Another website? What am I, switching out of electrical engineering and into IT?

Well…no.

This is the site for the podcast mentioned in the last post. We called the first episode, “Jumping Off” and the second episode is about “Feedback”. We hope you like it! Many more themes, discussions and guests are on the way in the coming months.

You can find it over at our new home, The Engineering Commons. Please consider subscribing so you can hear our shows as they are posted. Thanks for listening!

I’m not around here too much anymore. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s just that I have so many other places to say it. And I may have added another one.

As some you may know, I’m the co-host of an electronics podcast called The Amp Hour. It’s a lot of fun and our listeners run the gamut of hobbyists to professionals. Me and Dave Jones talk about circuits and related topics weekly.

I’ve looked at a lot of resumes for electronics positions, so I thought I’d share some of my opinions on what should or shouldn’t be on there. Nothing formatting specific, so much as how to get across your interest and passion in electronics. I used examples that are resumes meant for engineering internships, but a lot of the info can be generalized to anyone. Hope you enjoy the video!

Oh hey, remember me? Yeah, I’m the guy that’s supposed to be running this site. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been consulting, recording my electronics radio show, managing a multi-blogger engineer site and even getting married! Jeez, it’s been a busy time. Anyway, things have cooled off a bit, so I’ve freed up some time (for now, never know what’ll happen).

I decided to dive into a new project after a long hiatus from hobby type activity. I plan to put an MP3 player and output stage board into an antique radio enclosure. I also decided to document the process, specifically using the open source board layout program, KiCAD. I’ve been talking about learning the software and doing the videos for a while now, so here it is! The first installment is the schematic capture. I’ll add more as the board gets more complex and I need to dive more into the process of actually getting a board fabbed. I’m excited! Hope you enjoy the video and the ones to come!

I was contacted a while ago and dragged my feet, like any good engineer. But today I was the “featured engineer” on EE Web! Exciting!

Aside from the fact that it was very nice of them to think of me, I’m just as excited to be featured on there along with friends from the electronics scene! My co-host of The Amp Hour (who probably won’t let me forget who was interviewed first), Dave Jones has been featured in the past. My co-conspirator for the recently completed 555 contest, hackmaster elite Jeri Ellsworth has been featured. And someone else I really respect from the hobbyist scene, Limor Fried of adafruit.

Horrible pun in the title, my apologies.

However, the exciting news is that I will be attending ESC Silicon Valley in a few weeks! I just worked out the details for my trip and will be there from Tuesday, May 3rd until Thursday May 5th.

I’ve been to ESC Chicago and ESC Boston in the past year, but the Silicon Valley version seems to have more seminars, a bigger show floor and more going on in general. That’s to be expected in relation to the relative number of attendees that will likely be there. And of course each time they have a different ESC, some of the courses and people speaking seems to change at least a little to keep up with new technology.

This past weekend I stopped into HGR, the local industrial surplus company in Northeast Cleveland. This place has industrial equipment from all over Ohio, unfortunately from plants closing down. Check out the pictures of all the machinery for sale…it’s enough to build one HELL of a workshop (and even a great new workbench!).

This Place is Monstrous

OK, I really would love a robot

The Roof Could Use Some Work

Aside from the 555 contest I mentioned in my last post, my February was spent building the workbench I drew in Google Sketchup. It was built partially for The Amp Hour, partially for circuits I plan on building and showing off on here and partially for my new business, Analog Life, LLC.

So for today’s show and tell, I’ll premier the first video ever with me in it on YouTube:

I also had a couple snapshots of the bench in progress:

I’m guessing if you follow me at all on Twitter or Facebook or just about anywhere else on the internet (I’m not too hard to find), you might know about the 555 contest. I have been talking about it quite a bit on various channels, all except here.

So I thought I’d discuss some of the aspects I might not discuss on other forums because they wouldn’t be relevant. But since this site is basically about me and my interests…well I get to write whatever I want! Sweet!

After talking about my planned bench on Episode 26 of The Amp Hour, I thought it’d be fun to animate the finished versions of my plans (or at least where I’m happy with for now). I know Dave likes making fun of me, but the implications of such free and powerful tools cannot be understated. Even 10 years ago, CAD programs were inaccessible to the layman. Now, a very simple and intuitive program like Google Sketchup is letting someone like me design something like this. Amazing. It’s a subtle message for engineers to keep increasing their values and their skills over the years, as skills that were once coveted become more mainstream and commoditized.