Keeping the Flame Alive

Like my previous entry, it looks like I'm starting this year by noting that I looked at microcontrollers in 2023 but with not much activity visible on this site. Almost all the public activity was in my Inferno diary, though I also produced a submission for the 9th International Workshop on Plan 9 which I was unfortunately unable to attend in person.

The rant

One reason for being physically absent from IWP9 was work commitments, involving the ordeal of having to prepare for travel to a work event. This involved far too much preparation for very little return, including a booster vaccination that maybe I needed, but which my “employer” was characteristically vague about. In the end, the work event was a pointless exercise in the sort of performative corporate busyworking that even Nokia never managed to slip into during the years I was an employee there. Yes, an actual employee, not a self-employed contractor for a remote-first, try-to-appear-big, overgrown start-up pretending to be a proper corporation.

At least I met a few interesting colleagues in person before the end of my unproductive work experience four months later. Another section to slap on my CV that requires explaining to future employers.

The better things

More productive and interesting things also happened in 2023. As well as virtually attending and presenting at IWP9, I managed to port Inferno to more MicroMod boards, including the SAMD51, Artemis (Apollo3) and Teensy.

Nearer the end of the year, I started to automate builds of these ports, and others, with the results published here. I'm now looking at documenting the way these ports work in this repository. Hopefully, this will make Inferno porting easier for others to approach.

Categories: Inferno, Free Software

This document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.