While looking over robot simulator options, ran across V-REP which looked interesting. After reading through some of the great documentation, I wanted to give the remote API a try so I threw together a basic demo of a line following robot with logic implemented in Python. The demo is available on GitHub here. Hoping to try some more complex projects in V-REP soon!

A quick look back on 10 years of professional software/hardware development and some advice for new developers and engineers.

Some generalizations on how the first 10 years of your career might look. Years 1 to 5 will be spent learning as much as possible; it's very likely you will learn more in the first two years on the job than you did in all of college. Years 6 to 10 will be spent niching …

In a previous post, I brainstormed about applying masking tape to one side of a wire mesh part then fiberglass cloth to the other side. Tried it out and the results are encouraging. The only downside I ran into was the cloth tends to move around a bit when applying the resin. Also, this method may require some additional steps if the cloth cannot be applied as a single piece.

Here is a video showing …

Been experimenting with a few methods of using wire mesh to create custom parts. Mesh is cheap and easy to work with. I wanted to figure out a quick method of treating the mesh so that it would retain its shape and seal the openings in the wire. Here is what I have tried so far:

• Method 1 - Apply FibaTape over the mesh then apply Bondo over the tape.
• Method 2 - Apply masking tape over …

The undo feature built into Windows Explorer is scary. Let me preface this statement by saying I have not yet moved pass Windows 7 so maybe the behavior has changed in newer releases. That being said, accidentally hitting Ctrl-Z while in Windows Explorer can be nerve wracking because depending on the action being undone, there may not be any prompt displayed. For example, a file that was renamed an hour ago might be undone without …

Couple of quick thoughts on GDEX this year:

• Big shout out to the Fate's Echo team! These guys are awesome and there game looks great! Just happened to meet them on the same day they met each other in person for the first time!
• Of all the games at the show, Collapsis from Wraith Games stood out with its simple, fun gameplay.
• The talk on arcade first development was very interesting. Enjoyed talking with the …

UPDATE: Complete data is now available here.

The following is some programming language popularity and average salary data collected from Indeed and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The collected data included about 50 of the top programming languages in regular use. The popularity value is how a given language compares against all other languages. The employment number is an estimate for all of the US. The salary number is averaged over all the US …

Noticed some strange Electron <webview> behavior while working on a proof-of-concept for the next version of Doctrine.

I have a simple page with a <webview> tag displaying a local HTML file. If the local HTML file contains a link and the user clicks on it, the default browser should open the URL instead of the <webview>.

The following code produces the expected results:

webview.addEventListener('will-navigate', (event) => {
    // Order is important or URL will open in …