1. November 2008 by pilot.

A few days ago, I received an email from a reader who reported a new errata on page 123 (in the “Learning to fly the PIC24″ book) in the write() function, an example of redirecting the “stdout” output stream.

The function receives a pointer to a buffer containing characters that need to be forwarded to the output device of choice and a counter. A loop is performed to print sequentially the required number of characters, but (here is the bug) I apparently omitted to increment the buffer pointer.  To the reader’s greatest surprise the code example seems to work anyway! How is this possible?

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22. October 2008 by pilot.

It has been almost three full months since my last posting and you might have been wondering what happened … I have only a few excuses, but good ones:

1. I moved back to the old continent, I am now writing this from Munich, Germany
2. I changed job (a bit), while still working for Microchip, I am now responsible for the marketing of 32-bit microcontrollers in Europe, Middle East and Africa. This of course requires quite a bit of traveling.
3. But perhaps the most important one is my new “project”, my son Luca, who is now 10 months old and absorbing ALL that is left of my wake time.

In this last few months I have received tons of email, (I love emails from my readers) and tried to respond to most of them. Some of you have been reporting about typos in the books and/or issues with new versions of the compilers and libraries. Others have brought up interesting ideas and questions that I plan on using in the future postings. Slowly, I will try to cover all the backlog and get back live.

Stay tuned!

P.S.: For those among you who are old enough to remember the Blues Brothers movie, here is Jake’s (Jim Belushi) original list of excuses:

1. I ran outta gas.
2. I had a flat tire.
3. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare.
4. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners.
5. An old friend came in from outta town.
6. Someone stole my car.
7. There was an earthquake,
8. … a terrible flood,
9. …locust’s.
10. It wasn’t my fault!!

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