Rather than the Indian chief, we were taught the great Welsh anthem: Sons of Harlech Come and Harken To our Anthem A geographic thing, I suppose. We were 50 miles from Wales but several thousand from the Indians.

Flowcode started out like this: a graphical programming environment for embedded software that relies mainly on flow diagrams and assembles them into C, PIC assembly code and hex for direct porting to a PIC microcontroller. It's been extended since to cover the hardware components of the design. The problem I find with Flowcode is that as soon as the design gets at all complicated the flow diagram becomes unwieldy.

Peter

I bought a new TV a couple of months ago and I looked into curved TVs before I chose. The opinion of the various consumer sites I looked at was fairly unanimous that they have no viewing advantages at all and cost a lot more money. That was also the impression I got when I was looking at them in shops and showrooms. So I went for a flat screen and haven't regretted it. Couldn't see much difference between the major brands but I got a good deal on a Panasonic in a local shop.

Peter

Hterm [] works for me. I haven't compared it to other emulators mentioned here so I can't claim that it's the best, but it talks to PIC micros over USBser.sys conveniently without fuss. Also python's serial module is pretty easy to use if you fancy writing your own interface instead of using a terminal emulator.

In the early 70's I played around with magnetic core memory for a while but didn't get anywhere, but then Newbear brought out their 77-68 board: a 6800 with 256 bytes of memory. IO was two rows of toggle switches and 8 LEDs. I added 1. a speaker so that it could squeak tunes 2. a cassette tape drive to make program IO easier 3. more memory (eventually reached 4k - why would anyone need more?) 4. a type 4b teletype 5. a video board with a vhf output for an old TV 6. an old keyboard rescued from an electronic calculator 7. eventually, a 5.25" floppy disk drive (software for that was a challenge. But then Amstrad started selling their machines that were much less than I had spent on mine. Still got most of that gear in the loft.

First, what not to do. Normally the interviewers' objective is to find out how much the interviewee knows and what experience they've had. Asking trick questions and posing zany challenges will not help you find this out - they are just traps that bad interviewers fall into. Also if you go in (or send the interviewer in) with a set of questions about .net it turns from an interview into an exam. You could do that by email. Waste of interviewing time so that is something else to avoid. Instead, just ask them what you want to know. A good technique is to start by asking them what they've done (I'm asuming that someone else is dealing with questions designed to put them at ease and to check their applications - those a pretty essential ways of starting the interview). So your questions can start by asking the junior just how much .net experience they have had. Stop. Let them speak, and listen. If they say some interesting stuff then pick up on it. The purpose of your questioning now has to be to find out how much of what they are claiming they did themselves: if part of a team what was their role? What did they contribute specifically? e.g. answer: we designed a piece of software that did wonderful things. follow-up question: yes but which part of it did you personally work on, what was your exact contribution (to be asked every time they say "we did" instead of "I did"). Then shut up and listen. Then probe specifics, to see whether they can support their claims by demonstrating a genuine understanding of the task they are describing. What else have they done? - same pattern: find out how much was their work and how much they understood. Repeat until you feel you have got a measure of the candidate's abilities. They might be nervous to the extent that they dry up, in which case it is OK to lead them gently, using their application as a way in. But stop at regular intervals and listen. Try to get them doing 95% of the talking. Above all, if you are the interviewer resist the temptation to pontificate or otherwise show off. This isn't the time or place for that. HTH

Went smoothly for me. I'd been using Vista for about 6 months and had a lot of stuff on it, so I was careful to backup. But the upgrade ran without a problem and the one or two programs that wouldn't run directly under W7 went fine under compatibility mode.

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