Weekend Journal — You’re Doing It Wrong
I was hacked this past week. Not Engineer Blogs, but where I keep a few of my other sites. It’s a virtual private server or VPS. This means I’m in charge. And I’m doing it wrong. I think this is probably a function of being an engineer, right? I have experienced firsthand how easy it is to learn and apply knowledge over the years. Oftentimes, it takes the following form: Find the information. Thanks, internet. Replicate the style of the information you’ve found in your own project. In programming, this starts as “helloworld.c” or similar. In 3D printing, this is printing a simple hexagon block (also used to calibrate). You’ve gotta start somewhere. Begin to modify. Change the code, add more components to your spice simulation, start adding parts in your 3D modeling software. Lather, rinse, repeat. Some people would refer to this not as “learning” but instead “hacking on…
Blogging: the new career boost
A couple days ago, a headline in my IEEE Job Site newsletter caught my attention: How a Personal Blog Can Boost Your Career. (Being a blogger, things like that do catch my eye.) The article mentioned several ways in which a blog can help you, a couple of which I believe are more relevant for engineers than others. Let’s start with where I disagree with the post. I am not sure that I buy into the whole “personal brand” idea, but I also take issue with one of the final comments: that your blog probably isn’t going to replace your resume. The first is a matter of opinion, and in engineering, I’m going to guess that more manager-types are going to be interested in results and not your marketing je nes sais quoi. (I could very well be wrong on this, however, which is why I’m an engineer and not…
The management of TIME ITSELF
There can be few greater misnomers than the title of the course I attended for two days last week: Time Management. Who thought that one up? Not students of metaphysics, anyway. The management of time? We can philosophise it, theorise it, chop it up into humanly sensible bits, run our lives to it; but we certainly can’t manage it. Still, what’s in a name? It’s a pithy title (better than “Trying to make the best of our remaining hours on earth, at work and at home”) and at least sells courses to HR departments, so let’s go with it. Manager-like, let’s also get straight to the core question: why was I there and what did I learn? (Management questions are always double-barrelled). I was there because during a personal development chat with my manager and director, I raised the point that I was struggling to maintain my deadlines; overall we…
Covey delegation Eisenhower focus prioritisation prioritization Resources stress time management
Weekend Journal — Wrap-up and Followup
As somewhat of an administrator of this fine site, I like too look back and call out the good work that our writers are doing. We just finished up a theme week last week about the role of engineers when businesses are at different stages of their lifecycle. Some companies are dying. Some are growing. Some are just chugging along, doing what they do. In all of these cases, the engineering roles are never that different. We’re all still engineers, right? And I’m guessing if you enjoy reading this site, you like to see the commonalities among different types of engineers; there are many! But this past week, we saw the differences in roles and expectations, which I’d like to recap here: Seb started off the week writing about working at an established company and the conservative nature of engineering demands whiles still trying to find exciting work. GEARS delved into the grey…
One year down!
EngineerBlogs.org is officially one year old! Our first post was January 13th, 2011. Crazy! It feels like it’s a lot more, but I guess that’s what happens after posting once per week (a quick look at my other sites and you see why 1x per week seems like a lot to me). First and foremost, I’d like to personally thank all of our readers. Your wonderful feedback has encouraged us to keep writing and producing what we hope continues to be good content. The field of engineering is not a field littered with authors, so I’m glad we managed to cobble together some great minds and pens (and at a wonderful price!). We will continue to try and come up with interesting and relevant topics throughout the next year, as well as add new voices to the conversation. So let’s look back at this year. What did this year look…
Happy Holidays! Take a Break!
Hi Everyone! We’re wrapping up our first year at Engineer Blogs and I’d like to say how much fun I’ve been having so far. After writing for nearly a year with all these other great engineers, I am glad we’re still enjoying what we’re doing and we hope you’re enjoying it as well! We always love how interactive our audience is and the additional insight you all provide. We now adding another component to our interactive nature and taking guest authors on Engineer Blogs, so if you’re interested in being a one-time, some-times or all-the-time kind of author, please let us know. Since we’ve had such a great year, we’re going to give our writers a week off. They work hard to provide an article per week, in addition to their other blogs and activities. We’ll be back in the new year to regale you with more engineering articles and…
Sound Mind and Sound Body
Recently there has been a tragedy in my family, a tragedy on my campus, and a tragedy at my alma mater. When people in your circle pass away, or you lose someone in the community, there is grief but there is also an incredible focus and refreshing of priorities in life. There are truly only a few things that really matter. In the end, it is the people that matter. As much as I prefer the logical simplicity of equations, math, and physical objects – as much as I spend my day immersed in study and planning and working in the field of engineering – truly, it is ourselves and our family, friends, and fellow human beings who deserve the highest priority. The latin motto, “Mens sana in corpore sano,” can be translated as a sound mind in a sound body. This holiday season (in the U.S., at least), I…
Why don’t engineers write?
As you may have noticed, we have a new addition to our writing staff at Engineer Blogs. Miss MSE joined us as a guest contributor. What you might not have noticed is, with Miss MSE’s arrival and Paul Clarke’s departure, Engineer Blogs’ active writing staff is now 2/3 women. I’m a bit surprised by that given the usual ratio of men to women in engineering. I have a few theories why, aside from the obvious one that the male writers keep leaving. However, one underlying issue that is likely related is that engineers just don’t seem to like to write. This one puzzles me. Is it because engineering is a male-dominated field, and young boys are given the message early in life that they are bad writers? Does this make them not want to try? Or is it that they really ARE bad writers and realize the effort is futile?…
Following up on yesterday’s post
I’d like to thank everyone for all the comments in the post and on Twitter. I also think it’s important to let everyone know that the poster of the comment has since apologized. Finally, I had some further thoughts on the situation. I don’t want to keep using Engineer Blogs as soapbox (as that’s not the reason it’s here), so if you care to read them, please head to my blog. I have to add that the EB community really is awesome. Thanks, everyone.
Mind The Gap
Back in January of this year, I was listening to Chris on The Amp Hour telling Dave about this new website he was working on. That website was this one, EngineerBlogs. At the time, I was just blogging on DesignSpark. After hearing Chris say that he was looking for fellow bloggers to join, I dropped him a line. Now some 9 months later and 30 blogs posts on, it is unfortunately time for me to leave the good ship and concentrate on other things. Over this time, it has been challenging and demanding but very enjoyable to be part of a team of engineers like my fellow bloggers. The site is still growing with more and more visitors, so I’m, in a way, sad to be going. There is an amazing amount of support between each of us, and we help check each others posts. The whole team are always…