Will Code for Beer

Asahi Beer. Never drunk any myself. Seen lots of bottles of it though. And the labels. Some years ago I wrote a system (in embedded C) which controls the laser date marking systems at the Asahi Brewery in Japan. My software controls a device which moves metal disks in front of the marking laser. Thing is, the disks run out of characters after a while and so they need to be changed, along with the controlling software.

So tonight I was re-discovering the joys of code that I wrote quite a few years ago. Quite fun using a program which displays 24 lines of 80 characters on my 17 inch monitor. Whoa. Those letters are big. And it is surprising how all the keyboard shortcuts came back to me. Did the changes, blew the EPROMS and sent them off. If a few weeks they should be in the machines in Japan. And my software will be marking beer for another five years or so.

Not my favourite embedded job though. One day I'll tell you all about my toilet flushing program.....