Administrative | The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Moving to Tuesday/Wednesday Release Dates

Chris Gammell — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:37:09 +0000

Hi Everyone,

In an effort to have better edited audio and better checked show notes, we’re going to be moving the day we release the audio to the public back by one day. Previously it was Monday/Tuesday (depending on your location) and now it will be Tuesday/Wednesday. Just think of it as “daylight savings time” for The Amp Hour. Looking forward to releasing the next show!

~The Amp Hour guys

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Malware Issues

Chris Gammell — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:58:38 +0000

Hey Folks,

We’ve been having some reports of malware on TheAmpHour.com for the past few days. We have been trying to clean it up as it pops up, but it seems there is a much more pervasive issue which we’re having some experts look into. In the mean time, if this post morphs into a download link or if the site looks squirrely, please run away as fast as you can. I hope we’ll have it resolved by tomorrow (that’s when you should run back!). Thanks for understanding!

~The Amp Hour nerds (who are most obviously not IT nerds)

The post Malware Issues first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Day Change

Chris Gammell — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:01:57 +0000

Much like daylight savings time changes which can throw schedules into mayhem, Dave and Chris’s schedules also can change. And in fact, they have! So for the foreseeable future, we’ll be posting episodes between Mondays and Tuesdays, a day later than usual. Sorry if that leaves a hole in your Monday morning commute. Hopefully your Tuesday will get all the better. As always, you can contact us if you have any concerns. You can add suggestions for things we should talk about to our subreddit. And if you’re interested in supporting the show, you can donate here.

Thanks for listening and being a part of our little community!

The post Day Change first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

We’re Back…And Sorry

Chris Gammell — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 01:59:33 +0000

This past week on Thursday, our server had an unwelcome guest. He decided it would be fun to send out emails about C1al1s and such from our server. As such, we had it shut down while we took care of it. Due to circumstances beyond our control (until we really started yelling) it was quite unfortunate how long it took to get our server back under our control. To our webhost’s benefit, they did a full restore of a recent backup, which allowed us to circumvent needing to hunt down and destroy the scripts that were affecting us.

Regardless, thank you for your patience. We hope to not have these issues in the future.

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Requesting Feedback on TheAmpHour.com

Chris Gammell — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 03:56:55 +0000

We’ve seen a significant drop off in the commenting and usage of TheAmpHour.com. Not so much so that we’re worried about the site being broken, as much we are worried about offering a sub-par experience. So, if you have any feedback on any or all of the points below, please leave them in the comments.

How does TheAmpHour.com load for you? Fast? Slow? Not at all? Have you seen it improving or worsening over time (specifically the past few weeks)?
Do you use the Discuss Server? Do you regularly use the EEVblog forums?
What do you think about the layout of the pages? Do you find the lab-bench look impedes or enhances your reading of the site?
Is there anything else you’d like to see on the site that would make it more enjoyable for you?
Are there any components of the show that you find lacking or could be improved?

That’s a lot of open ended questions. Please be civil, but honest, in your responses. We don’t expect to be able to change everything you don’t like, but we’ll look into all of them. Thanks in advance for your help!

The post Requesting Feedback on TheAmpHour.com first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Get Your Questions In For An FPGA Chip Design Veteran

Chris Gammell — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:21:12 +0000

Philip Freidin was an architect of RISC (AM29000) and Bit-Slice (AM2900/29300) while at AMD. Later, while at Xilinx, he architected FPGAs such as the XC4000, Virtex, Virtex2, Virtex4 and the Spartan. He also has various patents, including for synchronous dual port RAM on an FPGA and for a programming standard that was the precursor to JTAG. Now he is a design consultant (and has been for the past 17 years) working on a variety of products. Much like some of our other guests, he’s also a hobbyist and has a garage full of metal working equipment for machining and building whatever he can dream up.

So…what kinds of questions do you have for him? Please ask a question or two on the Discuss Server!

The post Get Your Questions In For An FPGA Chip Design Veteran first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Guest Questions and News Items

Chris Gammell — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:49:49 +0000

As you all hopefully have heard by now, we launched the “Discuss” section of The Amp Hour this past weekend. Though it may be an unfamiliar format, we’re really hoping that listeners will take the time to stop by that part of our site. We think it could be a great way for everyone to get to know one another and build up the The Amp Hour community. However, if that alone isn’t enough motivation for you, there will be two other functions of the Discuss section:

Guest Questions
Since the Discuss section has a built in voting system for links and comments, it’s well suited to people asking questions to our upcoming guests on the show. The top rated questions will get asked (as opposed to Dave and Chris choosing at random of the comments left on a post). This coming week, we’ll have Matt Ettus of Ettus Research on the show. Matt started a Software Defined Radio company that developed the Universal Software Radio Peripheral. Since starting the company, Ettus research was acquired by National Instruments, maker of test equipment and control software. Please leave any questions you’d like us to ask him on the discussion site!
News Items
You have probably heard Chris and Dave talk about “the list”, right? Well right now, that lives in a Google Document that is closed off to anyone but us and our guests. A secondary function of the Discuss section of The Amp Hour will be to act as a proxy to “the list”. More specifically, “the list” will get phased out and we’ll instead move towards a public, discussable, user-submittable set of news items and projects that we will work from for each show.

What does this mean for you? It means there’s an easier way to help participate in shaping the show! Instead of posting something to our “Suggestions” page, you can now submit the link directly to the Discuss section of the website. If you don’t know of anything to submit (and that’s definitely not required, we’ll be adding throughout the week), you can go there and vote on your favorite stories. And if you have something to say about a specific story or idea, you can leave a comment or start a discussion with other members of the site. Interactivity at its finest!

We know that it’s weird when things start to change, but hopefully with the above two points you can start to see some of the reasoning behind starting the Discuss section. We can interact with you, get better feedback and really make sure we’re covering the stuff that the community would like us to cover. If you have any questions or comments, head over to the Discussion area now and start a new thread!

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Server Switchover (Done!)

Chris Gammell — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 02:49:08 +0000

Thanks to all of our wonderful donors, we’ve been able to upgrade some of our web server equipment and begin offering more services in the near future. As such, we just switched over from our old server to the new one.

Congrats! You’ve arrived at our new server! Let us know how it’s working in the comments!

The post Server Switchover (Done!) first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Slight Delay

Chris Gammell — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:23:31 +0000

We’ve been on a pretty decent schedule recently about posting by Sunday night/early Monday morning. However, this evening we had some technical difficulties in the audio; as a result, we are going to take some more time to fix up the audio and the show will be up by Monday evening. We had Tom LeMense on the show, a veteran of the US car industry. He has a lot of great insight and we are looking forward to sharing the episode with you. Thanks for your patience.

The post Slight Delay first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The Amp Hour 2012 Survey Results

Chris Gammell — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:16:32 +0000

The post The Amp Hour 2012 Survey Results first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

The Amp Hour Theme Song

Chris Gammell — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:02:14 +0000

We’ve had a few requests for the files behind The Amp Hour Theme Music. This was generously donated by one of our listeners, Paul Stevenson. You can find the file here on our LibSyn server. All we ask is that you don’t misuse the music or put it to something without Paul’s permission (i.e. Please don’t go creating The Bizarro Amp Hour Show or something like that).

Paul also wrote a version with words, also available on our LibSyn server. It’s titled, Chloroform The Amps. Here’s a version on YouTube if you don’t want to download and/or see the lyrics:

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buKg2eAX4Z0[/tube]

Thanks again to Paul and we hope everyone enjoys the music!

The post The Amp Hour Theme Song first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Classic Amp Hour Move — Not Looking At The Calendar

Chris Gammell — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:57:53 +0000

Hi Everyone,

Last week we asked for your questions for Bunnie Huang. Good news! You get another week!

It turns out I (Chris here) didn’t look at the calendar nor my email with Bunnie about him being on the show on the 27th, not the 20th. So you get one more week to think up questions. Talk about a highly anticipated show, eh?

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has written in so far. And sorry about the confusion! Dave and I will be recording the show as usual this week, so keep an eye out for episode 83 soon!

~Chris & Dave

The post Classic Amp Hour Move — Not Looking At The Calendar first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Get Your Questions In For Bunnie Huang!

Chris Gammell — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:24:21 +0000

Prolific hacker and maker Bunnie Huang, founder of Chumby, will be on the show next week. Our timezones don’t line up well, so there may be a possibility of glitches and/or rescheduling, but we want our listeners to be able to ask him questions!

So what do you want us to ask Bunnie about? Already on the docket is his latest fight surrounding his new neTV device and doing so without violating the DMCA. We also want his perspective about working directly with suppliers in Singapore (his hometown) and mainland China. And his perspective on the Open Source Hardware scene, which he is a large part of, will of course be a topic of discussion.

Bunnie is a smart, accomplished hardware designer, so ask away in the comments section below!

The post Get Your Questions In For Bunnie Huang! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Get your questions in for Dr. Howard Johnson!

Chris Gammell — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 04:35:56 +0000

Dr. Howard Johnson, master of the black magic of high speed digital signals, will be our guest on next week’s show! We have a few questions cooked up for him, but want to know what our audience members want to know about! Try and stump him with your questions or pose a problem you’ve experienced with crosstalk, high speed propagation, losses or any other kind of issue you think he might be able to help you with! Leave your questions in the comments and tune in next week to hear him answer them on the show.

The post Get your questions in for Dr. Howard Johnson! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Reminder: Get your LED based questions in for John Edmond of Cree

Chris Gammell — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:35:57 +0000

While we don’t usually post much that isn’t a new episdoe, we also usually don’t get such high profile guests on our show. This coming Monday we’ll have the Director Advanced Optoelectronics at Cree, John Edmond, on the show! We also decided its better to tell people who will be on our show beforehand instead of trying to surprise people, as we did with Joe Grand and Jack Ganssle. If you have any questions about the LED industry, Silicon Carbide and other crazy materials or anything else that the technical founder of an LED company might be able to answer, please leave it in the comments. Thanks!

The post Reminder: Get your LED based questions in for John Edmond of Cree first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Ack! Reset!

Chris Gammell — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:55:27 +0000

While I don’t think this will affect listeners as much as it will affect us, the stats on all of our shows reset recently. Specifically on Tuesday. And more specifically, by me. By accident. I felt like an idiot, but there’s not much I can do now.

As I said, it shouldn’t really matter much to listeners, I just thought I would share that there was a reset and that everything else on the site is healthy. As always, if you see issues or know how to improve things on the site, leave a note on the Suggestions Page. Thanks!

The post Ack! Reset! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Foiled Again!

Chris Gammell — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 21:23:18 +0000

Here at the Amp Hour we do electronics. We don’t do timezones very well. We’re starting to think that we should make some kind of global clock that always knows the time…or we could just check online. Either way, Dave and I didn’t realize the Australian daylight savings time change didn’t take effect in the US (well, I didn’t even know if Australia observed daylight savings time). As such, I was getting ready to start the show as Dave was heading out the door to work!

Regardless, we didn’t record the show at our usual time and will try again tomorrow. It’s that lovely time of year known as “cold season” (on both sides of the globe) and we’re hoping our voices hold out. We’ll see!

Thanks for checking in.

The post Foiled Again! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Survey Results!

Chris Gammell — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:30:09 +0000

Thanks again to everyone who filled out the survey. We got some fun responses (as I mentioned in Episode 8) and we’ll continue going through them for ideas and suggestions. Don’t think we don’t still watch our official Suggestions Page though, because we do. Feel free to continue posting ideas there.

One resounding theme that came through on the comments was that people really didn’t like us talking politics. That message is loud and clear. I can’t promise we’ll never mention policy ever again…because it truly does affect us and how the electronics industry runs. However, I (Chris here) can personally promise that I won’t try and overtly push my political views on anyone. If I start to, just give me a shout or vote with your feet (ears?). If we see people stop listening, we’re obviously doing something wrong. I highly encourage you to stick around though, we have tons more to spout off about electronics!

Onward to the results!

Who you are:

What you like:

Where you’re from:

Where you listen:

The post Survey Results! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Basement Studio

Chris Gammell — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:46:32 +0000

Since I was talking about it in a few previous episodes and was down there “cleaning” today (it’ll never be clean), I thought I’d take a picture of where I’m recording from in Cleveland. The mics are really all you need for a podcast, as evidenced by these pictures.

The post Basement Studio first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

New Theme!

Chris Gammell — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 04:11:21 +0000

So what is a website–yes, even an audio based website–without a distinctive theme? Well, it was this website before this weekend. But alas! Chris has spent some time digging into CSS and PHP and all that other boring stuff to try and make your realize once you land on this page, “HOLY CRAP, I HAVE ARRIVED!”

What we do need is feedback on what we have here though. I know the (log based, of course) graph paper background might be a little different than what you’re used to on the internet but try it out for a bit. This theme was meant to look like an engineer or hobbyist’s desk, complete with coffee stains and soldering iron burn marks. That’s soldering, with an “L”, as I was informed in our last podcast/radioshow/whatever it is.

So what do you think? We don’t have a forum, just the comments section, so let us know down there, especially if something is broken. Thanks!

The post New Theme! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.

Our New Home!

Chris Gammell — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:03:38 +0000

This is the new home of the Dave Jones and Chris Gammell Radio Show!

Many thanks to Mike from Mike’s Electric Stuff for helping us name the show. There were many other wonderful suggestions at the EEVBlog forums that allowed us to figure out our new name.

The post Our New Home! first appeared on The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast.