new post

Just a little rant on how the school's course signup is awful. I've spent the last couple of days worried about how I was going to fulfill my course requirements for next fall since I couldn't get into any of the classes that I need. Finally, filled with despair, I decided to just sign up for some random classes in other engineering fields. After perusing through the EE section for a couple minutes what did I find????

They have the exact same courses! Literally the exact same classes at the exact same times with the exact same teachers. Just under an EE heading instead of CSE. They do this so that EE majors will be able to find spots in their classes without having to go to the CSE section and vise-versa.

So now I am enrolled in the right classes and will have to go through the bureaucracy of getting the EE turned into a CSE on my transcript. Will it get approved? Who knows. But it is frustrating.

Feels good to work the system a little bit too. I got you... you school administration fiends.

another post

Signed up for classes today.

Tried to find some stuff that would have practical use for me in my projects--

Found CSE 4381 Digital Computer Design and CSE 5387 Digital System Design.

Talked to my CSE 3381 Digital Logic Design professor, Mitch Thornton, who said that both classes would be helpful. Digital Systems Design is going to deal more with different parts of a microprocessors and how the microprocessors function. Digital Computer Design is going to deal with connecting Microprocessors to vid chips and mem chips and interfacing different parts of a computer to have a working computer.

The systems class, I think, will help me with my Assembly coding and hopefully give me some good insight into how to program the arduino more efficiently as well as the pic and avr chips.

The computer design class is going to help a ton with some side projects I've had like the Fuzebox and an ipodTouch cheapy.

update and links to good sources

Well... It has been a while since my last update. Most of the arduino/microcontroller work has been sidelined for school... but I've still been doing as much planning and reading as I can so that when I finally have sometime/money/workspace I will be able to move forward with the different projects.

Here are some of the best sources that I've found:

http://www.instructables.com/

This is a great DIY site that allows users to post their own projects and view other DIY projects with instructions.

www.adafruit.com - good online store for arduino kits - check out the fuze box - its an opensource 8bit gaming system that you can build and program games for

www.ladyada.com - tutorials for most of the kits sold on adafruit.com

that's all for now... the fuse box is definitely getting put on my to-do list. Not so much for the thrill of playing my own games but because I want the experience working with A/V out and microcontrollers for another project I'm still brainstorming... no spoilers