You are browsing the archive for August 2011.
For many people they just except that software exist as some form of stuff that allows you do do things on computers or is hidden inside machines. In a way software can be as hard to physically get hold of as it is to see the flow of electronics in a wire or see the flow of air particles generating a vortex off a wing tip. However software is a important components in nearly everything you touch, from the mouse your scroll around the page with to the hundreds of servers that send you search results when looking for that next holiday. Software engineers are a massive part of the industry but what does software really do and can software really break? It would be difficult to explain software and how the flow of code works in a modern computer as they have become very complex machine. Instead its possibly [...]
A question was posed my way on the economics of academia. The question(s) asked are as follows: Why, with the high cost of university tuition, can’t schools have teach-only professors? With a ratio of 20:1 in the classroom and a rate of 100/hour (roughly), why do professors still need to get research dollars? Is it economically feasible to have teaching-only professors? Why doesn’t this happen more? Why do universities have to rely on research funding to stay afloat? We were talking about the demands on researchers and how that prevents better teaching (because so much time is involved chasing funding) and were questioning why not just give up the research side of things? Wow, that’s a loaded set of questions. There is, actually, an easy answer to this. In short, we have institutes that do specialize in teaching. Community colleges and technical colleges specialize in teaching rather than research. If [...]
In my life, I am surrounded by nerds. I love this environment – it’s a rare thing to be surrounded by equally passionate and quirky people with engineering mindsets. But sometimes I look around and think, “man, how did this get to be normal?” So I thought I’d give some examples of the nerd environment that I take for granted. And I am curious to hear from you – what nerdy expressions do you see from your friends? How do you express your own nerdiness? (Disclaimer: all this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I by no means intend to criticize anyone’s personal choice of expression.) Apparel Level 1: Generic Harvard or MIT shirt. This is meant to express “I’m hot stuff, and smart, so look at me I go to an Ivy League school.” But if you ask those who actually attend such schools, they would never wear such [...]
I was lucky enough to be gifted a Nook Touch for my recent birthday. It’s a fun new toy, and one that I probably didn’t need (the basis of the gadget industry). If I’ve been working enough to teeter on burnout, it follows that I haven’t had much time to go and read something like a book. I’d love to, and should I ever take a vacation, this this will get quite a workout (I really do miss reading for leisure). The first reason I started looking at eReaders was for component datasheets. While it may seem like a silly application, the ability to look at the information for a part while I’m sitting at my bench is pretty important. I have a short attention span and having something that can display just the datasheet is a good idea (for me); less chance of my attention being drawn by something else [...]
Today I must bid goodbye…not to the EngineerBlogs readers, but to Steve Jobs. For those who have not yet heard (because I know EngineerBlogs is the first site you read each day), he is stepping down as Apple’s CEO but is hoping to stay on as Chairman. Apple’s shares started diving. Not a surprise. I have to confess to being an Apple fangirl because so much of my life has revolved around using various incarnations of Macintosh computers. I sure hope it’s not because I’m a mindless follower. I’d actually used PCs most of high school, but I came to Apple through engineering. I was taking a digital systems class as a freshman in college, and the course required us to use a program which allowed us to do visual programming with boolean operators. At that point, Macs were significantly more advanced in the visual interface, and so the program [...]
I’m not suggesting the usage of engineers in crash testing over the million dollar and well qualified crash test dummies. However, I would like us to consider the people behind the dummies that work on developing safer and safer cars, trucks, motorcycles and roads for us to drive in and on. As a car and motorcycle user, I’m all too aware of how easy it is to get involved in an accident. Lucky for me, the ones I have been involved in have resulted in no injury to myself or others. I do, however, remember watching one accident that involved a car rolling over and being amazed at the driver getting out and walking away. I’ve also seen motorway accidents where cars and lorries have spun out of control and been not only stunned at the lack of injury but to see vehicles not turn over. The key thing I [...]
This post is probably much more fitting over at my normal blog (not that I’m trying to advertise or anything) but Engineer Blogs posts normally have a picture to hypnotize (hmm, no…) draw in (no…) accentuate the discussion. DrWife and I were perusing some local garage sales recently where we came across an awesome toy for NanoGEARS. Obviously, with the pseud GEARS, I had to buy it. NanoGEARS likes chewing on the gears and holding the pieces but other than that, she has no idea what to do with it. Now, she’s 16 months old. It’s not like I’m expecting her to calculate pitch ratios or anything like that. But it did get me thinking of the following question. What was my first real engineering-like problem? I do remember helping my father when he worked on his car. I also built a popsicle stick bridge in HS (which caused me to switch [...]
I often say that troubleshooting is the main skill I possess. My day job requires interfacing with manufacturing and trying to help them solve problems from time to time (among other things). And recently while working on an issue, I’ve come upon one of the most difficult problems to solve: component level problems. The hard part about component level problems is narrowing down and eliminating all of the other potential problems in a circuit board. There’s always temptation to look at a problematic part of a circuit and immediately declare, “These parts are no good. Get me the vendor on the phone so I can yell at them!“. However, that would have you chasing ghost problems and wouldn’t make you any friends at the part manufacturer or distributor. No one likes their product being accused of being shoddy, nor do they like chasing problems you have fabricated because you were [...]
I got a call last week from the electrical engineering department on campus asking if I would teach a class this semester. The class has the potential to be one of the most important classes that they will encounter in school. No, it’s not circuits 1. It’s University Studies. You see, our university requires every freshman to take a class to orient them to living life at a university. My sister went back to school when I started my master’s degree, and she complained to me over and over about how irrelevant the class is. There was a section on, for instance, talking to your roommate about making living arrangements. At this point, she’d moved out of my parents’ house and been living with someone for 12 years! The custom in electrical engineering has been to try to use this class for something better: what specifically do you need to [...]
Ok, I promise this is my last post on writing (at least for a while). Between writing three papers (still out for review) and two proposals over the last few months, I was looking forward to setting up my lab and working on lecture prep for my fall Lab/Project course. Now, granted, most of the writing I’m doing right now involves me and my arch-rival (Word). And when I’m blinded by white-hot rage with the stupid quirks of Word, I need to switch to a different topic. Lately, that involves brainstorming for new topics to research or flushing out ideas that started on the back of a napkin. While I’d love to share some ideas with the masses, that’s probably not the most prudent choice. Rather, I thought I would talk about penning my ideas in my lab note book (see what I did there?). I’m pretty much a scribble [...]
Subscribe By Email
Subscribe By Reader
Recent Comments