my name is mwd

I’ve been a bit lax at blogging of late – I have a bunch of things I need to post, but haven’t had the time of late. Thankfully other people are writing very interesting things in their blogs, so I’ll just point you their way for now.

Firstly Laura has done an excellent essay called I guess that’s why they call it hardware as a response to the people out there who think they know what it takes to make hardware but don’t. For example, you’ll almost certainly get someone ask if your device will run linux:

So, this isn’t a bad question – unless the answer is no. You then explain that the kettle doesn’t need to run a powerful operating system, but now the audience are grumbling and twittering that you’re worthless. (Later, when you quiz someone in the bar, it will turn out that they could possibly ignore their religious requirements for everything to run Linux, but they also desperately want an API so they can access data from your device, and they believe that APIs are only possible with Linux. The USB port which you included so you could publish data openly is totally ignored or dismissed, and you feel a little sad, because it was only to please these kinds of people that you added it anyway.)

Top stuff. As someone that’s just spent the morning helping our assembly line get a bunch of units setup and tested, it seemed quite poignant :)

The second article is by Karen about reducing her carbon footprint. She raises an interesting comparison between her efforts and the wastage in hospitals:

One thing I will say though is its demorilising to be doing all this when I work for the NHS, who waste god only knows how much recyclable goods. I probably see more waste in one shifts than I can recycle in a week, so it does make your effort feel a little worthless.

Indeed.