|
|
|
blue argyle triceratops
Wednesday, February 11 2026
Gretchen took both dogs with her to work at the bookstore today, and while they were there two interesting things happened. The first was that at some point some woman with a pit bull walked past on the street and, because a customer had failed to properly shut the door, Charlotte was able to push it open and go running up to that dog. It turned out that particular dog was not good with other dogs, and the woman with the dog was not happy. But nothing much else came of it. The other thing that happened was that a youngish couple came in and were so smitten by both dogs that they came back later with toys for each. One was a floppy lamb and the other was a blue argyle triceratops. That second one is so awesome that it's going to be sad to see it ultimately destroyed, as all dog toys quickly are.
Meanwhile I was having ChatGPT help me get my I2C bootloader working on the Atmega32A, a rather primitive form of the AVR technology that comes in big 40-pin DIPs. I eventually got it to work, which felt like a miracle given all the special code I'd had to put in both the slave and the bootloader code to deal with its quirks.
I was also interested in what use I might make of some old ISA sound cards I have. I had a conversation going with ChatGPT where I asked about various integrated circuits on the cards, and it would tell me how I might drive them with a modern microcontroller. I was hoping to find a Yamaha synth chip on one of the cards, and I eventually did, but it was a small surface-mount device that I would be reluctant to try to repurpose on its own.
Before Gretchen got home, I made the usual Wednesday-night spaghetti. Then I put a little effort into removing the accumulation of packed snow and ice from the walkway to our front door. The weather had been gradually growing warmer and now that ice and snow was fairly easy to separate from the underlying flagstones.
Charlotte at the bookstore today with her new toy, a lamb. Click to enlarge.
Neville with his argyle triceratops. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?260211 feedback
previous | next |
