Random Ramblings on LabVIEW Design

So the year is shooting past at a breakneck speed and here comes NIWeek 2015, sadly I blew my Jolly Fund in Rome and I won't be crossing the Pond this year. So this is a bit like me in a restaurant picking the meat dishes for my carnivore friends (I'm a veggie), here's what I would go and see if I was going....

As well as the keynotes, these are my picks (bear in mind I don't do many test systems any more so it's heavily biased on the software side of things)

TS6421 -      Don’t Panic: LabVIEW Developer’s Guide to TestStand - Chris Roebuck

TS5740 -      Computer Science for the G Programmer, Year 2 - Stephen Mercer and Jon McBee

TS7238 -      Curing Cancer: Using a Modular Approach to Ensure the Safe and Repeatable Production of Medicine - Duncan MacIntosh ,Fabiola De la Cueva

HOL7309 -   Hands-On: Introduction to Software Engineering and Source Code Control - Chris Cilino

TS6142 -      Hidden Costs of Data Mismanagement - Pablo Giner,Stephanie Amrite

TS6408 -      NI Linux Real-Time: RTOS Smackdown - Joshua Hernstrom

TS6720 -      Effective Project Management of LabVIEW Projects - Ryan Smith,Paul Herrmann

TS6977 -      10 Differences Between LabVIEW FPGA and LabVIEW for Windows/Real-Time Programming - Erin Bray

TS6303 -      LabVIEW FPGA Programming Best Practices - Zachary Hawkins

TS5898 -      Inspecting Your LabVIEW Code With the VI Analyzer - Darren Nattinger

TS7477 -      Using LabVIEW in Your Quality Management System - Maciej Kolosko

TS5698 -      Augmenting Right-Click Menus in LabVIEW 2015 - Darren Nattinger,Stephen Loftus-Mercer

HOL5977 -   Hands-On: Code Review Best Practices - Brian Powell

TS6420 -      5 Tips to Modularize, Reuse, and Organize Your Development Chaos - Fabiola De la Cueva

My interests here are software engineering, FPGA, and an increasing interest in data management. So I've chosen 13 hours of presentations + keynotes. Hopefully they will be video'd!

Talking of videos I've been busy tidying up some of our CSLUG presentations (more to come!)

These can be found here https://decibel.ni.com/content/thread/32010

I think it will make a nice archive over time.

If we manage to organise it, we're doing something a little different for the next CSLUG meeting on the 17th September, we're going to pick a subject and have a series of 4 slide presentations with multiple presenters. We should then get a spread of concepts for databases, error handling, customer sign-off etc etc. Each subject will be about 30 mins. We'll see how it works out!

Finally I'll be presenting on immediacy at the CLD summit in Newbury on 9 or 10th of September, so I'm busy updating my Rome presentation, I'm actually adding more technical content and taking some of the jokes out! I've been applying some of the techniques and can show some of these off now.

Workwise: SSDC Maritime Division is beginning to blossom, we're currently waiting on orders that are worth 150% of last years turnover! I'm also working on a distributed oscilloscope program that seems to be generating some interest (I'm actually quite proud of it so far) and then we are waiting for the go-ahead on a data repository design and reporting system. Any of these jobs may have a profound effect on SSDC and I may finally get the company hovercraft I always wanted. The downside is I will probably be slower on my blog output!

If you are travelling to Austin; travel safe, if you are presenting; present well!

Lots of Love

Steve

Hello Lovelies,

I'm going to be very candid in this article and once again no LabVIEW so bonus random points for me.

There will be no meditation, sobriety or jogging in this article so rest easy.

I'm pretty unemotional and shallow. In fact below are photos of me with my various moods on display

And I have an iron constitution, so essentially for 40 odd years my body was just for moving my brain from point A to point B and for filling with beer.

My twitter feed has a few comic book writers on it and these guys are doing a job they are intensely enthusiastic about, they are also doing a job they can carry around with them. Most are slightly younger than me and have been doing it for years.

It sounds idyllic and not dissimilar to my situation.

So it really interested me when one of these writers complained about feeling anxious and what could he do it about (it was anxious to the point of not being able to work, not just a bit fretful)

And then came the flood of rubbish advice.

• Have a cup of tea (mostly British)
• Have a walk
• Listen to music
• calm down
• blah blah blah

And I really wanted to chip in, but not on twitter.

A few years back the same thing happened to me. Here's the details.

I love writing software, just love it. I'd do my 9-5 work and go home and have some food, say hello to my family. I'd then sit down and while they watched rubbish TV I would start programming again and this would then go on until 10ish and then bed. Every gap I had I would fill with software.

This was fine until one day I was driving home and I felt most odd, like I was having a heart attack. Bear in mind my body had never spoken to me for 45 years so I wasn't very good at listening.

Trip to the Docs, Heart going too fast, asked me if I was stressed, working too hard, told me to stop being stressed and working too hard.

So I looked at my life and felt surely doing something I loved wouldn't have this effect on me would it!. Well actually it did.

The issue was I wasn't differentiating my work time and home time. Essentially I was never finishing my working day.

The cure?

I just separated the things I think as work (i.e. programming), with the things I don't regard as work. The things I do as work I do 9-5, the other stuff I do when it entertains me.

Luckily I don't regard research, writing blogs, making presentations as work so I could still manage to pack in some extra hours, which is useful when running your own business.

Did it work? Almost instantly and following these rules have kept me very happy for the last few years.

Just look at my little face....

So my friends be nice to your brain, it's kind of useful!

Lots of Love

Steve