Embedded - 315: Trespassers William

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

Chris and Elecia talk with each other about non-work activities including music, office rearrangement, and origami. The Solarbotics Squid Hunting CearouSol Kit Samson S-patch plus 48-Point Balanced Patchbay Waldorf Blofeld Synthesizer EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine V2 Polyphonic Pitch-shifting Modulator Pedal (with Magic knob) Artelino is a Japanese print auction house

Hello and welcome to Embedded. I am Alicia White. I am here with Christopher White. And we both want to say Happy New Year. Happy 20-something. Lots of 20s. All the 20s. 2020, 2020, 2020.

It's a big year. 2020, 2020, 2020. I'm trying to figure out if the sun would go out. Probably not. Probably not. It's just us today. And I figured we would mostly talk about non-work stuff. It's the sort of non-holiday, or wait a minute, it's sort of the non-work time holiday season. Non-work time holiday season. That sounds like you don't work in marketing. Happy non-worktime holiday season. Well, we do have to get back to work soon, but before then, we have things to play with. You worked yesterday. Well, yes, and i'll likely work today

you're failing at non-work time holiday season i yes but i haven't been working very hard although i should be feeling guilty about it well i think that's a mistake uh so i we're going to talk a little bit about our presence and about what we're doing outside work. And yeah, that was pretty much it. So I looked on Christopher's wish list on Amazon. And I saw many interesting things, drum books and musical instruments. And then I saw this thing, and it was super boring. It was a patch bay, and the description was like,

it connects one thing to another. Oh no, it connects many things to many other things. That's the exciting part. And so I got the most boring thing on his wish list, figuring that was the thing he wanted most. And then the day before Christmas, the 24th, Chris said, you know what I really need in my office? A patch bay.

And we were walking along and I was like, what's that, honey? Knowing that it was already wrapped and under the tree. So what is a patch bay? So I reorganized my office over the non-work holiday season. You did. You really, really did. It looks great in here. Which before it was kind of a disaster.

And it's a really big room. And I had enough space to have a place to work and then space for music stuff. But it was arranged such that every time, no matter where I was in the room, I felt like I was being encroached by piles of stuff. But it was arranged such that every time, no matter where I was in the room, I felt like I was being encroached by piles of stuff. There were these quadrants, and they were like the designated quadrant for stuff. Yeah, you could have put a tape line down the middle. This is the work area, and that's the music area.

And I hated going down here, because it was just, it felt oppressive. So I actually started writing stuff out on graph paper, and then I decided that was too non-visualizable. So I got a stupid little iPad app that allows you to rearrange rooms and furniture. You were so excited about the iPad app. So I actually spent a couple hours moving stuff around in 3D to get an arrangement that I thought would be more inviting.

So now stuff's around the outer edge of the room. The middle of the room is kind of free. There's a couch, which I didn't have any place that was comfortable to sit except office chairs before. So I did that. But in the course of that, I rearranged all my music stuff so it would be more useful. And one of the problems with music I've always had is I have a lot of synthesizers or instruments and then effects, pedals or outboard effect things, and they all need signal routing. And I never really understood how people did this before. I just had piles of cables and unplugged stuff

when I needed to rearrange things, which isn't a great idea, actually, because unplugging and plugging stuff wears out the connectors, and nobody's disciplined enough to keep cables organized, so I just end up with piles of cables everywhere, and if I wanted to do something, I'd plug stuff in. But most of my synthesizers, you know, sat on a shelf somewhere, not getting used as much as they should be

because it was hard to unplug stuff and plug stuff back in. What a patch bay does, which I didn't really understand, because every time my brother had some in his studio, and he always extolled their virtues, and've read about them. Everybody says you got to get Patchbase. But every time I read a manual for one, I'd be like, what? I don't understand. This makes no sense because it's got modes, half normal and normal and through and non-normal. And it just switches to do stuff. i finally gave up and tried to understand it but the only way to understand it is try to actually use one that was my mistake i never

tried to plan out my studio but what it does is it allows you to keep all of your stuff plugged in and it routes signals from one thing to another plugged in you mean the signals plugged in not necessarily the power to the wall. No, no, no, not a power. The power is, you always, I mean, there's no solution for power except power strips. This is the audio signals. And it takes all of your outputs and your inputs

and sets them up so they can be plugged into the back of this thing forever. So you never have to unplug anything again. The patch pad. And depending on how you have the switches arranged on the front, you can arrange that back plug-in so that the usual stuff you have the most common setup you use like i want this synth and i want to be plugged into the inputs one and two of this audio interface and i want these effects and

i want them arranged such like plugged into each other this way and so you set up the back like that um but at the front there's also jacks and at the front if you plug something in it defeats your routing at the back and allows you to plug anything to anything else so if i want a different synth to go somewhere else i can just put a little three inch or six inch patch cable from one port on the front to the other and so I can rearrange my whole studio, how these audio signals are routed just by unplugging and plugging short cables at the front, like a telephone patch.

I mean, it looks, it's the same thing. Like they used to route calls. So you do that and it's much cleaner and you have to have more cables because you have to have enough to have all your stuff plugged in at all times. Plus the little rearranger cables.

Plus the little rearranger cables, but they're short. And you don't need too many of those if you've arranged it properly at the back so your most common setup requires no patching. Which totally required a lot of grass paper. Yes, I'm not even done. But all your cables are hidden away in the back for the most part,

and everything gets cleaned up, and you can have everything set out, and it looks really nice, and you don't have to fight. So that's a long explanation of the boring patch bay, which now I want patch bays for everything. I want USB patch bays. I want power patch bays. Well, I sort of have one of those. I mean, I have like three power strips, and which one is on at a time well for my pedals i have a little box and it's got 10 nine-fold outs

and you just take little short cables from the box to all the pedals so you don't have to have a wall wart for each pedal do you use pedals with synthesizers yeah oh right you must because you had pedals before you had guitar. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so yes, it's lovely and it's cleaned up my desk and it's very nice. It got me thinking about tools that make life easier and just make people happier that aren't that expensive. And what else is out there that just isn't that expensive but really is helpful?

Yeah, boring stuff. Boring stuff. Boring stuff that cleans up your life, yeah. Very Marie Kondo. Oh, she likes putting away clutter, yeah. But the great thing is I had all these cables all over the place, some in drawers and stuff, and they weren't really getting used because I would never have everything plugged in. Now my drawers are empty because the cables are all plugged in.

Excuse me, you have to write down a show title. So now I have space in my drawers to put other stuff away. My drawers are empty. I'm sorry, guys. This is just what the show is going to be like. This is the first show of 2020. So we're trying to... We're trying to set the bar suitably low.

So we're trying to beat this. Yeah. We're trying to beat this with forthcoming shows. It's like when people are nervous about being guests, I explain to them we had our cat on the show and that was the only bar they had to... Somebody offered to transcribe shows for us and to do one for free. It was sort of a spam email.

Yeah. And I really want to send them the cat one just to see if it, you know, if they type meow or if they do that bracket thing that just says indecipherable, inaudible. Yeah. Part of rearranging your office,

you said that if we had guests we might be able to record on the couch yeah why are we recording at the desk i haven't figured that out yet i mean i haven't i know why we're going to desk i haven't figured out how not to um because it requires freestanding mic stands which aren't quite as nice to use as these oh we have these little arms that hang over and if you're sitting on the, it's hard to face the guests unless you turn. So now that becomes... And then your airway is constricted and you don't sound as

good. So I thought maybe we'd put the guest over there. Yeah, you. You go sit over there on the couch. We'll be over here looking like adults. Or I could sit over there. Truthfully, I'll probably end up sitting over there, which is fine. We don't have that many people who come and visit us anyway. We had a few this year.

We have. The previous year, yeah. And I should point out that MoHeat was a listener request, which just goes to show that when you request people, I do listen. I don't always do it, but I do listen. And if you actually know the person, it's much easier for me. So back to Christmas presents. Sure.

I also got you a squid chaser. Squid chaser. Yeah. The solar robotics kit. Solar robotics, I think it was a company. Solar robotics? Yeah. You know, it's one of these laser cut wood kits that you snap together and it's very clever and it had a little airship. And then on the other side of kind of a weighted teeter totter, it had a little squid and they rest on a point on a thing. And then the airship has a little propeller, and it has a couple of solar cells, and it had a very clever circuit.

Usually with solar stuff, I thought... Solar stuff I've seen in the past, I thought was just like, if it had enough voltage coming from the solar cells, then it would run, which means you had to have stuff in the sun all the time. But this had a little transistor and capacitor, and it must have a little comparator thing in there. And it uses the solar cells to charge the capacitor, and then when it gets enough voltage to run for a little bit,

it goes ahead and discharges, and the propeller goes, and it spins around for a little bit, and then it just goes back to idle charging up. So it actually goes periodically, even in normal kind of ambient daylight in a room. And when you say goes, it turns on its little propeller on the ship. And the ship is balanced by a squid on the other side. And then there's a little point in between them that is kind of teeter-tottery, but circular.

I'm sure there's a word for that. Balance point, I don't know. Balance point. And so the propeller goes and the whole thing starts going, and then the light stops providing enough energy, or the capacitors drain, and then it keeps spinning until at some point it gets enough solar power that it turns on its little yeah if it's got enough if it's got enough it's

got low enough friction that'll spin for quite a while uh sometimes long enough to charge up but often like i mean when it's in the sun yeah it was neat it was fun to build a little bit of soldering a little bit of soldering there There was a lot of the wood stuff. It took you a little longer than I thought. Was it just because you were playing? No. There was a lot of parts and the soldering had multiple steps where you had to test it. So they wanted you to assemble the electronics and test it before you mounted it in the actual sculpture thing. And that required, I finished soldering it at night and there's no lights.

Right. There's no lights anymore that emit enough light besides incandescence, which nobody has, that made it go. So I had to wait till morning. And then you have to, after you prove that it works, you nobody has, that made it go. So I had to wait until morning. And then you have to after you prove that it works, you have to desolder it to mount it to route the wires. So, yeah, that took a little longer.

That was the Solar Robotics Squid Hunting Carousel Kit. You got that from? Evil Mad Scientist. Yeah. I did. There was another one that was cute. It was like, I should actually look it up and not just say whatever it is my memory is.

But I thought it had to do with the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, there was one that was a, it's on top of the Eiffel Tower. And then there's a airship, balloon-style, balanced by the solar part, and it spins around the Eiffel Tower. Pretty cute. You almost got that one, but I was squids. I know. I also got you a 555 kit from them. Yes, I haven't built that yet.

No. What does it do? It's a 555, but it's in discrete components. Surface mount. Surface mount. Surface mount. So it's not as big as the giant one they have. It's like the medium one. It's about the size of a deck of cards.

And you got me an origami print, sort of. I got you nothing technology related. The narwhal? Narwhal? Yeah, there was a laser cut narwhal thing not technology yeah it doesn't do anything no it really doesn't it's a little just a little bottle yeah i got you art yes it's very cool where did you get that germany well yes but you found this site that just well i i looked on a books because i knew you were doing origami stuff and i was trying to find something origami related maybe an old old book or or something like that so i looked on a books and they had

some old books but then they also there was a place that had a couple of prints in this one particular print of uh from 19 i think it was 1910 thereabouts a japanese woodblock print uh of some people doing origami and that was really cool so i got you that but that wasn't the site that i found later i found another site after saying hey these woodblock prints are pretty cool they're nice art they're not super expensive they're sort of vintage yeah say that after we frame it. Well, I started looking around for more and I found this auction site called Artelino, A-R-T-E-L-I-N-O dot com. And it's also in Germany. Both places were in Germany. But this place has a regular running auction they have for 10 years. And they just put up lots of auction lots of Japanese woodblock prints of various

kinds and some of them are expensive and some of them are not. They're kind of cute. They're an easy way to get some very visually striking art that isn't super expensive and has some history to it. I always forget

when I think about Japanese art that the wood blocks, you know, we see those, but they go way further than that. There are wood blocks that look very, very modern, and there are some that look like... Some of them are modern. Some of them are from the 60s and 70s and stuff. But even the old ones look, just because of the structure and blockiness and color use. And then there are some that look almost like they were impressionistic paintings. Yeah. I can't believe you got me onto that site.

That was mean. We have a lot of walls. And then before Christmas, in a move that confused me, you bought a new something or another. I said synth, and then you said it was something or another else. Oh, this! Oh, I thought you were talking about the

keyboard. Your parents got you the keyboard. Yeah, no, this was... I bought this out of the last of the Fitbit stock I had to sell. What is it? It doesn't help them to just point at it. It's this. Can't you see it?

It's white. It's got dials. It's a synthesizer. It's a Waldorf Blofeld. Say that again. A Waldorf Blofeld, which is named after the villain in many James Bond movies. But it's from a German company, and it's actually a very old synthesizer. It came out in 2008, but they still make it and sell it. And it's a little tabletop unit that is digital.

I don't have any digital synths. This was the first digital synth I have. So it can do different sounds. Weird sounds. Much weirder sounds than analog synths in This was the first digital synth I have, so it can do different sounds. Weird sounds. Much weirder sounds than analog synths in some ways. Have I heard anything from it yet? Not yet. I haven't used it too much yet, because I was

busy destroying my room. Yeah, that was a lot of work. I mean, listeners don't get to see that there are many, many instruments in here and an exercise bike and a couple of desks and cabinets. And it is a big room, but it's got kind of a low ceiling and it's not that big of a room.

It's full of 35 years of junk. It's not a lot of junk. Maybe 45. Actually, the Apple II is... Yeah. At least 40. It's full of 35 years of junk. It's not all junk. Maybe 45. It's close to this. Actually, the Apple II is... Yeah. At least 40 years. 42 or 41 years old, so...

I started hiding things in certain places here because he's got some shelving that he doesn't really use slash know about slash see. I don't think the beam holding up the ceiling is shelving. I think you're a little... I think the stuff looks cute up there. It's like hiding stuff. Anyway, I have too many synthesizers. Yes. But some of which will be heard on maybe something someday. You are actually working with your brother on something,

someday you should totally name it. That something, someday I have been for years. There's nothing new. They've all heard about this. Um, I stopped, we released a few singles and we stopped doing that to finish collecting enough things for an album. And we'll probably be done with, done with that around the April time frame and then I'm trying to decide how to encourage people to listen to it. And a lot of people have said they buy

vinyl. That so confuses me. It's very hard and expensive to produce, so if we're going to do that, we might try a Kickstarter, although we don't have a fan base exactly, so I'm not sure how that will actually, how successful that will be. But for vinyl, the smallest runs you can do are in the 100.

So if we could get 100 people to buy it, that would be great. But they're very expensive to produce. They're like $20. $20 to make. Yeah, and that doesn't count some of them. So we'd have to charge $30 or $35 to cover everything and really break even. So we'll see. I'm kind of pondering that in the back of my head.

If anybody has any suggestions for music-based marketing, I'm open to them. But it's very difficult. It's very difficult in the age of Spotify and Apple Music and stuff to get your stuff in front of people. And you don't want to play live. It'd be very difficult for us to play this live. Because you play like four instruments. We would need another person to either play bass or drums,

depending on which I didn't want to do. And we might need a second guitar. What about all the synth and keyboard stuff? We probably wouldn't play those songs. Or just have it to a MIDI backing track or something.

So Matthew will send you a song idea with fake drums? More than an idea. Usually he'll send me... So work back and forth, but usually he'll send me completish guitar tracks with a temp bass track and fakie drums. And then I will replace the drums in the bass track

and add keyboards if we're doing that. And sometimes it goes the other way. Yeah, I've sent him synth tracks with drums and he's added a guitar. And these are just giant Logic files? Yeah, it's a big... The last one he sent me was 18 gigs.

Because he kept all of his... All of his takes. So it can be pretty cumbersome usually they're about five or six gigs depending um on the complexity of the song but uh yeah he just drop box them back and forth and then ship it back the other way and he mixes down there with his studio uh studio there and then you know i can do some stuff here and we go back and forth and then we decide stuff's done. So it's kind of nice.

It's weird that it works. I mean, people, they sound like we're playing together. But, you know, we've been playing together for a long time. What's the advantage of being brothers? I kind of, you know, I know how to play drums to his guitars, which most people wouldn't do. It'd be the rhythm section playing to the bass or something, and then the guitars would play. But we have a different way of working. So yeah, I've been doing music with him since the early 90s,

so we kind of know how each other play and stuff like that. I mean, it was before that that you guys were putting on Kiss makeup. We weren't actually playing anything, though. like that. I mean, it was before that that you guys were putting on Kiss makeup. We weren't actually playing anything, though. That was the 70s. Okay, so you've been building electronic things. I have. Kits.

I have. We just talked about the squid chaser seconds ago. Sure. And you have the 555 kit to put together. Yeah. And you've been learning new synths, and you've been learning guitar, and you've been working with Matthew. Yeah. What else are you doing?

I have a job that I occasionally work at. Yeah, we don't talk about that. Yeah, we don't talk about that job. It's a fun job. What else have I been doing? That's pretty much, I mean, that's a lot. It is a lot. Am I missing something well i mean you

have a 3d printer that needs more use but i think that has to wait for a little while yeah i have i have notions of building guitar pedals my brother's been building guitar pedals recently um yeah we went down there and his wow his office his office went from looking like a studio slash mathatorium to... To an electrical engineer exploded. Yes. Exploded is the right word. It looks like the standard workbench for a EE. I was pretty impressed.

Just piles of parts everywhere and half-built stuff and breadboards and completed projects. Yeah, he showed me his completed project. His pedal that... Completed projects? Yeah, he showed me his completed project, his pedal. I mean, yeah, it was all going to hold together for a while, but it didn't look... Oh, that's fine. What? It just, you know, it looked all shoved into the pedal. Have you seen inside of pedals? Well, no, of course not. They're very small.

To me, it's just like, there should be a board in there. That's pretty much what they look like. Yeah, and the older ones, they didn't even have boards. But yeah, I recognized the soldering iron and the DVM and all this stuff. There was some stuff on his desk that was kind of funny. There was an in-package Z80 microprocessor in its plastic bag. It came from long ago. Another interrupt controller

for it and some other stuff. There was enough parts there to build an accreditable Z80-based computer in bags. I was like, what are you doing with this? These bags are from 1981. He's been building stuff from kits he's bought,

and he's also been just finding schematics online and building pedals he wants. And, uh, it's not that hard. I mean, it's, it's kind of cool because pedals can be very expensive,

especially kind of the vintage ones, but you can just source parts for those and find the schematics online. And, and apart from the, the hard part is, is mounting them in something that's going to survive, uh, being used on a gig,

you know, with the good switches and being in a solid case. But you can get kind of generic cases. And you build one into a cigar box. That probably wouldn't work so well on a gig. And I think you may get to the point where you have enough cases and now you're just ripping things out maybe um but yeah we've been talking about that for a little while he's gotten into that and i've thought about doing some of that and maybe taking taking something he he's got that he

he would be interested in um and going through key cad i want to say key cad you can go with key cat it doesn't matter kai cad both are fine k-i-cad and uh you know making a board some of them are pretty simple circuits and it'd be a good starter project to get a board uh a board run gun going and then i you know as he's been doing that i've had some ideas okay well what if i wanted to build something what would i build and i have some ideas based on synthesizers that that's right you said work was too much python and you needed to do an embedded system well this was just going to be this was going to be all analog but uh that's that's a whole other thing yeah um but maybe maybe do something digital you know in a pedal that'd be fun too but i don't have any good ideas for that right now but yeah taking parts of synthesizers

and applying the guitars for for signal processing and put that in a guitar pedal could be kind of cool i know things sort of like like that exist but they're kind of piecemeal you know like three pedals to do the things i want to do and yeah amongst all the other time i don't have but yes we've been for our job that we've this is the first time we've worked together, pretty much. Since school. Yeah. Well, in school, you wanted to murder the other people on the team. That's not true.

You wanted to slightly maim the other people on the team. Sometimes. I was more emotionally unstable then. Everybody was. Yeah, but we're working together for the same client and doing kind of the same stuff. And it's all Python. And Python is the most embedded thing we do. And I'm like, well, yeah, except now that I have found this bug, I know that it is due to performance problems. So I'm going to go off and optimize low-level stuff. Low-level stuff on a Linux computer.

Well, yeah, but I'll be playing with the GPU. That's not embedded. I know, but it's fun. It's really fun. But yes, having done this for a few months, I realized I haven't written a lick of C or anything remotely embedded. I haven't even touched the dev board.

I haven't read a schematic. Well, in my last year at Fitbit, I was doing iOS. So it's been even longer that I've done anything remotely embedded. So I kind of decided in the last couple of weeks, I need a project to not let these skills totally atrophy. So I had some ideas for some MIDI things.

They were kind of boring. So hoping for some new ideas to pop into my head and just make something simple. You have so many things going on. How exactly do you find the time to work? The truth is I never do any of these things. I just talk about them. You do a lot of them.

Well, mostly the music, and that's I have somebody else working with me pushing. Yeah. The rest of it is stuff I think about doing and then don't really get a start on. I know that the board and thinking about that, you've been thinking about it, but haven't had the time to start,

which makes sense because it's December, or was December. The board? Which board? board and thinking about that. You've been thinking about it, but haven't had the time to start. Which makes sense, because it's December, or was December. The board? Which board? Doing a board for a guitar pedal, or doing an embedded systems project. So I need to pick one thing out of, you know, the start doesn't complete nothing? That's where I'm at. I need to have a dozen on the shelf and then pick one that I'm going to focus on for a while in addition to music and work.

So I think I can do three things. I can't do six things. Yeah, doing six things leads to doing no things. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so, I mean, and the embedded thing, I'm a little bit more motivated to do because I feel like I need to do something on that side. Whereas the rest is like, oh, it's a hobby. I can do that or I can't.

This is like, well, I'm going to be doing this Python stuff for a while. And at the end of it, I'm going to have forgotten everything. Maybe not. Yeah, but you'll have learned a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. As long as you're learning stuff, it's easier. I don't know. You just have to keep your brain

flexible enough. Brain yoga. I bet there's an app for that. I should also mention that we had the Digital Nest matching grant from one of our generous listeners. And our other generous listeners

matched it all. So they got over $5,000 from, uh, nominally from the embedded community. So cool. I, I can't believe that worked. It kind of boggles me.

Uh, I do a matching grant for somebody else, uh, for one of the elementary schools. We match whatever the kids raise for one of our local charities. And I've only been on the, here's cash, go make some more. And it was really fun to be on the, hey guys, look, there's cash, you should come. And I mean, it was a marketing problem and I'm not great at that.

But apparently our community is cool enough that I don't have to be great at marketing. Christopher's mad because I'm playing with the cables. It's clunking. Is it? Yeah, the connector's clunking on the thing. Well, maybe you should have given me a longer cable. I don't understand how these cables survive. You just sit there worrying them the whole show.

If I do origami, you don't like that either, because the paper's loud. Yes, thank you everyone for assisting us with that. And I think we'll do something, maybe do something more with that this year. Okay, I'm sorry, I'll stop. Yeah. You know, there is one other thing we've been doing that we didn't mention earlier, and that's the book club. The book club? Can we talk about the book club?

I don't know. What's the first rule of book club? So, I've never been in a book club before because someone telling me to read something pretty much guarantees me not to read it. I don't know, maybe this was something that happened in high school and didn't help in college. But it's become an excuse to hang out with friends. Virtually. Yeah, it's all over Skype, and we video chat with each other, and I'm surprised. I didn't expect it to be this cool,

but I don't know how else to find a good excuse to ask all these people to just chat with me for an hour. D&D, I'm telling you. If this book club doesn't work, we've got to run a campaign. I can't imagine running a campaign with these people. Exactly. That's why to do it. The first book we read, one person who wanted to be in the club, who wanted to start the club, suggested it, but he already read it, so he didn't really show up very much. And so much snark. So much snark. A little too much snark the first round,

right? Maybe a little too much. The book deserved it. And then the second one is about a subject that some of us care about, but most of us, it's not a book we'd read normally. That's fair. And there's much less snark, but it's still, I don't know how to describe it. It is nice to have something to talk about with people that I wanted to talk to anyway. Other than a podcast. Right.

I did want to make the book club a podcast. And I'm kind of glad we didn't because we were really mean to that first author. And we were only a little mean to the second one. And choosing books is really, really hard because the group, like half people have read everything. And nobody wants to read something they've already read or it's just, and then people talked about reading one book. So I went off and read it when it didn't make our last list and it was so

boring and bad. And now it's going to be on our list again. And I'm like, no, we can't read that one. Anyway, I'm surprised. I didn't expect a book club would be fun.

We're doing it in kind of an odd way that we meet every week and talk about a couple of chapters instead of meeting once a month and talking about a whole thing because procrastination. Well, the books we were reading were sort of not self-help exactly, but supposed to be applicable things. The second one hasn't really been organized that way, but it's a series of essays. So they're just connected. I think if you're reading a fiction book, that might be a little, a little less applicable. But since I like talking to everyone on Sunday nights or whenever we get to it, I like the weakliness of it. If we did it once a month, we'd talk about the book the whole time. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. So form a book club. It's fun. It's surprising. It's good that it's not a podcast because there'd be lots of taking the dog out in the middle and stuff. Well, people would be a little more guarded in what they say. Not everything needs to be broadcast. No, really.

You've been doing more and more origami. Yes. Now the origami is like above knee deep in the house. It's kind of embarrassing. The dog ate one of my origamis. I organized this office, but there's like a wave of origami coming down the stairs as it overflows. Have you changed anything about what you're doing after talking to Robert Lang? Some. I have been noticing more of the things that repeat in different patterns. So I am gaining a shorthand of, oh, these five steps are just splitting this point,

and I can read it and then not have to work through each step individually. And that's pretty neat. You know, it's kind of like becoming fluent in a new language. It's, oh, I caught that phrase. Oh, okay. And so that's been pretty cool. And then the, I talked to him about having to fold a lot of cats and starting to get a very different perspective when I fold the same thing many, many times. So there's been more of that. I did get a couple of books after our conversation. I actually had the box book he suggested. I got his Origami Sea Life, which is why there are whales all over the house.

And other people's houses now. Yes, I did distribute the whales around the neighborhood. And then I also got an origami butterfly book after kind of falling in love with some online butterflies. And so I have plans for a chandelier. As soon as the holidays are over, we're going into springtime with flowers and butterflies on the chandelier. Right now they're on the Christmas tree. I had to put them somewhere. So yeah, I've been doing a lot of origami.

It keeps my hands busy. It is better for me than playing online games. And when I say online games, I'm not talking like... More like online game. I don't think I've seen you play a different game than last year. That's not true. Oh, threes. Yes.

Okay. I am still addicted to threes. Okay, two games. Yeah, I have a word spelling time-based strategy-ish game called Alpha Bears that's awful, but really fun. And then threes. And origami is better than doing those things, although I haven't stopped entirely. And I learned how to make a dragon. Everyone should know how to make a dragon I and I took

when we saw one of our friends over the holidays I took action models so I took little things they could play with fidget spinner like things I haven't heard whether or not his kids liked them oh well his wife liked them that's when I

was getting up let's hope they survived they didn't have to they're just paper yeah i know it's they get crushed it's no big deal you make more um let's see what else have i been doing um i still have my writing group book club and writing group you have a reading group and oh my goodness and some days are on the same day and it's really confusing. Cause I'm not that snarky in writing group. Although some of them did listen to the Amy Lucido,

Emmy and the key of code podcast. And Marlene was just very excited about it and very happy about the book. And just, it was neat. It was neat to have my life cross over a little bit. Right. I'm right. Sorry about that, Christopher. I should stop doing things. Maybe you should give me a different cable. How would a different cable change things?

I don't, if I could play with, I don't know, maybe, maybe I should get a cable that's not attached to anything. Uh, yeah. Don't, don't play cat's cradle should get a cable that's not attached to anything. Yeah, don't play Cat's Cradle with your headphone cable. Anyway, yes, origami, writing. I do a lot of reading, and sometimes I garden, although mostly it's about starting plants and then being afraid of them when they have filled up the greenhouse area. And now I should plant them outside, because California now is the time to plant.

But, yeah, I haven't. Even though it's pretty outside, I just don't want to go outside. I want to sit in the sunspot, read books. I guess, okay, so do you have any resolutions or goals for the year or the decade? The decade? The decade. No. The year, I would like to spend less time on the internet. I think that's a goal which will spread into other things

what do you mean spend less time on the internet maybe i'll do some of this other crap ah okay where do you get lost on the internet stupid twitter reddit what parts of reddit do you look at synthesizers oh yeah i looked over his shoulder and the first like the the pinned post on synthesizers is what should i buy yeah it's like that's the you know that's what people talk about not what should i play or here's hints for getting the most out of your own synthesizer that's the second you That's the second pin post. Yeah. Synthesizers,

you know, movies, movie talk, junk, garbage, people arguing about stuff on the internet. I avoid that as much as I can. The internet's been a huge disappointment to me. It really has. For the last 20 years?

No, like the last 10. Why the last 10? I mean, the first 10 weren't that great either. The last 10 is when everybody has become able to talk to everyone all of the time. Instead of, you know, it used to be blogs and you'd find your interest group, or there's a forum and you'd find your interest group and you'd talk about that topic and there'd be still stupid internet arguments. But now, now everybody can talk to everybody all at once about everything all the time. And I don't think it's good.

I don't like it. I avoid those places. Yeah, I know you do. I wish I could do that. But it's not on Reddit synthesizers. No. I'm talking about Twitter mostly and's not on Reddit synthesizers. No. I'm talking about Twitter mostly and other parts of Reddit. Okay.

Wow. Yeah. And Twitter for me is largely an open only thing. Yeah. It's just all those stray thoughts that collect in my head. I see you reading it occasionally. I do. I will go through and I'll read it. And the embedded Twitter follows all of our guests,

and so I like to look and see what everybody's doing. It's just the Internet in the last 10 years took everybody's inside voice and made it everybody's outside voice. Yeah, yeah. I'm not on Facebook anymore. I deleted my account. But that was even worse. Yeah, I didn't account, but that was just, that was even worse. Yeah. I didn't want to know that people that I love had those opinions.

And, you know, it's the medium too, because no matter which site you go to, the same kinds of things happen. Like Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor. It doesn't matter what kind of people, it doesn't matter what the topic is. It'll oftentimes just devolve into... Somebody tweeted a couple of days ago, and they said something like, you know, if somebody says they like something or they're excited about something, you don't have to weigh in to try to convince them that they're wrong. Allow people to be happy and enjoy things. And I think that's a large part of what happens on social media these days. It's like, oh, hey, I just went to this. It was good. Yeah, but I, you know, I found it lacking in the following

qualities. And, you know, that's a nice response. Usually it's something like, well, you know, only idiots would appreciate something like that in that way. So it's just infuriating. I don't know how much longer society can really continue to do this. You should follow Emergency Kitten and Military Cats and maybe 41 Strange, although that one can get a little stressful. I should work on music and read books. These are the things I did 10, 15 years ago when I didn't have a laptop or an iPad or an iPhone in my hand 19 hours out of the day. You say that like it's a bad thing, but you talk to your brother for a lot of the day.

I used to talk to him on the phone. I mean, that's not a big difference. Yeah, but this way it's... I mean, you talked to him when we went to go watch surfing at the beach. I don't know. There are bad parts of it. I totally get that. I agree there's good parts of the internet,

but they have stayed the same size while the bad parts have gotten bigger. And you can stay in that little same size, but it's difficult for me. You do better with it, but I tend to get angrier about things. Well, that's why I stay in my playground, because I don't want to get angry. I just don't need to know everybody's opinion all the time. And it's not that I'm saying everybody should shut up. It's that the medium drives everyone's opinions to me constantly.

And I do the same thing. I have lots of opinions and I post them on Twitter occasionally. We have a podcast. We have a podcast where I'm, you know, espousing my opinion right now straight into your ear holes. Yeah, no, I recognize that it's not hypocrisy exactly, but there's a paradox to it. But I want to choose, I want to be able to curate what I see better.

And it's gotten harder to do that in some of these mediums. It's hard to basically say, if you're shouting, I'm not listening. Yeah. But that's what I do. If you're shouting, I'm sorry. I need calm discourse in order to start talking. And there's an addictive quality to it, too. Oh, absolutely.

Because it's so much easier. It's designed to be addictive. It's so much easier for me to sit down and I'm tired, I've done something, sit on the couch, I'll pull my iPad, see what's going on in the world, see what folks have to say, and then I'll just do that. And even if it doesn't make me mad, I'll find myself doing that for an hour and it's like, what the hell did I just do? Nothing. And it's a little dopamine hit every time you do it, but that's the hard thing for me. Sometimes I'll delete it and put it away. And then I'll feel bad. I'll have an anxiety episode or something. It's like, well, you know, this makes me feel better sometimes to sit and do nothing. And the level of effort to find a book or something seems too high. So, I mean, there's lots of factors involved that are very personal.

I can set up little origami dinosaurs and dragons you can crush whenever you feel bad. But you don't. I mean... It isn't the same. It isn't the same as pushing reply on Twitter. There's a lot of psychological... No, I don't reply to stuff. I just read stuff, mostly. I'm not getting into arguments. I've learned my lesson.

Yeah, I don't know. So, for this year, I would like to do less of that and find more things to do that are more productive. Not productive, but more positive. Productive has that quality of, oh, you should be making things at all times and be a useful member of society. It's good to separate those.

Yeah. Because you can do things that are positive without being productive. I forget that sometimes. I have all this crap down here. I should use it. Now that it's also neatly organized. Are those petals?

They're candy colored. This one? Yeah. That's the rainbow machine. It has a magic knob. Can you run the whole podcast through the magic knob? You would not like it, but I can. Just this part.

I'll do that for this section. So why don't you recite something and then I'll run it through the magic knob in post-production. Marysy dotes and dozy dotes and the lambsy divy. A kittledy divy too, wouldn't you? I'll see what I can do. If that section does not sound abnormal, it's because I went and read Twitter instead of trying to plug this in. How about you?

What are your goals and resolutions for this year? No, it was a one-way question. I didn't really have any. Resolutions and goals. I go for a lot of walks with various people and I like talking to people when I walk, but I have discovered that I won't go for a walk unless I have a walking buddy.

And that is dumb. I need to learn how to be my own walking buddy. Although I should wear headphones if I do talk to myself so that it doesn't look like I'm talking to myself. You have a dog. Our dogs are pretty old at this point. I don't think they walk. They get tired walking three houses.

They sleep for the rest of the day. We were talking to Mohitat about uh micro obsessions and i definitely do that i mean podcasting and machine learning and robotics machine learning is not a micro obsession okay it's your current paid job well yes but it was a micro obsession and then it became a paid job. Yeah. Writing and reading and origami, all these things. And sometimes I feel bad that I will want to pursue things and then maybe I'll drop them. Oh, yeah. I'm going to stop feeling bad.

My goal is to figure out what I want to do and what I'm good at and what I like. Why is it bad to try it out for a weekend or a month? Maybe I do drop a bunch of other stuff. As long as it's not work or not important to other people, that's fine. I should follow my micro passions. I think that's great. I mean, yeah, there's a thing where people tend to think, Oh, my hobbies, I should establish them and I should just continue to work them forever. I don't want to be an expert in my field of hobbies.

Yeah. Because I don't want to get paid to do origami. That would ruin it for me. What if I paid you a million dollars? I would make you a cat. If you paid me a million and one, I'd make you a dragon. Would you make it out of the dollars?

I'd have to use a couple of dollars. So maybe a $300 dragon. $300 dragon. Yeah. And then I'd have to use the fixative and the foil paper. I think it'd be more than a million. No. Yeah, in my writing group, there are some people who are starting to get book contracts,

and I'm just like, yeah. Well, you've done that. I don't think I want to. Well, but for fiction. Yeah. I mean, the experience isn't going to be that much different in terms of the business side of it. Yeah. And I don't need to be an expert.

So, on the other hand, I read a whole book about slime, so I feel like I'm an expert in that. Slime. It was really about algae, but the title was slime. Oh, I'm trying to get you with the title. Totally worked for me too. I thought it was going to be about slime and then it was about algae and it was still very cool. Algae is slimy. Yes.

Okay, so are we having a party this year? Yes. Are we done sending out pins yet? Absolutely not, and I'm sorry. I don't think we can have a party until we finish the pins. Yeah, that's true. Where do you want to have the party? I don't know, but we just had one, so it's not like we're having it in two months.

That's good. But we'll figure that out. Maybe we'll have something smaller. Maybe we'll have something smaller. Maybe we'll do a couple small things. Maybe we'll have a big party again and have it over the hill. Over the hill. Silicon Valley area. More people are and more venues.

I like making them come out to the beach. That's fine too. It's kind of rude though. I mean, it's not rude. They're coming to an event. Well I mean, it's not rude. They're coming to a, an event. Well, yeah,

but it might be easier for them if they don't have to travel so far. It's easier for us. We're picking the party on. We'll talk about it. We probably will not have the party at the beach, even though I keep looking at those park things, but we wouldn't have enough power supplies. Yeah. Okay.

And then I think the only thing I have left to do is to say thank you to the patrons. I mean, thank you all for listening, but in the last year, we've actually made Patreon work for us in a way I didn't quite expect. And it's been really nice. While I say I don't want to make my hobbies my profession, it is kind of nice that some of you were willing to cough up a few bucks in order to say thank you. Because it isn't something you have to do, and it is something we truly appreciate. So patrons, thank you. Thank you all for listening. If you want to suggest new guests for 2020 or beyond, send us an email show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm.

If you would like to say hello or to the very nice people who sent us New Year's messages. Whatever you want. We'll be here. We'll read them. We may respond to them, but only after we've finished shipping pins. Okay, I'm done playing with the cord because

I can't anymore. And now, some Winnie the Pooh. Do you have any other last thoughts, questions, goals? I do not. I do not. I do not. I think we've subjected the five remaining listeners who've made it this far through the episode to enough. And the greatest episode.

Sorry, everybody. But we are excited. I mean, I'm excited about 2020. Except for the one part I'm not excited about. Anyway. Chapter 3, in which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a woozle.

The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech tree. And the beech tree was in the middle of the forest. And the Piglet lived in the middle of the house. Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had trespassers W on it. When Christopher Robin asked Piglet what it meant, he said that it was his grandfather's name and had been in the family for a long time.

Christopher Robin said you couldn't be called trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could because his grandfather was, and it was short for trespassers will, which was short Trespassers W. And Piglet said, yes, you could, because his grandfather was. And it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two names in case he lost one, Trespassers after an uncle and William after trespassers. I've got two names, said Christopher Robin carelessly. Well, there you are. That proves it, said Piglet. Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them.

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