I flew down to San Jose for the Embedded Systems Conference and had a great time there. As always there were loads of iPad/iPod giveaways, which I never win, but the real treat was meeting Jeri Ellsworth. In case you don’t know who she is, she created the Commodore 30 in 1, as well as an avid DIY hacker of sorts. You can check out her youtube channel and wiki entry. Her presentation was about her life, and how she overcame many obstacles to become a successful self-taught electrical engineer. I met her after her keynote and had a small chat. It was a pleasure talking to her about her current projects and her new found fame on the internet. I was truly inspired talking to her, and makes me want to go home and work on my DIY projects.
Steve Wozniak was also there, although he is more involved with philanthropy and teaching kids these days. He had a great presentation about Segway Polo and just being a famous nerd. I did want to ask him a question at the keynote, but didn’t get the chance however. I thought it would have been interesting to know if he has had any failures in life, and what he has learned from them. We hear a lot about Steve Wozniak’s successes, but I’m sure he also has some failure stories.
In other news, the results from the Cypress Psoc5 Challenge are in, and well, the Drum Tuner did not win. I did get into the top 12 finalists however. That was kind of a let down last week when I found out about it, but there’s always the next contest.
Anyways, San Jose was a blast. I loved the Shabu Shabu! You just can’t get that around DC.