It was fun getting the Zedboard working on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. We are using 2012.4 version of ISE/Vivado Webpack. There are no major tricks in getting it to work but since there does not seem to be a guide out there, I thought that I’d write a quick one here. Read more…
Fixed a major problem with the computers at the office today. We currently have our users authentication handled by LDAP and their home directories stored in an NFS server. This is a pretty typical tried and tested scenario in many places. Things were working fine for a while but for Read more…
Our new carpets were installed yesterday. It took them all of half a day to rip up the old ones and install the new ones. The entire office is now brightly coloured and I hope that means that we’ll be able to work more productively come 2013! PS: There’s but Read more…
Although we’ve only been squatting at our current offices for the last few years, we did not renovate the office when we first moved in as the previous tenant had left an office which was mostly what we wanted anyway. However, with the wear and tear of the last couple Read more…
In preparation for the development of our new products in 2013, we have ordered a couple of FPGA based development boards to aid in our work. Both of these turned out to be Digilent boards – Atlys and Zedboard. The Atlys will serve as our general purpose development board as Read more…
After spending several months running user home directories under GlusterFS, we have encountered some minor problems of files that get modified or unmodified in a seemingly random fashion. This might be due to us using Gluster in an unsupported way. Therefore, we decided to switch to a tried and true Read more…
This is part of our series of ideation entries. What if one could have a modular server farm – think of a rack of blades, which you can add computing resources to in a modular manner. For one, it would definitely reduce power consumption if the computing resources could be Read more…
Seems that we’re not the only one stuck in this conundrum. Although mentioning only web-developers, the things mentioned in this blog entry are applicable just as well to our own problems in hiring at AESTE. Paraphrasing the entry: Hiring engineers is like simultaneously enduring a flood and a drought. You Read more…
At our office, we’ve been using Glusterfs in an unconventional way. Instead of merely using it in a distributed or replicated cluster, we’re using it as central storage for our user home directories. As part of our office-wide upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04LTS, we have had to upgrade our Glusterfs from 3.0 Read more…
Just read an insightful piece about the differences between working at a start-up vs a big company. It boils down to 10 points: Responsibility, accountability, impact Everyone is expected to take ownership of their own work here. Collective responsibility doesn’t fly as it encourages a no-blame, no-responsibility culture. Risk There Read more…