FOB

I'm a little disappointed with Piperka right now. It's a combination of several things. There seem to be a couple of comics that it isn't keeping up with properly...

PSU's Electrical Engineering program was ranked ninth in the nation by the latest US World News and Reports.

How did that happen? I've been through the ECE program, and I know it can't be on par with MIT or Stanford (which also ranked in the top ten). There are a few really good teachers, but the whole department needs a good shake-up and a new Computer Engineering curriculum. I fear the ranking will cause the department to stagnate. Of course, someone majoring in Electrical Engineering may have a different opinion.

If I had the time, money, and lab space, I'd work on projects like this guy's electronics projects. I especially like the telsa coil car theft prevention system.

I've been dreading writing my essay for my scholarship application. I finally have it done, and I think it's a darned good essay…

I got bulk read and write working for usbfs2! :D More info later; I need to get some sleep.

Two book reviews are at my livejournal: Diane Duane's The Book of Night with Moon and Diana Wynn Jones' Conrad's Fate

I'm still trying to get in the swing of school. I suspect that I'm already way behind in homework and textbook reading, but I'm enjoying taking a break to read some fiction.

I finally got my new reading glasses. Now I can actually see subpixel anti-aliasing.

I've been posting book reviews in my livejournal, but I'll post them here if anyone else is interested.

From Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang

Why get in a car when you can hop in a boiler? Why tell someone to shut up when you can tell them to close their head? Why threaten to discharge a firearm when you can say, "Dust, pal, or I pump lead!"

Posted for Bart's amusement.

I'm so very excited about my classes next term. I talked with Dr. Hall about getting ECE senior elective credit for my USB projects. Looks like it's a go, if I can get an ECE faulty member to be my advisor. The process is fairly formal:

• Write a project proposal (by Decemeber 8th) that covers duration, tools to be used, expected results, and what constitutes a successful completion of the project.
• Work 16 hours a week for 10 weeks on the project.
• Write a final report for the project and do a presentation of the project.

There's two sides of the USB project I want to work on next term. There's the Linux kernel work to replace usbfs and libusb, and there's the DMA and isochronous work that needs to be done on LPCUSB (the USB library for the LPC2148 chip). Proposing I do both seems a bit much. The kernel work is arguably harder, and the LPCUSB is closer to the kind of ECE work that I think Dr. Hall expects. I won't abandon my USB kernel hacking next term, but I'm leaning towards proposing the LPCUSB work.

Next term I'm also taking CS572 (Operating System Internals). Basically it's lots of kernel driver hacking. Karen and Binkley are co-teaching it, and Karen said I should be able to substitue some of my kernel hacking for some of the projects. We're going to write a character device driver in that class, so my USB endpoints character device project seems like an appropriate substitute.

My final class is ECE485, Computer Architecture. It's taught by Faust, and I've been told the projects for that class are awesome. I have to take for my CpE undergrad degree, and it's only offered this term.

Whew! That's three really time consuming classes. I'd take a crap class, like economics, to balance out my load, but economics overlaps with CS572. I really want to take all my classes next term, because they're so cool, but I'm a little afraid I'll go completely insane.