The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

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#83 – Aggravating Agersia Agiotage

Lots of talk about CAD, Education, Startups and China today!

Did we miss something? Did our ranting and raving this week get you as worked up as Chris was? Let us know in the comments!

 

Next week, Bunnie Huang will be on the show! (for real this time) Get your questions in now!

 

Thanks to Uwe Hermann for the KiCAD photo!

Comments

  1. Re: “Where do you work best?”

    It’s not for work-work, but today I came in to my university campus despite there being no class (for anyone) today. Why? A nice quiet place to work 🙂

    I happen to be making today a day of KiCad shenanigans… and the labs here are nice distraction-free places to work.

  2. Seems quiet here today! Every one must be watching Dave assemble his makerbot (now complete) and ready for calibration and first test print, and he still has most of his hair left … Just.

  3. I take issue with Chris’ comments on buying insurance against illness being difficult. This seems to be a myth that makes an insurance contract through a large org seem to be worth more than it is. My family ages 38, 36, 3, and 1 a contract with WPS w/ a $7k/$9k deductible/MooP for $390/mo. I’m an ave American who could stand to lose 20lbs[9kg]. When I was buying through an employer group, which had to take employees who may already be sick, the premium was $750. It’s a myth that large orgs get a huge break. If you can’t scrape together insurance premiums, you probably struggle w/ groceries and all other basic needs. (An exception to this is people who got sick while on a group plan and now can’t leave it and people who got sick while uninsured.)

    I agree that the social situation of working alone is huge. I agree that working on your own means no guarantee of the next project, but working for a large org is the same thing. The large org hides it from the employees, so as not to lose them, whereas if you run your own practice/business you can see the risk for what they are.

    I agree Scotch should be enjoyed not invested in, unless you’re talking about investing in a distillery.

    The scenario of China shutting its doors is not much more likely than the American South seceeding and shutting its doors.

    If you start a junkyard, your show will be like Sanford and Son.

    You should have a small paid section of the show where you give honest endorsements and commentary about paid sponsors products or services. You would disclose all large supporters, so there would be no question of which part of the show involved paid comments. You would only endorse things you could put your names behind.

    • Guys move to Australia. Join Dave and I.
      It seems that any insurance in the USA is expensive. Why is that so in the most prosperous country in the world?
      In Australia we get free health care for every one. If I want to have the doctor of my choice and cover dental and other things I pay about $2500 per YEAR for the top cover.

  4. Speaking of KiCad, does anyone know of any open source projects done in KiCad? Anything like a high density board? I want to play with the tool and I was wondering if there are any projects done in KiCad already that I could play with.

  5. I think Dave will have a big shock when moving from Altium to KiCad.
    And I think there should be a new entry on the bingo card, Dave ranting about software development to cover up his own inability.

    • Membership dues went up and he wasn’t sure it was worth the increased cost, but I’ll remind him to talk about it the next time he’s on. Cost/benefit and all that. Catch him on twitter if you want more details, http://twitter.com/mightyohm. Don’t think it was clashes of personality or anything.

  7. Chris I don’t know what insurance you are looking at or for, but I pay blue cross blue shield $90 a month for a $1000 deductible for $5,000,000 worth of coverage. I can pay the $200 for the doctor visits and the $5 to $90 for medication. Maybe my view is different because I am single and don’t get sick every other month. I have insurance to pay for something I can’t pay for, insurance is gambling.

    • Pointers. Explain it like I’m five. Because even though I’ve learned it before and have used them in projects before, it always makes me feel like I’m five.

      • I think the problem with pointers in C is that the syntax sux. It confused me once upon a time, then i got into assembly coding and when I returned to C it was like “oh its just like using the index/offset register in assembly”

      • Instead of having the candy in your hand, there is your Pointer Mummy showing you where the candy is in the drawer.

  9. About shared workplaces: I know lots of consultants/software developers/project managers who work on their customer’s premises. So they don’t see their own office often (if they have one). I think it’s mostly based on the customers’ inability to express what they expect in detail from their software or project. So it’s more efficient to have the sw developer near the customer.

  11. Dave, you said that you didin;t use a lot of the stuff you learnt at uni (college). I have to agree that for 99% of the time I just use some basic engieering formulas.
    BUT there has been times when I have solved some real world problems with the stuff I learmt at uni that I did not use most of the time. I got a reputation as being a good problem solver just becuase I remembered and could apply what I had learnt at uni.
    Having said that, I do enjoy the hands on aspects of engineering

    • Remembering a relatively simple equation after not having used it for more than 15 years once earned me a big bonus.

      Overall I always thought of the stuff learned at uni as basics, popular stuff, and arbitrary stuff, selected to cut your teeth at. All that to get a ticket to enter the industry and continue learning while being paid.

  12. Chris asked what would happen if China went tits-up overnight. I’ll tell you what would happen. Innovation. We are engineers, it is what we do! Maybe it is just a British thing, but I don’t think so. Heck, getting out there and doing it is what the USA was founded on! Small businesses would spring up within 48 hours and fill a lot of the gaps, whether it be stripping old PCBs or making new components in innovative ways.

    • While I agree that they wouldn’t do it if they thought there was imminent danger, I think the People’s party (ha) in China keeps things pretty well under wraps. Plus I’d imagine the Americanized areas would show the least signs of unrest, simply because they’re so populated with foreigners.

      In reality though, I have no clue what will actually happen. I think the party will do what it needs to to stay in power, nothing more. This might even mean elections some day, but the point I was making is if there was something big, it would mess up stuff in my hometown.

  14. Dave, as a software engineer I feel kind of the same about software complexity. I quite have use C++ a lot and I can tell you this language sucks so much. Operator redefinition and stuff like this are hell. It makes thing convoluted and unpredictable. My 2 cents is that the software industry have gone crazy with Java, C#, c++ and the down side is that most student have to learn those languages otherwise they won’t find a job. But there is a different story out there. Story about pure functional languages where abstraction is as simple as saying “select(list, odd)” which gave you only odd number from a list. My dream as a electronic hobbits is to program my MCU, FPGA … in scheme, smalltalk or haskell.

  15. Hello guys, I was a little late! I simply cannot believe you mentioned me! I had absolutely no clue anyone had known about it during that short point where there is no search engine traffic or alike. I was saving a spot for you the whole time while switching platforms, it’s back again. 🙂

    Regards,
    Alexander.

    Listening to this one on my jog today, amazed when I looked at one random shownote.