Saturday, January 27, 2007

    Chat with me on meebo.com

    I've been using http://meebo.com for my instant messaging lately. It lets me chat with my friends on AIM and Windows Live Messenger from a web page rather than requiring me to install software on each PC that I use. If I'm online and not busy with work or World of Warcraft, you can try sending me a message with the widget below.


    Please edit your nickname to something meaningful before sending me a message. Remember that support issues should go to [http://support.microchip.com] and development-tool discussions should go to [http://www.microchip.com/forums]. This chat is for more personal discussions about my blog.

    NOTE
    : Don't send me a message if I'm offline. There's a good chance that I'll miss it!

    Thursday, January 25, 2007

    Enso Launches the Command Line

    Many software geeks prefer to minimize their mouse usage and navigate primarily by using the keyboard. Those people will be happy to hear that a little team named Humanized has a created a nifty command-line utility for Windows XP called Enso Launcher. The utility gives you lightning-fast control of your daily Windows activities by allowing you to type short commands to do things such as open web pages, open files, minimize windows, etc. It even has auto completion.

    I just tried it very briefly, and I have to say that I could get dependent on the utility pretty quickly. Mossberg over at the Wall Street Journal seems to agree.

    Head on over to Humanized's web site and watch the videos of Enso Launcher and download the 30-day trial.

    Wednesday, January 24, 2007

    A quick word about "MPLAB®"

    Technically speaking, the term "MPLAB®" is a brand name referring to Microchip's Development Tools. The term itself does not refer to the Integrated Development Environment that we have all come to know and (hopefully) love. As a brand name, the term should be used as an adjective, not a noun. For example: MPLAB IDE, MPLAB C30, MPLAB REAL ICE, etc.

    Sunday, January 14, 2007

    It's learn-to-solder month - arstechnica.com

    The Opposable Thumbs blog has pointed out that we are in the middle of learn-to-solder month. Being a software weenie, I really don't know how to solder. Luckily, I have some friends in the manufacturing and hardware groups that can help me out. Do you think I should take the rest of the month to learn to solder? Those of you who would like to learn too, check out the link.

    Thursday, January 04, 2007

    Doing embedded multitasking with small microcontrollers - embedded.com

    Embedded.com is running an article by Keith Curtis, a principal applications engineer at Microchip, on building simple MCU state machine constructs.
    A simple construct, called a state machine, simplifies the task of generating a sequence by breaking the sequence into a series of steps and then executing them sequentially. While this sounds like an arbitrary definition of a linear piece of code, the difference is that the individual sections, or steps in the sequence, are encoded within a SWITCH/CASE statement.
    Read the full article here.