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Engineering Resource: Web Equation

Documentation, Documentation.  Documentation.

It is always critical to document progress is a log book.  If using an electronic tool like Evernote or a Blog, it can be difficult to document equations or calculations you’ve made in a project.

Vision Objects has put together a demo tool that allows for writing your equation in freehand which then uses image recognition to covert into LaTeX code.

For convenience, there is a direct link to WolframAlpha to calculate the equation.  A preview of the LaTeX Equation is provided by the open-source MathJax javascript rendering engine.

Web Equation.

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Renesas Promotion Board for RL78/G13 | Renesas Electronics America

RL78 Kit from Renesis

Renesas is offering a promotion version of their RL78 microcontroller.  This offer is only available to their Sample Component account holders, but the process for signing up for a sample account is pretty straightforward.  (There may be EAR restrictions with this board.)

If you are looking for a powerful processor that is an alternative to PIC or AVR processors, this board might be worth a look.

[i]Note:  It appears samplecomponents.com might have been compromised at some point in the past.  Google throws a warning page up.  Proceed at your own discretion.[/i]

Renesas Promotion Board for RL78/G13 | Renesas Electronics America.

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OSX: Cathode, Best Terminal Ever!

Cathode from Secret Geometry is, hands down, my favorite Terminal Emulator for OSX.  It is, in my opinion, (near?) perfect emulation of classic computer terminals from the 1980s.  When using it, it reminds me of how far computers really have come.  It is also one of the funnest ways to ssh into a remote host to edit a CSS file real quick.

I like keeping mine set to 14.4k baud emulation.  The screen blur, when running Full Screen in Lion, almost makes me forget I’m using an LCD!

What truly amazes me is all of the little bits of polish that go into the emulation.  For example, remember hitting the side of a CRT and getting a little bit of jitter?  Move the terminal window around and the same thing happens.  There’s even an option to take a picture from an iSight, which appears as a reflective image.

Below is a YouTube Video I put together to show it off a little bit compared to the boring regular Terminal.app.  Head over to Secret Geometry’s web site to download Cathode and enjoy nostalgic terminal emulation.

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