The Right Tool

I had a realization the other day while searching for my ½ to ⅜ socket adapter. I had lost it somewhere on my bench top in the ever growing pile of tools that I tend to accumulate during a project rather than just putting each tool away once I’m done with it. Unfortunately, the realization was not that I should just keep my workspace clean while I’m working (still waiting for that one). The reason I was looking for my adapter is because most of my sockets are ⅜ drive, but I have at some point in time long forgotten lost my ⅜ socket wrench, so I end up using my ½ wrench instead, thus requiring the adapter. My first thought (also not the realization) was that I should really keep a spare adapter handy just in case. I pretty quickly realized that wouldn’t actually solve the real problem and that what I really needed to do was just buy a new ⅜ drive socket wrench (that is actually a lie, I had another idea prior that I should buy a whole new set of ½ sockets).

A Note on Values

 In my last post I made a comment about engineers '[placing] value in being technically competent'. In the interest of keeping these posts digestible I glossed over this idea to focus on my core point, but I wanted to take a moment now to expand on this idea of 'values'.

A Well Rounded Engineer

It is that time of year once again where everyone's favorite question - "Do you have any New Years Resolutions?" - is being asked around the dinner table, at social gatherings, and even at the workplace. Whether you are someone who spends time developing a thorough list of goals and strategies, or have given up on the idea of resolutions altogether, I think the underlying question is probably still at the forefront of our minds - "How can I become more like the person I want to be?"

Developing Successful Demos

Over the course of my career I've had the opportunity to lead or be in the audience for dozens, if not hundreds, of technical demonstrations. I would assume that this is actually fairly typical for many engineers in the tech industry, and yet despite this, so many in our field find the act of leading a demo to be difficult. Even if you haven't had to lead a demo, it is quite likely that you have at least sat through a bad demo. Maybe the speaker was not engaging, or maybe it was uninformative, or most likely the product just didn't work. 

So why are technical demonstrations, something that is so common in our industry, so hard?

CandyOps: Over-Engineering Halloween with AI and Robots

A few weeks ago my wife sent me a link to this candy throwing robot and said it looked like a fun project for our kids' upcoming Trunk or Treat. I of course immediately took that as permission to buy a new Raspberry Pi5 and all the necessary parts (including a few unnecessary ones) for the SO101 Robot Arm under the thinly veiled excuse of a great father/daughter project (and totally not for my own amusement).