The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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#41 – An Interview with Jeff Keyzer – Exhilarating ESC Escapades

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This week is another three person episode! Chris & Migthyohm Jeff are jury-rigged up in a hotel room at the ESC conference.

Chris recording in the Hotel room at the Hilton:

 

Comments

  1. I love the new theme tune. It seems to encapsulate the world of electronics so much better than the old one did.

    However, although I thought you guys would eventually sell out, I never thought it would be to the Australian Tourist board 😀

  2. Wow. Thanks for the shout-out guys. It was totally crazy that I happened to offer a doughnut to one of only 3-4 people I’d know at ESC. I had a ton of fun running around with both of you all day. Now to do something cool with all these dev boards I got!

  3. Awesome way to end the show Dave! That has to become the official version of our anthem. Classic!

  4. WHOOOHOOOO!! THANKS FOR THE SHOUTOUT GUYS!! And thanks to Jeff for mentioning my humble contribution translating the “Soldering Is Easy” comic.
    Awesome show and cool move for Dave to put the Australian anthem as a opening music.

    Anyways, have fun at ESC!

    • The translation is pretty good Sebastián, I was amazed with how universal/neutral the spanish used was 🙂 (I intended to do a translation but, as a Chilean, no one would have understood WTF I was saying)

      • Thanks for your compliment JP! Your observation is spot on! I really tried hard to make it as neutral as possible.
        As an Argentinian I also was tempted to use some words or expressions that could have resulted in a total lack of understanding in other spanish spoken countries.
        I saw your blog and I think is awesome! So if you don’t mind I’ll link to it from mine.

  6. Chris, regarding your bullet points above, proprietary is spelled as I just have and the batteries are AAA.

  7. You heard right. “Girt by sea”.
    I like the Ramtron FRAM chips. You can order free samples off their website but i thought you used to be able to do web sales of small quantities on their website also. I think TI’s FRAM+SRAM combo msp430’s are a winner.
    Ramtron are also partnered with Samsung, Toshiba and Fujitsu. I wonder which of their chips/products are using FRAM.
    Freescale have similar NVM in FlexMemory.
    Geoff – I think you have to take Kickstarter with more of an amatuer entrepreneurial and philanthropic viewpoint.
    Wishing i’d been at ESC,
    JD

    • I had to write a reply about the girls in Engineering (Electronics) subject, because I’m afraid I have to totally agree with Dave on that one.

      As much as I’d like to see more girls in the Electronics industry, and with the modern hacker/maker scene we undoubtedly are seeing a bit more activity from the girls these days, but the fact is we will NEVER see the kind of interest in Electronics from girls as we do from boys. I don’t think so, anyway.

      The problem is that girls are much less inclined by their very personalities to be interested in a subject like Electronics. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with a girl being an Electronics geek of course – it doesn’t make her any less female or anything like that – but as a general rule most girls interests will wander elsewhere rather than being gripped by Electronics design.

      This is not being sexist, it’s just a valid, factual observation of female behavior. Nurture does play a part I’m sure, but I think it goes deeper than that. Even without the nurture aspect, I think there’s an inherent difference in girls that directs them to be generally more interested in different things. Female and male brains aren’t they same – if they were, female behaviour would not be noticeably different from male behaviour – and the fact is that in certain aspects, there is a clear distinction to be made between males and females in that respect.

      Again I should stress that there’s nothing wrong with girls choosing Electronics as their interest and pursuing it as their career, I’m sure it’s generally welcomed and encouraged by most people (I certainly encourage it as a good thing too), and it doesn’t make her any less female for doing it or anything silly like that. The only point I’m trying to make is that GENERALLY, less women will be interested in subjects like Electronics than men.

      Brian

      • Oh, and I should have added that although I do believe that women are less inclined to be interested in Electronics than men, that doesn’t mean that an interested male is more likely to be better at Electronics design than an equally interested female. That’s not how it works.

        I remember Jeri Ellsworth saying on a previous show that she felt quite a bit of resistance from what is clearly a male dominated Electronics industry, and I can certainly see where she’s coming from with that, but no – there’s absolutely no reason why an interested female can’t be as good or better than an equally interested male in the Electronics industry. It’s just that females are less likely to be sufficiently interested in the first place.

  8. I agree with Dave’s point that there are way more male than female EEs, and it’s reasonable to recognize that. I disagree with Dave’s “always have and probably always will” claim. Men dominated real estate a few decades ago, and now females dominate it. You never know how things will change in the future.
    I used to with Chris on the nurture-over-nature claim, but I have doubts. I agree with him that I’ll withold judgment until someone does an abusive experiment to get the answer scientifically.
    Regarding the question of why you need a consultant’s support group, it’s to take the place of in-person conversations you would have at a FT job if you had one. Calling it a support group, though, sounds like it’s something for the mentally ill or addicts; not far from the truth. I am involved with the Madison ECN, and I think it’s a good thing.

    • I disagree with Dave’s “always have and probably always will” claim. Men dominated real estate a few decades ago, and now females dominate it. You never know how things will change in the future.

      Sure, you never know how things will change, but would you seriously bet on females overtaking males in electronics design?
      What is the current ratio? I’d put it ballpark around 90%/10% now. Can you ever see it getting to 50/50 let alone swinging the opposite direction?
      I’m simply trying to be realistic here.
      Don’t get me wrong, I’d LOVE to see it 50/50, but I just can’t see it ever happening.

      There would be countless other examples I’m sure, electronics is but one of them. Taking nursing for example, a highly female dominated field. Males are equally capable of doing that (evolutionary physiological differences aside), but can you ever see it swinging in the opposite direction?

      Dave.

      • The difficulty we see in the U.S. is that some people in government don’t accept that there are innate differences in the genders and try to socially engineer equal outcomes.

        While most of us are eager to accept others into the field based on their interest and technical ability regardless of gender, the bureaucrats foist harmful and wasteful programs on us to try to solve what they perceive as an equality problem.

        Equal opportunity must be provided, but equal outcomes will always be unattainable.

    • Yeah, “support group” is bad name with negative connotations. That’s the first thing I thought of when I heard the name!

  9. So there I was, driving through the rolling lush green hills of Eastern Oklahoma, listening to my favorite (next to Soldersmoke) electronics podcast, when suddenly I hear Oklahoma described as “flat and dusty.” OK has around 200 lakes, has more man-made lakes than any other state in the USA. 2000 miles of shoreline and over one million surface-acres of water.

    http://www.planetware.com/picture/tulsa-us-ok010.htm

    But, admittedly, I’m in Eastern OK, not Western OK…

    http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-kansas-kronikles-oklahomas-strange.html

    🙂

    But, thanks for the show guys! All in all, it was a pretty good Oklahoma shout-out.

    WA5PSA <–one of your ham radio "analog rock stars"

    • My father’s an okie. He’s defensively told me of the slight altitude differences in the north and east. Pointing out the terraforming, i.e. man-made lakes, only serves to enhance the perception that okies are self conscious about the state’s geographic image. The dust bowl will take a little more time to work it’s way out of the social consciousness.

  11. Google employee #2 in the house.

    Chris, you should definitely get your ham radio license, and get involved with the QRP homebrew scene. It’s a totally different world from embedded digital stuff. It’s too bad you just missed Hamvention. It was May 20-22, right around the corner from you in Dayton. You should check it out next year. About 20,000 people come.

    Regarding gender issues, don’t forget that in 1960, only about 5% of MD and JD degrees went to women. Today it’s around 50%. I’m not saying there’s an exact parallel with today’s situation in engineering, but imagine how the world must have looked from the perspective of a male doctor or lawyer in 1960. It’s humbling.

  12. Just started listening to the podcasts yesterday, played this one today. Maybe the only American that would recognize where the theme music came from as this episode started – big Chisel fan!

    • Welcome Will!

      Can’t say the music is “from” anywhere. I wrote it in my basement, though I don’t doubt it could sound like something else. Which song is it that you think it sounds like? I’d love to hear it and compare!

  13. Chris, I was referring to the Australian tune in the start of this episode, not the regular instrumental theme.

    BTW, I’m also a Case EE grad (’93), but am a software engineer since leaving school. Do want to get back to hardware at least as a hobby.

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