UptownMaker

In mathematics, a degenerate form is one that cannot be perturbed in some way without being rendered a member of a larger, more complex class.  For example, a circle is a degenerate ellipse- change the constant multiplier of one of the terms and you push the form out of the class of circles into the larger class of ellipses. Next time you're solving a problem, ask yourself: am I solving for a degenerate form?  And, if the answer is yes, is that important?  Let me give an example where the answer to both questions was "yes".  I was tasked once with supporting some motion code which was intended to align a circuit board on a conveyor belt under a camera. The code as written worked fine in the lab, but in the field, customers began to complain of erratic and unpredictable behavior- boards which would be incorrectly positioned at the start of inspection, pushed off the end of the conveyor, etc.  It turns out that the code had originally been written to the dege...

Whenever you put a project out there in the community, be it on your blog, a community board, or as an article in another venue (or if it gets picked up by say, Hackaday or Make), you're bound to get some comments that are, shall we say, worth less than the calories they took to type.  Worse still are the times you get these comments from someone to whom you are explaining (in meatspace) your current pet project- those times can be a SERIOUS buzz kill and I've lost the will to finish a couple of projects after comments like this. "You know, Target sells something that [does that]/[does almost exactly that]."  This is more common in meatspace than on the web, I think, because the web audience self-selects for people who understand that the joy is in the making, not the having.  And, frequently, the "almost" is where the bugaboo lies- I want EXACTLY that, not ALMOST exactly that. "Arduino is for losers."  Or some variation thereon.  Arduino, as a p...