I’m getting married in ten days. Unsurprisingly I’ve little else on my mind. However I do still have to work.
I just submitted a camera-ready copy of my paper to PPIG2006 (change history is available at ‘svn co http://foss.it.brighton.ac.uk/svn/ppig2006/ppig2006-release’). I think it’s a good paper, but it needs to be developed over a longer term, which is something that I want to do.
I’ve also inherited next years real-time systems course. Which places me in a strange position. I’m going to blog about it but….. Some of the techniques I’ll be using to teach the course are experimental. The problem is with the “Show no fear” mantra, where lecturers are advised not to show that they are non-expert in an area or that they make mistakes. I may use a technique that turns out to be a mistake. If I don’t blog I can always “show no fear” and point-blank refuse to accept that I made a mistake, if I do blog I may be land in some interesting situations. I’m willing to trust that students want the best from me that I can provide, and I’m willing to trust that they understand that in order to do this I have to push the limits of my knowledge, technical skills and teaching skills. Basically, I want to turn this away from me teaching the students and more towards having a conversation with the students. In this way they can tell me how they learn best and I can accommodate them.
So at the moment the set-up for real-time systems reflects my wish that students actually get down and dirty with a real time system. In order to do this we’ll be using RTLinux on ARM emulated by Qemu. I’m getting two ARM development boards (thanks JD) and I have two robotic armatures. I want to “simulate” the control rods in a nuclear power plant using the armatures and a childrens’ toy (you know the one where kids get to put cylinders into cylindrical holes). So we’ll see how this all goes 