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I've been working on the courses that I'm taking over the summer at CAC. I'm trying to knock out the education credits that I need to teach here in Arizona. The courses aren't all that difficult (Behavior Management and Intro. to Education) and actually are quite interesting. They just take a little time for the reading and writing papers. I've got a couple of more chapters to go and hope to have it all finished over this weekend. Then it's back to playing with microcontrollers. I really miss the little guys.

I've been seeing a lot more discussion about FPGAs in the literature lately. It looks like they are coming to light as the versatile little buggers that they are. EDN magazine has an interesting little article in the July 7 edition on the image-processing applications of FPGAs. In Embedded Systems Programming magazine (July 2005) the editor has a nice piece about his experiences with FPGAs.

Good news! IEEE Spectrum magazine is reporting in the July 2005 issue that engineering salaries are slowly starting to rise again in the US and are really taking off overseas. Overseas, salaries for engineers are increasing by double digit percents. The drain that has occurred here in the US with engineering jobs seems to be heating up the job market in China and India. Hopefully, some type of near equity will be reached with US engineers and some of the jobs that have been sourced off-shore will start returning.

Computer magazine (July 2005) also has an article on embedded computing and discusses the need for computer science to revisit its foundations and prepare for the 21st century by creating practices that will meet current and projected needs. It will be necessary to reinvent computer science. There are issues of precision and reliability involving temporal issues. We have the basic tools that we need. We just need to start using them. Technology is ready for another leap. The time is just about right for another revolution such as occurred as transistors became ubiquitous.

Star Trek New Voyages

I came across a cool web site for an independent Star Trek fan film production group at Star Trek New Voyages. They have released two films so far that pick up where the original series from the 1960s left off. Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise had completed three years of their five year mission when the series was cancelled and the fan films pick up during the fourth year. All of the original Enterprise crewmembers are portrayed by new actors who give fresh interpretations of the original characters.

The first two episodes “Come What May” and “In Harms Way” were released in 2004. These short films are available free for download from the website in zipped WMA format either through direct download from mirror sites or through bit torrent. Each episode is presented as a teaser and five acts. There are two more films in development and are scheduled for release in 2006. The third film is being written by one of the writers from the original series and will guest star Walter Koenig - Mr. Chekov from the original series and the movies.

I was impressed with the quality of the films considering that they are privately sponsored and produced. There are quite a few computer generated special effects but the look and feel is approximate to the original series plus something a little more. The costumes, props, and sets are very well done. I noticed the improvement between the first episode and the second episode and anticipate again as much improvement in the upcoming episodes. Since Star Trek Enterprise was cancelled and there is no Trek in sight, at least not for a few years, the production of fan films such as New Voyages will do nicely to fill the void for Trekkers such as myself.

I know that there are other fan films in production, some spinning off from the later series such as "The Next Generation." But for me, it's exciting to see Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise back in action again - boldly going where no man has gone before.