Page 6 - Max Maxfield News Today

In my previous column on this topic, I noted that -- for reasons that will be revealed in the fullness of time -- I’m currently wrestling with a passel of perplexing posers revolving around the math associated with revolving around a torus (plural tori), which is colloquially known as a donut. We commenced our thought…

I've just been talking to the folks from a jolly interesting company called IOTech. One of the things they told me that really struck a chord was that their technology bridges the OT-IT divide. "But what is the OT-IT divide, and why does it need to be bridged?" I hear you cry. Well, I'm glad…

Do you recall the 1963 American comedy film -- It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World -- starring Spencer Tracy accompanied by an all-star cast of comedians, including Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Terry Thomas, and Phil Silvers? Well, that has nothing to do with what we’re going to talk about here. In my…

by Max Maxfield It’s a funny old life when you come to think about it. You never know when something is going to spring up to surprise and delight you or to bite you on the a…sk no questions. As a “surprise and delight” example, I recently received a request to give the keynote presentation at the FPGA Forum in Trondheim, Norway, 9-10 February 2022. With regard to the “ask no questions” front, I foolishly asked my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) if she would care to acc...

97-year-old WWII veteran from Orlando competes in National Veterans Golden Age Games Competition continues through May Tags:  ORLANDO, Fla. – A World War II veteran wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down as he participated in the Veteran Affair’s National Golden Age Games. “I started walking, I just told myself I’m going to do this and that’s all there is to it,” Max Maxfield said. [TRENDING: Ad He was one of the last to finish, but he wasn’t alone as people came back to wal...

by Max Maxfield I’m currently running around in ever-decreasing circles shouting, “Don’t Panic!” because I’m trying to spin too many plates and juggle too many balls and I was never trained to spin and can’t juggle. Hmmm, now that I come to think about it, that’s not strictly true because I once read a book on the art of juggling and — as a result — I can juggle nine fine china plates, but only for a very short period of time. The term mechatronics refers t...

by Max Maxfield I’m a big fan of having hobby projects. In addition to taking one’s mind off the toils, troubles, and tribulations of the world, I think that having a new “thing” that you want to do is the best way to set about learning how to do it. Take adding a new programming language to your repertoire as an example. One way to do this is to wade through the language reference manual (yawn). Another approach is to come up with some algorithm or task you wish to ...

by Max Maxfield Many of today’s electronic systems feature multiple printed circuit boards (PCBs) and/or modules. (For the remainder of this column, unless such interpretation is inconsistent with the context, we will assume the term “board” to embrace the term “module.”) Not surprisingly, the system’s designers often wish to pass data back and forth from board to board. Oftentimes, these inter-board signals involve relatively low-speed data transfer via general-...

by Max Maxfield I can’t believe it; we’ve finally arrived at the ultimate part of what started out as a mini-series and ended up being a mega-epic. In a moment, we’re going to consider FPGA (hardware) and MCU (software) solutions to the switch bounce problem, but first… Just in case you arrived late to the party, in Part 1 we introduced the concept of switch bounce; in Part 2 we delved deeper into the bouncing associated with SPST and SPDT switches; in Part 3, Part 4...