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I hope you are enjoying these comics. I will be making more of them, but I am also working on upgrading Robobob. I think you will be pleasantly surprised, so check back soon!
Showing posts with label comic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comic. Show all posts
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Computers 103
The gnome is back! This time, he has a very important message for you about registers. Please give him your undivided attention, or there may be consequences. 0_o
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Computers 102
For your amenity, the next installment of "inside your CPU" is avaliable below. If your screen is big enough, you shouldn't even need to scroll. The previous issue can be even be found here. Convenience!!
(If you don't get the joke in the last panel, it is because the "take one down" action will eventually set the zero flag in the status register, but the "pass it around" line will never set the zero flag. The branch instruction can only know about the results of the operation immediately before it, so the gnome will eventually die of alcohol poisoning. THINK OF THE GNOMES!)
In other exciting news, the source code I used to make this video is now avaliable. You can find it here. There are a few improvements and bug fixes.
(If you don't get the joke in the last panel, it is because the "take one down" action will eventually set the zero flag in the status register, but the "pass it around" line will never set the zero flag. The branch instruction can only know about the results of the operation immediately before it, so the gnome will eventually die of alcohol poisoning. THINK OF THE GNOMES!)
In other exciting news, the source code I used to make this video is now avaliable. You can find it here. There are a few improvements and bug fixes.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Computers 101
I'm taking a little hiatus from the epic how to build your own robot series for a few reasons.
Firstly, there is a LOT to cover. I'm writing this as a sort of trial run for how I might explain it to first year university students, and as we all know - firsties are only marginally more intelligent than the rats they experiment on. With so many topics to cover, I'm faced with either giving 10 second "just take my word for it" style advice, or deviating from the topic every paragraph to explain the reasoning behind the statements I've just made.
The other problem is that it isn't fun to read. It's very technically dense and wordy, and I feel that if I can't hold the reader's interest then there isn't much point in me spending all this time explaining it. After writing the how to choose servos article, I really felt that I should have introduced it with an earlier article about exactly how they worked and what they were used for.
So to remedy this, I've decided to take a different approach to the rest of the series. Before I start spouting off about software and microcontrollers and interrupts, I'm going to give you some background on the subject in general – just so that everyone is up to speed when I use terms like instruction set, word size or stack overflow.
What's more, to keep things interesting the lessons will take place in funky 8-bit comic style! Enjoy!
Firstly, there is a LOT to cover. I'm writing this as a sort of trial run for how I might explain it to first year university students, and as we all know - firsties are only marginally more intelligent than the rats they experiment on. With so many topics to cover, I'm faced with either giving 10 second "just take my word for it" style advice, or deviating from the topic every paragraph to explain the reasoning behind the statements I've just made.
The other problem is that it isn't fun to read. It's very technically dense and wordy, and I feel that if I can't hold the reader's interest then there isn't much point in me spending all this time explaining it. After writing the how to choose servos article, I really felt that I should have introduced it with an earlier article about exactly how they worked and what they were used for.
So to remedy this, I've decided to take a different approach to the rest of the series. Before I start spouting off about software and microcontrollers and interrupts, I'm going to give you some background on the subject in general – just so that everyone is up to speed when I use terms like instruction set, word size or stack overflow.
What's more, to keep things interesting the lessons will take place in funky 8-bit comic style! Enjoy!
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