I just finished a contract job for the people I worked with earlier in the year. Nothing shows that a job was lost because of external circumstances more than getting re-hired by the same people for a new job. This time they wanted me for a short term contract job, a rush delivery of a demo for the consumers electronics show.
I had a month to learn Java, Eclipse, the last iteration of the prototype project and Android SDK development, plus actually building the system. It was a fun challenge, and I pushed in a lot of features in time for the show. Essentially, a piece of the prototype hardware hadn't been made yet, so they wanted me to use an android phone's touch screen to stand in for it. This would have been pretty simple, but they also needed the phone to communicate with the existing chunk of custom imbedded hardware. I found an article covering the product here: http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2013/01/johnson_controls_debuts_infota.html
I got to work with some great people and learned a lot more about the professional work scene. Connecting two unrelated devices with a socket was a new experience as well, and I enjoyed the challenge.
Anyhow, I've been full time on the project and haven't had much time for anything else, but before it started I did make some big breakthroughs on a new form of artificial life form I've been working on. Now that the job is over, I'm back to looking for work and I'll have some time to work on the AI project again. It requires a lot of components to be built before it can start doing interesting things, but once it does I'll start to post more about it.
