Memos From the Cube

Woah, has it really been that long since I last posted? My bad – time flies when you’re having fun. Time to wind the clock back a few weeks and run down what I’ve been doing.

A few weeks ago I went hiking up into the local mountains in Dragvoll with my two housemates, Saurab and Simon. I was actually surprised how close they were to where I’m staying – of course we can see the mountains from the road, but it’s quite something else entirely to be standing on top of one after only an hours walk. On the way we saw many interesting things, from frozen farmland to genuine Norwegian snow ponies:

As well as some great views of the city. Eventually we came to what we’d come to see, the local (frozen) lake – now I can say I’ve walked on one:

As well as have a good-old fashioned snowball fight. I’ve decided that these are best avoided; as an engineer, I lack the physical upper body strength and coordination to win any fair fight. On the upside, being skilled in the “flight” part of the “fight or flight” arts means you can just wait until they turn around and dump a big ol’ hunk of ice down their back, before running like hell.

That night I went off with a few coworkers to a dinner at Kristian’s awesome bachelor-pad, yet another Atmel co-worker in my department. It was quite a fun night; I got to eat some awesome roast Reindeer (that’s twice now!) and also taste some more properly prepared Norwegian accompaniments over some somewhat decent Australian wine I managed to find, from the only place in town licensed to sell wine. I’m not sure how Amateur Chef and Engineer mix together, but quite frankly it’s a mystery I’m in no hurry to solve. I’ve been quite surprised how much everyone at Atmel have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, and this night was no exception. The night ended with us all watching re-runs of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which quite frankly is how I think all good dinner parties should finish up.

Last Thursday was my somewhat official send-off party in the Atmel Applications department – a little premature to be sure, but it was a night that best suited everyone. It’s hard to believe I’m already in my final week at this awesome “magic smoke” factory, as the weeks have really flown by since I got here. The night started with the team all meeting at the local Indoor Go Cart (and Laser Tag) center just out of town. Here we donned pseudo-racing suits and ridiculous lunch-lady hairnets before putting on our racing helmets and hitting the track. Luckily I managed to snap a quick photo without showing anyone’s face before putting my camera in the valuables locker, so I can post a picture of the inside of the place:

I’ve never actually gone proper go-carting before, so this was another new experience for me. It’s surprising how fast everything feels while actually racing, as opposed to just idly watching; I was on full brown-pants alert for most of the race. After my spectacularly bad attempts at driving, I’m pretty sure I’m blacklisted from ever coming back — I managed to crash and stall for a good half of the first race against the others in my group. In the final race I managed to do a lot better, with only one big crash and a lot of slipping, sliding and near misses, although my overall performance was quite frankly abysmal. Not to worry, I can just cross “Professional Racecar Driver” off my list of potential alternative careers, just after “Professional Bowler”.

Getting out of the car on the last race I managed to do something spectacularly stupid, and put my hand against the engine mount. Protip: engines, after long and strenuous use, are quite hot. I managed to burn the bejesus out of my hand, resulting in a nice painful discolored patch for the remainder of the night. On the upside, burns go well with cool glassware, so it was an incentive to drink slower later on at the pub.

After showing my utter lack of anything resembling driving skills, we all jumped into various forms of transport and met back at one of the local out-of-the-way pubs, which I think I was told was one of the oldest surviving ones. Here we drank expensive beer and played Sjoelen, a Dutch tabletop shuffleboard game where the object was to throw wooden discs along the board and into one of four slots at the end. This is actually quite fun, and progressively more-so as the night wears on, as everyone gets more and more intoxicated and less accurate. Definetely more interesting than just sitting in a booth all night. Someone took a photo of my playing, complete with devil eyes:

So I certainly recommend playing if you ever get the chance. Family aside, I think the one most closely counting the days until I get back is actually my liver; it seems like the abuse hasn’t stopped since I got off the plane. Australians drink to be social, Norwegians drink to live.

I’ll be a bit sad to leave Atmel on Friday and Norway next Wednesday, but I guess all good things must come to an end eventually. It’s been a heck of a lot of fun here, and I hope I can come back in the future – even if only for a visit.

A final bit of geeky news; if you’ve been following the LUFA repositories at all over the past two weeks, you’ll notice some major changes – I’ve nearly finished an initial port to the AVR32 UC3B processors (finally!). That’s a big upside to working here at Atmel for a while; now I’ve got some hands-on experience and training with the UC3 processors, I’m much more comfortable about working with them. Hopefully this will be the first of many ports, with other UC3 families (UC3A, UC3C, etc.) and other completely different architectures (NXP ARM, etc.) in the near future. When the UC3B port becomes operational I’ll announce it here and on the LUFA mailing list.