very far all of the physics phds he knew wrote software the same sort of software he was already writing and so yeah i could skip ahead. I could go back to software because that's where I was going to end up anyway. Pros and cons. Pros. You learn more. You learn more in a structured environment. You don't necessarily learn more. No, you learn more.

I mean, it depends. You should be learning more. That's the point. That's true. You're paying to learn. Depends on the program and whether you do a thesis or not. Uh, if you do a thesis, you know, you get to do a focused deep project of your own devising somewhat of your own devising and that, uh, that you can dig into and, and have to,

have to show people. If you do an academic enough degree, I'm not saying that CS and W aren't academic, but if you do a researchy enough degree, you get facility with academic papers, which can be quite useful if you're in an environment where that comes across. That happens in embedded sometimes where you're working with research scientists or something, and they have a vision, and it's all very wonderful except hard to turn into practicality,

and you have to translate what they're doing in maybe a paper, which is written in academic mathematics, to code. Yeah, we had a professor on not too long ago. I think it was Lindsey Cooper who said that learning to read papers is actually... It's a huge advantage. It's a skill and it's not something

you shouldn't expect to just look at a technical academic paper and expect to read it through like you would an Embedded.com article. Generally get paid more. to read it through like you would an embedded.com article. Generally get paid more. PhD gets funny. Sometimes it ends up being just software.

A lot of times it ends up being a special sort of software and you get paid more for the niche. Right now, as I'm looking at applying for a grant, I wish I had a PhD, but all I want is the piece of paper because I feel like I have learned most of what I want to know on my own, including the math and including learning to read the academic papers, although not as well as I want to. So it really depends on what you want to do. There's a good reason to have a graduate degree, but you can learn a lot in industry too. It's different information and you get paid for it.

So it's different information and cash. But if you have the ability to stay in graduate school, there's goodness there too. Yeah, I mean, the PhD, you're kind of narrowing. People with PhDs should probably be considering staying in academics because they're training you to be a researcher or a professor or move into kind of chief scientist roles or chief research roles at companies i don't know that getting a phd on

top of a master's degree would really help much if you're kind of a line-embedded developer, or you want to be doing that. Beyond the master's degree, PhD is a few classes, but it's mostly during your dissertation and teaching, which can be cool and useful, but it's moving you further and further away from kind of an engineer kind of mindset. Yeah, more into a research mindset.

Yeah. So I think if you're looking to do a PhD, you should know exactly why you're doing that. I did hear a good reason to get a PhD when I asked a guy why he had one. And it had to do with navigation and inertial systems was his PhD. And he said that before the PhD, it was something he did that was work. And after the PhD, it was fun. I mean, it became so much a part of him that sure he still got paid for it but it was fun now and that was that was kind of an attractive reason to me but i never had anything i wanted to be that deep into i kind of like shifting from application to application sure all right um steve bren, you wrote us a very, very long comment on a past show, which I will link to in the show notes.

The comment or the show? I guess the show. It does end with a request for how to keep an engineering notebook, but we actually already wrote that as a blog post. I wrote that as a blog post. And I think Steve found it shortly after he posted this. So all in all, Steve, thank you for listening and for commenting on our shows. And thank you all for listening. Come to the party.

It's our way of saying thank you. Did I mention it's free? Embedded300.eventbrite.com. You can contact us, show at Embedded.fm, or hit the contact link on Embedded.fm. And if you want to send us anything for the party, or if you want the link for the party, or if you want to say hello and congratulations on 300 episodes.

Yay! Yay! We're a little low energy today. Sorry about that. It is exciting. It is really. I mean, when I stop to think about it, the idea that people listen to us.

You can listen to us talk for 800 multiply it out, you can listen to us talk for 800 years continuously. Is that true? That's not true. No, that's not true. Although it is some like obscene number of days. And someone told me they were listening to the show like eight hours a day. And I was like, no, that's too much us. Healthy. That is so unhealthy. No more than two hours. It's about 12 days. That's right. 12 days of us talking. And other people.

And other people. Mostly other people. I hope so. Okay, so now Winnie the Pooh? Are you ready? Do you have anything else you want to talk about? No, no, no. No, that's it.

Happy, happy 300. And we're starting phase, phase four of the podcast with all new, all new ideas and things. We're going to have a quadraphonic sound. I'm going to start encoding in FLAC exclusively. So I hope, I hope you have a good data plan. Wait a minute. When are you going to start releasing the show in Ogdnash?

Ogdnash? I don't know. Ogdnash? No, I'm trying to figure out how your brain got to Nash. Ogdnash? Yeah. That's a person. What is the Og thing?

I need to know who this was. Ogden Nash was an American poet. So he's dead now. So I can't have him write any poems about the show. Og Vorbis? Thank you. Do people still talk about that? I don't know.

People have given up on Og Vorbis. Okay. Well, we're not releasing shows. That's why I was going to release it in flack. Vinyl. Okay. Well, we're not, we're not releasing shows. That's why I was going to release it at Flack. Vinyl. Oh. You know, we redid Our Living Room.

Just. We are releasing the show in the episode three, episode 400 will be on vinyl. And we, Chris set it up so that it's this really kick butt movie theater and it's beautiful. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's kick shin. And it's this really kick-butt movie theater, and it's beautiful. It's kick-shin.

But then we were sitting in there, and there are little hue lights, so there's blue lights, and there's lights over the couch. And then he set up this little star thing, so there are stars on the ceiling. It was really nice. And then he's like, you know what we need? We need a vinyl player. Yeah.

And it's not because he thinks it sounds better. No, vinyl sounds terrible. It's just because. I'm going to get so many emails about that. Also, the gold cables are a rip off. Now you got to get the platinum ones. Yeah, no, it just seemed like a room with, you know, a turntable going would be kind of cool, visually.

And the whole experience of pulling out a record and putting it on the thing and hearing the little hiss. Yeah. I can make that in some sort of app for you. It'll hiss. It's not the same thing. It all comes, said Rabbit sternly, of eating too much. I thought at the time, said Rabbit, only I didn't like to say anything, said Rabbit. That one of us was eating too much, said Rabbit, and I knew it wasn't me, he said. Well, well, I shall go and fetch Christopher Robin.

Christopher Robin lived at the end of the forest, and when he came back with Rabbit and saw the front half of Pooh, he said, silly old bear, in such a loving voice that everyone felt quite hopeful again. I was just beginning to think, said Bear, sniffing slightly, that Rabbit might never be able to use his front door again, And I should hate that, he said. So should I, said Rabbit. Use his front door again, said Christopher Rabbit. Of course he'll use his front door again. Good, said Rabbit. If we can't pull you out, Pooh, we might push you back. Rabbit scratched his whiskers thoughtfully and pointed out that when once Pooh was pushed back, he was back. And of course, no one was more glad to see Pooh than he was.

Still, there it was. Some lived in trees and some lived underground. And you mean I'll never get out, said Pooh. I mean, said Rabbit, that having got so far, it seems a pity to waste it. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.