Earlier today as you are reading this (assuming you are reading it on Tuesday 6th September, which is when it’s scheduled to post on the EE Journal website), I gave my presentation to the MSc students studying Embedded Computing at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. I’m actually penning these…
I have a friend called Bob (spelled the usual way and pronounced with a silent ‘q’). In fact, as fate would have it, I’ve been blessed with an abundance of Bobs (and that’s not something most people expect to hear themselves say on a daily basis). In order to distinguish between members of this bodacious…
Adobe Stock Modern incarnations of the technologies of yesteryear – such as Nixie tubes and 21-segment Victorian displays – add charm to modern devices.
My current hobby project involves creating a 21st Century incarnation of a super-tasty 21-segment Victorian display technology. I will explain more in a moment, but first.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of the steampunk aesthetic, which I feature in many of my hobby projects. This is especially true in the case of display technologies. Take Nixie tubes, for example, which first appeared on the scene in the 1950s.
Nixie tubes are similar in appearance to vacuum tubes except they don’t actually contain a vacuum. Instead, they are loaded with a gas such as neon mixed with a little mercury or argon, all at very low pressure. The glass tube also contains a wire-mesh anode along with multiple cathodes that are shaped like numerals or other symbols. Applying power to one of the cathodes ca
by Max Maxfield
I’m a big fan of having hobby projects. In addition to taking one’s mind off the toils, troubles, and tribulations of the world, I think that having a new “thing” that you want to do is the best way to set about learning how to do it.
Take adding a new programming language to your repertoire as an example. One way to do this is to wade through the language reference manual (yawn). Another approach is to come up with some algorithm or task you wish to code in this new language, and then research how to achieve this goal. Of course, I’m not saying that reading the language reference manual is a bad idea, just that it’s not the only instrument in the toolbox.