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Thanks to everybody for your patience as we dealt with rain and
traffic, wonky door signs and hurried setup. There was the usual
time pressure to cram as much information and sharing as possible
into a two hour meeting while preserving interaction. <br>
<br>
Thanks to the folks who helped make this meeting happen:<br>
NCSU students, faculty and staff who enable us to meet in an
ideal venue<br>
Paul MacDougal, for a superb presentation<br>
Charlie West, for untiring technical support<br>
Glen Smith, for making the video camera recording happen with
zero avoidable mistakes<br>
<br>
We'll get the slides for Paul's talk about interrupts up on the web
site, along with a gaggle of hyperlinks, such as the full <a
href="http://www.atmel.com/images/Atmel-8271-8-bit-AVR-Microcontroller-ATmega48A-48PA-88A-88PA-168A-168PA-328-328P_datasheet_Complete.pdf">Atmega
328P Datasheet</a>. <br>
<br>
The prospects for a video record of the meeting are less certain
(the "unavoidable mistakes" bite hard). After VLC crashed multiple
times and we were relieved to have the video camera running as a
backup, I was shattered by the discovery that there isn't enough
contrast in a lot of the content. The slides cannot be read a lot of
the time. I fully expected we wouldn't be able to make out Paul, let
alone the blackboard behind him, until Trent turned the front lights
on. But I really thought the capture of the projection screen was a
non-issue. I was wrong. So, along with the terrible torture the AVI
equipment visited on Paul, the frequent stops and starts for the
sake of dumping the camera files (to avoid the camera dumping at an
arbitrary point when its 20 minute limit was reached) may have just
been additional noise in the system. There is an outside chance a
magic software wand can be passed across the mpeg-4 files to fix the
contrast. If you know about this subject please send me email
("reply" vs "reply/all" or "reply/list").<br>
<br>
Next month there will be an "agenda outline" slide on the screen,
and we'll be sure the "have a job/need a job" item is closer to the
front.<br>
<br>
And we didn't get a chance to talk about a theme for next month. I
suggest we aim Scott's very popular idea to have a series of
"lightning talks" related to switch debouncing at the November or
December meeting. A hardware focus for October, starting with
practical electronics worship tips by Fred Ebeling, is next in line
and I hope we can contribute suggestions to focus that meeting.<br>
<br>
There are many other comments to make, but I've run out of time for
now so I'll leave it to the rest of you to chime in.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Pete<br>
<br>
<br>
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