#234 – We'll Believe It When We See It - Hiring Hypercatalectic Helpelp

Dave Jones: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded January 27th, 2015. Episode 234, Hiring Hypercatalectic, Help Help.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the AEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. Live from DesignCon 2015.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, live from a pricey yet modest...

Dave Jones: $240 a night, best western.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah, it's... Man, folks out here, I don't know. You describe this as a shitty place. No, it wasn't shitty. We were scared it was going to be shitty while driving up. But I mean, it's really not bad. It's very modest, but it's not bad.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. And it's $240 a night.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to Silicon Valley. Yeah, right. And we were kind of talking about it as we were driving through the villages, not the villages, but some of the living areas here too. And it's just like, man, thinking about how much it costs to live here. And it's just everything's real spaced out. But it seems very different to me that I'm not sure I would be as... It's just a different way of living. You know, like, I'm used to the burbs and everything.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep, yep. Yeah, well, I'm used to suburbia, you know. Right. And expensive suburbia, right?

Chris Gammell: So it's somewhere in between.

Dave Jones: Well, mid-price suburbia is what I'm at. But my house is worth a million dollars.

Chris Gammell: Right, that's what I meant. It's mid-price, but it's still expensive in the global scale.

Dave Jones: When we started the show, it was probably worth $700, maybe. No, it wouldn't even be that. It wouldn't even be that. It was probably worth $600.

Chris Gammell: That's crazy.

Dave Jones: When we started the show. Yeah. So, nuts.

Chris Gammell: Good old Sydney. Not getting any bigger. No, no.

Dave Jones: I think it is more expensive than San Fran.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, those are always up there.

Dave Jones: Well, San Fran's more expensive than Silicon Valley, isn't it? Because Silicon Valley is usually not, you know. Silicon Valley doesn't really have, like, there's San Jose, of course, but I don't think anyone actually lives in, like, the heart of it. Do they? They all sort of live out in the...

Chris Gammell: No, people live there, too. I mean, like, there's people everywhere here. That's the thing. Like, it's, I don't know. I've stayed down in San Jose before, and there's some nice areas there, too. And it's, I mean, like, it's, that's the thing. It's just, like, there's just people everywhere. This is what I'm not used to, right? I live in the scarce suburbs outside of Cleveland, and, you know, and there's no tech people, and it's just a very different experience for me. And it's not bad. It's just different than what I'm used to. Just like if I moved to Sydney, it'd be different. So, but paying $240 a night for a hotel.

Dave Jones: Oh, no, Sydney would probably be very similar to Cleveland, I suspect. Yeah, not the house prices, buddy. Cleveland, I suspect. No, no. Not the house prices. For the price of a VCR, remember? Not the price of a VCR, that's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, I'm more talking about the CBD side of things, like the central business district. I don't, when I was in San Jose, I don't recall, you know, seeing too many, like, apartment buildings, but then again, I wasn't really paying attention.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Too busy going to see the HP garage, which I will not be seeing again this trip, but oh well.

Dave Jones: And I was too busy staying in my expensive hotel, which was attached to the McEnary Convention Center. Is that where you're at?

Chris Gammell: No, we're at the Santa Clara. It's up, it's a little bit further north. Yeah, I think of. I really don't know where I am. I'm just kind of following, you know, I'm kind of in that mode where I'm just following Google's directions and like, okay, go over here now, go over there now.

Dave Jones: Well, because usually they put you up in the, the reason they have these conferences at, they usually have like huge, big hotels attached to these conference centers. And, you know, usually the done thing is you stay in the hotel because, you know, it's got like a thousand rooms or whatever. Right, right, right. They're usually massive hotels.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, well, that one was $350, so, you know. Oh, right.

Dave Jones: The company's paying, what's the problem? I mean.

Chris Gammell: I didn't book it, so, but it's not a big deal. It really isn't. I mean, again, it's like, you know, I'm going to be out doing stuff and on the show floor, and by the time I get back here, I'm going to be passing out, just exhausted, so.

Dave Jones: You've got to be careful what they book you. You know, you've got to double check. I can remember I was working at a company, and they sent me to Melbourne to go to a, it was the PCB design course, you know, like the certification course. And, yeah, and, oh, okay, yeah, I got my ticket. Here we go. I got my hotel. Yeah, okay, sounds all right. And, yeah, it was fine. It was nearby and within walking distance. Great. And I decide, oh, I'll just double check, you know, what this place is like, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's a backpackers.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: That's like. Well, you're at a great rate.

Chris Gammell: If you don't mind five bunk mates, you're in good shape, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. You meet some interesting characters. And the secretary who booked it. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And she profusely appalled it. You know, they book it through agents in the agent. Yeah. And so they sort of trust the agent, you know, and all that sort of stuff. And, yeah, somehow they book me backpackers.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, oops. You can be sure if you're at a hotel, there's probably an Aussie traveling somewhere, right? You guys are.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: You guys are world travelers. You're everywhere.

Dave Jones: We are. We are. Yeah. Like, I think 90% of us have owned passports, whereas like 10% of Americans own passports. I think it's 18.

Chris Gammell: 18 last I heard. 18.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, geez. You're getting adventurous there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Dave Jones: Look out world.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, what have you been up to?

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: Are you drunk again, as I tweeted? No.

Chris Gammell: No. Yeah, I did. I did get a message from Dave today that was like, hey, so you ready to record? And I'm like, I got it as I'm like carrying stuff into a convention center. I'm like, oh, my God. It's three hours earlier here. So, yeah. No, I was not drunk. No, I was just furiously. Carrying all the gear. Yeah. All that crap. So, yeah. It's, you know, mostly website stuff and getting that up on the. Getting everything set up for this conference. I don't know what to expect.

Dave Jones: Website stuff. How do you set up? What do you carry to set up website stuff?

Chris Gammell: You know, there's displays and there's like boxes of T-shirts and if people want T-shirts. Right. Swag.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Swag. And then, you know, like big monitors to show people stuff. And so, you know, just carrying stuff in from the car.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but you didn't have to transport those yourself, did you? Did you like check those in? You had to do the big 40-inch monitor or? No.

Chris Gammell: No. Yeah, we decided not doing that. It's just this weird. This whole thing is weird. I can't imagine how CES would be. Maybe. I don't know if we talked about this last week even. I'm kind of blurry on everything these days. But it's just like there's just like this huge industry around it. And I don't like it at all. So, this might be my one and only conference. We'll see. But I don't know. It's.

Dave Jones: This was your last conference.

Chris Gammell: I said first and last.

Dave Jones: As in being on the stand.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, we'll see. Being on the stand, you mean. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's not fun. I don't.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. I mean, so I'm looking forward to some things. So, I did get to walk through the show floor today. And, you know, because it's like. So, DesignCon is kind of meant for like high-speed design stuff. So, a lot. Like all of the scope makers are there. And they all have like tons of gear on the floor. And so, that's going to be cool. You know, on breaks, I'll be able to walk around and check out some of that stuff. Again, not like I know a lot of that. You know, like a lot of that super high-speed stuff I've never done. So, I don't even know what I'm looking at. But I don't know. I was going to ask you about this, though. Like, so when you go to. When you go to a show, wherever it is. What do you. What do you. You know what? You walk up to a show stand.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Say it's a scope stand. What's the first thing you do, though? I mean, like. Because I think about it.

Dave Jones: I play with the scope.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But like. Do you like just play through the menus? Or like do you. Because there's no. Are there demos? I don't know. I've looked at some of these.

Dave Jones: They almost always have demo boards attached. You know. And they might have. You know. For a scope, for example. They might have a. A video camera. Which generates a video signal. That's always a good test of a scope. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To show the. You know. The. The display and stuff like that. That it's analog like. And so.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. They'll have that hooked up. And yeah. You just. Go up and fiddle. And then. Yeah. I mean, I guess.

Chris Gammell: I don't. I don't know. Like. But like. I don't know. Like. Digging through menus. Like. That doesn't really. Like. I feel like so much of that stuff is. You know. You don't really know what you're looking for. Until you're. I feel like.

Dave Jones: Well. You either have an interest in scopes. Or you don't. Well. No. But I feel like. If you have an interest in scopes. You're going to go up and play with the menus. Yeah. No. I get that. And see what's in there.

Chris Gammell: But I'm just saying like. The time when I know that I need to scope the most. Is when I'm. I'm at my bench. And I'm like. Holy crap. I need to see more of the signal. You know. Like. That's.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anything faster. Anything better. Give me everything. I'll pay anything.

Chris Gammell: So. Yeah. I don't know. And so. There's a lot of like. Like high speed connector folks as well. And they're in their sessions. But. I don't. I don't know. We'll see. I'll poke around. Probably post some pictures on Twitter. And stuff like that. So.

Dave Jones: The stands that always. Attract you in. I think. Is the ones that have practical demos. Yeah. They've got a robot. You know. If they've got an industrial control board. You know. Like a little. Like a PC 104. Or bloody. Arduinos these days. Or whatever. Right. When I was a boy. PC 104. Anyway. They. They. They would have like a cabinet. And they'd have like 20 different industrial boards. And they'd all be behind the glass cabinet. Like you can't even fondle the bloody things. Right. You can't even pick them up and have a look. And you know. Read the chip numbers. Right. So they're all in the glass display cabinet. They're like. They're the boring as bad shit stands. I'll usually pass those. But if somebody's got their demo board out. And they've got it hooked up. And it's controlling a robot arm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Bet your ass. I'm going to go up and have a play. It's making stuff blink. It's making stuff do whatever. Exactly. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. I mean. We'll see. I mean. I've been to. Like. I was at Electronica too. And like some of that stuff. Like. I don't know. I think I talked about that too. It's. A lot of that was very businessy stuff. So hopefully this is a little bit more on the. Right. On the hands on kind of things. But it's.

Dave Jones: So what is your stand like? Describe. And who is the stand for? Is it like a parts IO specific stand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Specifically for that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. So it's branded parts IO. It's not branded. Yep.

Chris Gammell: And it's basically like. You know. Answering questions. Getting people to try out the search. If they haven't before. That kind of thing.

Dave Jones: So it's basically a bunch of dorks like you. Standing there with a bunch of computers. And big screens.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: I mean. We have free swag. We have free swag. Please stop by our stand.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Actually the one thing that I did. That I thought. I was very proud of myself on this. Handing. So like handing. We were talking about handing out t-shirts. But like. I was like. Well we got to hand out polo shirts. Because I was. I don't know about you. Maybe you were allowed to wear t-shirts. But like. I wasn't allowed to wear t-shirts to work. At older jobs. At older jobs I've had. Really? So I was always like. Oh no.

Dave Jones: Hell no.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Screw that. I've always worn a t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: Oh no.

Dave Jones: I went through a polo shirt phase once. Yeah. I mean. That's always kosher. It wasn't because it's a requirement.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But it's always like. Okay. Right. You're usually safe with that. Again.

Dave Jones: I used to wear tank tops.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: I used to wear tank tops.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Okay. And they. But they actually pulled me aside. Once. You know. And they said. Hey. What's with the tank top? And I said. I like wearing tank tops. And they went.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: You know. And that was the end of it.

Chris Gammell: When I lay on my boards. It was bloody hot. Right. It's the middle of summer.

Dave Jones: And we were. And we were. You know. My. My office used to be in like the upstairs under the hot tin roof. You know. So it was. You know. It was. It got bloody warm. So you're damn right. I'm going to wear a tank top.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well. I think. Yeah. At that point too. You know. Like if you don't have the air conditioning set. Right. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. In Cleveland. Why are you wearing two sweaters? You know. All right. Chris. You're looking extraordinarily plush today. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh. Goodness. I don't know. I mean.

Chris Gammell: Like trade shows. Like. So. This is. I mean. Obviously. This is an interesting experience for me. Because I'm on the other side. Like. Usually I torture people at trade show stands. I try to ask them questions. And you know. Throw them off their game. So it'll be. Yeah. You know. People will try and throw me off my game. That's fine. I don't really. But it's. It's nice. Hopefully. You know. Good.

Dave Jones: Have you ever walked up to a stand. And they go. Can we help you? And have you ever gone. Probably. And you ever. Had a look at them. And go. This guy's a freaking. Just a marketing wanker. And you. And you go. Probably not. You know. It's like. No. You haven't been that harsh.

Speaker ?: Dave.

Chris Gammell: I feel that I am that marketing wanker right now. Like. That's. That's my fear. You know. Like. I don't think. Or.

Dave Jones: Or you can read it on their badge. Right. Yeah. Right. Marketing. You know. Like. Wanker. Or whatever. You know. And it's like. All their. And I sometimes. I have like. Human resources people on the stand. Or whatever. And you go. Yeah. Really. Probably not. You know. Like. You know. If the stand's big enough.

Chris Gammell: Engineers back there. You can just. You can sandwich behind a curtain. Maybe you can bring them out for a little bit. Show them off. Oh boy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: Goodness.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking about the. I was thinking about my. My. My. My work here. Right. This is. This is the last they'll say about the site for now. I mean. Like. Honestly. Here's my plea to people. I feel like. Like. I took one for the team. I know that sounds really stupid. And. Really stupid. Right. Explain. I. I want to fix this stuff. Like. I know that it's like. I'm not doing hardware. Like. All the time now. But like. This thing needs to be fixed. That's why I took the job in the first place. And. Right. So yeah. I mean. That's why. That's why I'm actually interested in all this stuff. I mean.

Dave Jones: What do you mean it needs to be fixed? It's brand new. No. I mean. Like.

Chris Gammell: It's a new concept. Searching for parts.

Dave Jones: Like. It's not easy. Talking about the whole paradigm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean. Like. It's just not easy. Like. Finding new parts is hard. That's why I took this job. Is. Like. That sucks. I hate that. You know. Like. Well. It's always going to be hard.

Dave Jones: It's always going to be hard. Right. You can just make it maybe a little bit less hard. Exactly. Suck less. You know. You're not going to suddenly make it. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: But you're not saving the world. No. Of course not. I mean. I'm not Elon Musk. Come on man. Someday.

Dave Jones: So. What does your badge say? What is your title? What's it got on there? What is my title?

Chris Gammell: I think it's product manager. I don't know. That's my. I think my official. Yeah. It's pretty. Grown.

Dave Jones: Yeah. What a wank.

Chris Gammell: Well.

Dave Jones: Eh.

Chris Gammell: Chris is boring. Whatever. I'm building hardware now too man. So. Oh cool. I'm balancing it all out. That's my big thing.

Dave Jones: What sort of hardware?

Chris Gammell: Well. The. The contextual electronics courses. Oh right. You're doing it with contextual. Of course. So I mentioned that last week. But yeah. So basically. We need to kind of get up and running. In terms of just kind of getting people started. So. We're. We actually switched over. We're just going to do. A current source. Layout. So like. Obviously you've done videos on this stuff. Other people have built. Current sources to high heaven. It's not. Hard. To build one. Or it's not hard to find one online. But. You know. Just to. Get people used to the flow. And building stuff. And you know. That can be a big thing. Right. When you're getting started. Sometimes you need to start halfway. You don't need to start. Right at the beginning. So we're going to start from a schematic. And find some parts. And. Yeah. Do a layout. And order a board. And quick turnaround. That's the focus. Awesome.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well hopefully. I'm going to be doing more of that soon.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. So what's going on. Are you. Are you allowed to talk about anything.

Dave Jones: Um. Yeah. I think so. By the time this episode goes live. Yeah. I think. Everyone will have been informed. Yes. I have found somebody. Hey. To. Hey. To start. Dave has a minion. Yay. Mini me. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Mini me. And. That's great man. Yes. Yeah. Um. And not starting for. A few weeks. End of February. Or whatever. Cause they. That's okay. They've got other. Other committance. It'll take me that much time to. Sort things out. And just. Get everything. Uh. Set up. And all sorts of stuff. Cause there's tons of little things to. You know. Get ready to make. Um. To make. Their work. Efficient. Like the last thing I want to do. Is get them in here. And then be completely. Unorganized. And have to waste half my time. Shuffling them work. You know. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like I need to get. You know. I need to go into. Every site that I get email from. You know. All my shopping cart stuff. Read. Get email. Yeah. Set up new emails. Accounts. So that all the email then gets directed to them. You know. Instead of me. For all that sort of jazz. And. You know.

Chris Gammell: So you get to reclaim your inbox too. That's nice. That's. Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful. Yeah. That'll be awesome. I know. Totally. Dave might actually answer my emails at some point now.

Dave Jones: My humble apologies if you do send me an email. I don't. Answer.

Chris Gammell: Who. Me. Or anyone. Try to. You mean anyone. Oh. Anyone. Anyone.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. That's okay. I think people realize you're one usually Google like you know highlights you I go to the top yeah

Chris Gammell: that's right yeah this does wankers complaining again so yeah we have a show he might forget it

Dave Jones: but we have a show although I've got minus chip printer in there you know so if there's any

Chris Gammell: yeah of course regarding that it's just yeah I don't send you stuff like that anymore

Dave Jones: but there was something on the list about it there was something on the reddit yeah was there

Chris Gammell: something there someone you know actually I saw it or I read it it was a tweet someone sent us a tweet about that and there was it's this UK company and they've actually been printing they've been doing it for a while and basically they they had a news item about uh they're about to cross 100 million transistors or I'm not sure if it's transistors or devices that they printed it was 7400 no no I know but total devices they've actually printed out by now I think it was either devices or transistors like they were that was basically like the the the threshold they had crossed as the you know this is the news item yeah it doesn't make them useful right well that's the thing it was like 7400 series logic uh you know amount so yeah which we which has if people don't well you should

Dave Jones: now if you're listening to the amp hour it's got you know a few dozen transistors maybe a few hundred

Chris Gammell: you know right for the most the most complicated maybe like the timer chips or something like that

Dave Jones: yeah yeah yeah the most complicated would have a couple hundred gates you know so right yeah and so

Chris Gammell: I mean like and that's cool I mean it's cool right obviously we we have that discussion on here I think it's anytime printed comes up uh usually people they get to catches their ear and they say Chris Chris wants to use this against Dave and yeah it's it's not bad uh but which is fine go for it

Dave Jones: because my argument has always been and will always be that you can print a million transistors on a chip at home you haven't packaged it you haven't tested it you haven't qualified it you haven't right and you can't beat the price of the the hundred thousand parts at digi key for a dollar a pop yeah so when you've done that well you know whatever whatever next 20 years I don't know what's gonna happen the next 20 years we'll still be doing this bloody show

Chris Gammell: when I was a boy when I when I was a 30 year old

Chris Gammell: oh I love it oh god well the same arguments 20 years from now yeah yeah we will yeah why do people

Dave Jones: still listen to this show it's just the same old shit every week well you know it's gonna look back

Chris Gammell: around at some point you know yeah right oh goodness what what is this no I don't believe it what this actually isn't on our subreddit this is in the electronic subreddit sorry I just saw this

Dave Jones: right okay I don't yeah what is it the art of electronic

Chris Gammell: third edition oh yes yes yes pre-order April 2015 no way

Dave Jones: I have pre-ordered one I have pre-ordered one

Chris Gammell: you have oh my god yeah

Dave Jones: dude this it's real and I well apparently it's real and apparently L'Amour has seen one because her quote she really she's actually quoted she's actually if you read the amazon page she's actually quoted along with um well this is people are questioning this because along with Jim Williams he put a quote in there as well and as somebody pointed out Jim Williams has been dead almost two years I think or it's getting yeah but this book's been worked on for probably 10 years yeah I know so like how old of a copy have they actually seen you know or oh right right right right so yeah anyway because there's always an update on this is one guy oh yeah no this is the first time I've seen it but there's one guy in the forum who apparently uh he always emails uh win hill and win who always replies to him about the update so every you know three months he emails him and then he reports back to the forum so we've got sort of like a central person who contacts win you know on the forum and updates and and the last we heard was that oh you know yeah it's still going through copy uh copy editing or whatever you know blah blah blah or we're starting on the index or something or you know something like that um and yeah so it looked like oh yeah it's another three years away you know and then no all of a sudden wham bam here it is on amazon pre-order so I damn right I'm going to hit that pre-order button um so yeah who do I have to sleep with to actually get a pre-release copy

Chris Gammell: does that does that uh does that mean you have to pay up front or no I don't know how it works I

Dave Jones: haven't checked if my credit card's been I don't think so I think amazon charges your card when it ships I think that's how amazon works but I don't use it enough to know yeah because I know like I know

Chris Gammell: that a lot of crowdfunding campaigns like there's at least in the I think in the states there's a rule that you can't have more than 30 a charge 30 days out and so that's yeah what no that's the entire

Dave Jones: point of crowdfunding campaigns you get all the money up front and then you can take a year to actually ship if you want that's the whole point of crowdfunding um well I don't know I but I think

Chris Gammell: that's that's still you don't get charged until the campaign tips though right oh yeah oh yes sorry

Dave Jones: yes until the campaign tips yes yes the campaign must tip so yes that's how it works well I think uh sorry kickstarter is like anyway it's details it gets charged when the campaign finishes and it's tipped or whatever whereas possible so that's for the australian possible one you actually get the money when it tips as soon as you hit your threshold and it hasn't finished yet you get the money so yeah I think

Chris Gammell: that's how it works anyway yeah I mean I'm sure that a lot of that is the you know just how how the countries are different right I mean so maybe maybe just the payment rules are different or something weird like that so that that might be it but I'm pretty sure in the states at least it's it's the 30 days thing okay so uh okay so you're gonna hire this uh you have this new hire coming on and uh so any big plans to start with or I mean are you gonna wait a little bit and then jump into uh stuff or

Dave Jones: what's what's oh we don't know well don't know yet we really have to get together and um you know figure out exactly how we're going to do things and what we're going to do and things like that but um immediate priority I guess is to um well one of the immediate ones is to um yeah get them working on some hardware um be it the uh projects that you know my list of dead projects um get them to you know start working on those again i.e building up our prototypes and things like that so that I can start you know testing things and stuff like that potentially like building um hardware for videos um you know because people go oh well why don't I uh why you know I want to test the chip out why don't I just lay out a board and and build something up and and do a video about it yeah I'd love to but you know that's a whole week's work right so I'm not gonna you know it's it's really difficult to do that yeah so whereas now I've got someone else who can work on that in the background and you know it might take a month for example like they might start like say there's a new chip that comes on the market and I want to play with it want to do a video with it right and we might want to build up some hardware or something then yeah they can you know lay out a simple board for it send that away get it made cheaply and that might take a couple of weeks right and then when it gets back they can build it up and then I can do a video on it and then that's you know um taken all the sort of grunt work of actually you know building up stuff like that away from me so that I can focus on doing videos of actual electronics hey all right that's for change yeah because electronics takes time people don't realize this you know um well some people that are doing it yeah well they do yeah I know I'm sure everyone understands that but they just are so used to my frequent content yeah that they don't realize that you know no I can't spend I can't be working on five different projects and at the same time and still produce content and yeah you know the thing that always that always

Chris Gammell: continually gets me is just like the and I think this is kind of the this the underlying factor in a lot of a lot of the strife that we see in electronics industry is just like the there's just the delay not the delays because delays implies negativity even in a best case scenario there's just logistics of like shipping stuff and you know like oh yeah I want a part and then I have a part and then I get a board and then I send out for the board the board comes back yeah yeah best case scenario you got you line everything up and you still got a two-week wait unless you're paying you know hundreds of dollars rush charges and yeah well then yeah that's right you can either do it

Dave Jones: the normal way and you know if you use osh park or something like that how long does it take to get

Chris Gammell: your boards what is it three weeks or something I think it's two stateside I know that the length we're working on some faster stuff you know that's still two weeks

Dave Jones: and your enthusiasm can die in that time you know oh no I don't want to do the video I've got another idea for another project so you put that on hold for a little bit I'll do it next week and then next week never happens right right right and kind of thing so if I can have somebody whose job is to actually finish things because I'm not a very good finisher I get highly distracted and you know think of

Chris Gammell: something else to do right oh yeah exactly that's I mean that's and that's good um yep that's good to have you know a lot of a lot of things up in the air at the same time and if there's other people kind of helping along with that that's I mean when you think about like company structures as well that's effectively what you're doing right you know you know when you have a company that has multiple product lines there's people on each product and they're all kind of managed there's a manager that try and sequences everything and then everybody's working on their own pieces you try and get it all together and it's it's that's the tough part that's the hard part about getting

Dave Jones: getting a project together so and the the the problem is is that I don't give a shit enough to be quite frank like it's because this is my show this is my dog and pony show right if I go oh well I don't care if I finish that or not you know there's no pressure you know nobody's telling me to do it you know and like I don't care I just I go on to something new and fun that excites me now you know and I don't care if I well I do care but you know not enough to actually grind down and do the work yeah oh yeah you know if somebody's job is to finish things then you know it's different this is what differentiates me doing professional electronics work at a company and working on my own yeah you know yeah I've got a deadline and people are expecting me to do it and I'm being paid to do it and so I do it you know whereas working whereas doing it for yourself hobby projects just never you know you've got to have a lot more discipline yeah oh definitely

Chris Gammell: that's why that's why projects can linger for such a long time you know they yeah fall in and out of favor and you know there's other things that come up and yep yeah but I mean on the other side you know they're doing it for money I mean that that changes things right I mean like I was talking to my wife about this the other day you know we were just talking about like I forget how it came up just like things that we do for fun right and she's like well you know you used to work in electronics for fun when you came home from work you know it's like yeah well I do that all that I mean and I still do that it's still fun but it's just like it changes the nature of it and actually I saw I was just hanging out with uh Chris and Alicia White and and we were talking about that too just like the you know like we know that like you know for the podcast or for other things it's like yeah of course we do stuff outside of day jobs and everything else but at a certain point you know some of the times that can really start to wear on you and and I've talked to I've talked to um I remember I used to work with engineers and I've wondered like well why don't why aren't they doing stuff at home you know why don't they have hobby projects at home it's like well sometimes it's just you know at the end of the day if it's depending on how taxing the day is and you know how deep the technical content is during the day sometimes you want to go ride a bike or you know go to the gym yeah that's right yeah walk take a walk I don't know like yeah it's there's just other you know like it is kind of a balance thing as much as anything else so you can't fault people for that

Dave Jones: totally not and that's the issue like to me this is still my hobby you know so you know it's it's unsurprising that I don't take it with the professional attitude that I should right because this video blog is is basically a complete extension of my hobby so I'm just gonna dick around it if I finish it I finish if I don't oh well you know put it on the back burner you know right you

Chris Gammell: who cares right well it'll be interesting to see if your new your new compatriot agrees with that

Dave Jones: yeah it could take quite a few months to like you know you can't expect things to happen you know overnight it's gotta yeah well it's gotta take some months but anyway that's that's the core idea you know there's a lot of people who thought you know I just be you know cleaning up around here and stuff like that well no you know that's you know two percent of it I think you know the the whole idea is that they can finish things that I don't right for whatever reason and then hopefully finish things equals better videos or more technical content so you know yeah yep and you know a lot of people say that oh why don't I you know do cool projects like Mike does on his videos for example well because that's his day job is to produce those and he makes spin-off videos from those projects that he does for his day job yeah well and that is being able to work or insert other blogger here yeah yeah it's just a different it's just a different ball game right

Chris Gammell: well that's good man I can't wait to see what pops out of it I have to say so

Dave Jones: well hopefully it works out for the good yeah that's the idea if we don't try then you know never get anywhere and yeah I'll just stagnate like I am at the moment yeah just you know occasionally getting a decent technical video out but even then they're not really in depth because

Chris Gammell: I don't have enough time to do them so yeah hmm it's all good so did we talk last week about so we actually I think we tweeted with the guy but did we talk about the risk risk 5 processor that open source I think we had mentioned it back in the day but did we actually end up mentioning that last week I kind of recall talking about it a bit did we oh okay never mind then yes I think we yeah I think

Dave Jones: we mumbled something about it okay well anyway what is this risk 5 processor oh was it on twitter

Chris Gammell: it was on twitter I thought yeah yeah so yeah okay so we had talked about it a while back there was this open source risk processor but basically there was a bunch of uh proceedings that we were supposed to talk about last week from they had actually a conference back in January and the videos aren't online yet but you can see some of the slides and it's just interesting seeing you know like what actually is getting uh focused on you know when you have this one like I don't quite know the motivations behind it all in the first place because you think about the cost of of uh you know machining it or not machining it uh getting a chip manufactured in the first place but but like you know the specs are available now and you can kind of start going into that and seeing uh you know the user manual manual and the cores and stuff like that and seeing what so it basically exists as a soft core is that um is that the current state of it I don't know what the current state of it is

Dave Jones: uh like can you actually buy a chip with this core in it oh no no no one's making it right you know so it's a core so it's a soft core yeah yeah right well yeah I mean everything starts I

Chris Gammell: suppose everything starts as a soft core and eventually then it gets put into you know hardware

Dave Jones: and actually made what is what is the goal of this I mean I thought arm owned practically everything what is the advantage of this uh

Chris Gammell: uh his car five processor well I think the same reason as any other open type project is just more

Dave Jones: visibility and less more visibility yeah I mean if arm is do we need that though I mean it's like that because that can have its downside too I mean if nobody you know it ends up like key cad kind of thing if nobody takes the bull by the horns and goes right this is the definitive thing here you know if everyone's like sub branching the bloody thing off or whatever then nobody's going to have a

Chris Gammell: standard core uh yeah somebody has to take the bull by the horns there's always that always that trade off between you know uh having a common ground but I think the problem there is and I usually usually from the motive and I'm not sure if that's the one here but usually the motivation for that kind of thing is you know if you have a central gatekeeper like that you know who watches the watchman type of thing like there's no saying that there's anything wrong right but but basically the idea is that open is always better in that kind of case because then people can build on top of it if they want to

Dave Jones: and you can well they can but it's not better from a practical point it's not necessarily better from a practical point of view yeah well I mean if you think right if you want to get something done I'm not going to choose an open core processor right I'm just going to choose a proven you know processor out

Chris Gammell: there that I can buy a chip yeah right but you're not right you're building you're developing right

Dave Jones: and this is on the research side we've had that talk before oh yeah so I I consider this more of

Chris Gammell: an academic yeah I know what it is and and if you look at that it'll have a real yeah and if you look at practical the region it's the copyrights by the regents of the university of california so there's definitely an academic side in all of this so right yeah yep yep but uh I mean that's where it stems I think for for listeners it's interesting just to see how this stuff does get spec'd out seeing some of the instruction set and just you know like digging into this stuff in the first place you know especially people like um hardware architecture type stuff it's yeah it's interesting

Dave Jones: you know it's it's oh no I totally it's totally cool yeah um from a practical point of view though

Chris Gammell: I don't quite see the well everything everything starts somewhere right I mean oh yeah arm is from acorn and acorn was what 20 years ago or something like that I mean like it was it's not like it was commercial right it was commercial you're right yeah but I don't know I think this is an interesting in between right it's like you have the commercial side which is profit driven then you have like the the this side which is you know more like knowledge driven and and you know there's I'm probably sure should say there's profit in there eventually but but then there's also like the standard side you could say well what if we all got a committee together and standardized and it's like well yeah but we want to make it at some point maybe yeah well then you might as well go buy a

Dave Jones: commercial one yeah right right by default it's standardized and what see like and there's multiple flavors of this there's the open risk as well which I think is a different thing right which is yet another open core risk processor I don't know I'm on the open risk info page here and there's an open risk 1000 and uh yeah it's a open cause it's part of the open cause community and once again here's another open source risk processor and well how is that different from

Chris Gammell: this risk v or sorry no here we go well number 11 on the risk 5 uh frequent asked questions is why not open risk or mips and they said open risk has condition codes and branch delay slots which can complicate higher performance implementation basically it's like you know if you take it as an academic exercise there's always gonna be limitations so they think it starts from scratch kind of thing open risk has a fixed 32 bit right there's yeah right right there's a few people who didn't like

Dave Jones: the open risk they went and did their own one and there'll be people who don't like either and they'll go start another one right you know and which is great you know from an academic point of

Chris Gammell: view fantastic yeah well I guess I guess the question is when when should that not happen right I think it's always it's always an option to happen I think that you know it's probably not going to be a direct competitor arm right now but maybe if there's take up in the future that could kind of thing and

Dave Jones: maybe you know but I'm I'm gonna make a call here oh yeah you love making these calls I love going out on the limb within the next within the next decade uh-huh we will not see we will not see an open core processor commercially you won't be able to buy one on digi key okay yeah duly noted digi key's the benchmark digi key's the benchmark okay yeah right I don't know maybe it is easy to actually someone will prove me wrong because they'll manufacture 10 chips and they'll get digi key to stock it Dave was wrong yeah you know you don't have to go that far just get Dave to be wrong oh boy yeah yeah um because there's already like how many go to digi key and type in you know processes right how many variants are there already yeah I mean do we need another open you know like what advantage is the open core one going to have probably not much unless you want to implement it in an fpga for a specific yeah maybe uh you know soft core application which you need to tweak for some sort of thing and then it's probably fantastic right I can imagine that being great because it's open you've got the vhdl you've got the verilog or whatever and you can tweak it to your own requirements brilliant yeah right that's that's here's what I know you say the value you said 10

Chris Gammell: years out I had a recent experience where I I was reading so I really like the book the uh innovators dilemma which is a clay christensen book right no I know I've never mentioned on here before right

Dave Jones: uh I tried to read that it wasn't I gave up I didn't like it oh no okay yeah no so yeah and so people maybe all the good stuff is at the end uh yeah I mean it's just kind of interesting as a case

Chris Gammell: study just like patterns that have existed over and over and over again right in business so like yeah so it was always you know businesses like like he used hard drive manufacturers and then like backhoe manufacturers stuff like that basically like if you're trying to make better and better stuff for smaller smaller group with higher margins so maybe scopes could be a good example the high-end cad tools the cadences and all that sort of stuff you know basically your market keeps shrinking and then people always come up from the bottom right so like in scopes it would be like the regals of the world right and in cad tools it would be like the uh the kai cads of the world if you know or the upvurders or they you know or the the dip tray stuff like that eagle too as well right I mean like all of the the lower cost that kind of moved its way up in the the value chain and and so I'm reading this book and or sorry I I'd read that book a long time ago and I really I really do like it I do recommend it even if it's a little dry for Dave's taste uh and so I was not I was getting on a plane and I wanted a book to read so I bought a kindle book which is out of character for me but I was I remembered that that I had heard clay christiansen on some podcast and he was promoting a new book I thought and blah blah blah blah blah and so I'm like oh I'll go and buy it and the only one I could find was the innovator solution and I'm like cool let's let's there must be the the follow-on to that old one that's great all right and I start reading it on the plane and I get like two or three chapters in and he starts talking about all of these new innovations and cell phones and and and it was like oh and the palm pilot does this and the blackberry does that and and Nokia never saw what's coming blah blah and I'm just like thinking to myself I'm like what the hell is this guy talking about and it and then I finally went and looked and I think I had searched on Amazon and I saw that there was a reissue on 2014 but it actually was published in 2003 before the iPhone came out and it's just like man that was 10 years ago you just don't see this

Dave Jones: stuff coming you know like no no nobody saw the smartphone nobody exactly not not in this right I

Chris Gammell: mean people say they saw it and maybe some people yeah and you can always point to people that predict everything and yeah oh some of that's gonna be right but what I'm trying to say is you know we're talking about 10 years from now and we're talking about technology it's just like man I don't even know why we bother sometimes it's just like holy crap you know like that yeah yeah it was uh it was crazy uh but actually the the second book you know once you get past the fact that it's written in 2003 and palm has pointed out as this great company working on the smartphones uh it was it was kind of an interesting it it is interesting read because basically it's the idea it's it's taken from the other side then uh uh of like how do you actually prevent this kind of thing and like how do you how do you actually go and design products and not get caught by all of the problems that he talks about in the the uh innovators dilemma so it's uh you buy a stat use established off-the-shelf

Dave Jones: processes instead of yeah that's what it is yeah that's exactly yeah you know hey this is a practical thing right this is a real world decision as a designer as a product designer you've got to make

Chris Gammell: uh you know you're saying like don't use open course

Dave Jones: it's no it's like a what processor you choose is a real design decision or what chip you use can come back and bite you big time oh yeah man that's so that's like

Chris Gammell: it's like we've talked about this it's like it's like uh picking your kid out of a lineup instead

Dave Jones: of just having a kid right yeah as we've said sometimes it's better to have the choice thrust upon you by a company you know they tell you you must use this that's it end of story right right

Chris Gammell: you know at least cut down on the design the the decisions that you have to make and the regret you have later you have someone else to blame it on that's right that's it yeah

Dave Jones: so you're talking yeah like this is interesting about predicting the future and all that sort of stuff like i can i think i can pretty confidently predict it's not going to be another processor architecture that wins the future it's going to be something else entirely be it a form factor be it a uh usage you know and and implementation solution or i don't know i'm kind of talking out my hat but like there's already a hundred different processes on the market right just having another core a different core that you know tweaks this and it tweaks that is is nothing you know it's just noise yeah i mean it could be things like i mean

Chris Gammell: just because of the ubiquitous nature of having processors it's just maybe a better communication between them right shared some kind of shared memory architecture it could be a new serial

Dave Jones: protocol yeah it could be it's got to be something else it's got to be which i can't think of because otherwise i'd be able to predict the future which i can't so you know i i just know what it's not going to be right you know the future is not going to be yet another processor architecture right you know that's just it doesn't matter it's it's of insignificance you know yeah like like the smartphone right the smartphone revolution was not the fact that they used arm processors in there right although that's what 95 of them use right that that didn't enable it what enabled it was the fact that you know it was they designed it you know the screens got bigger the yeah the process got bigger but they designed it as an app centric you know like a generic computing platform yeah kind of thing that could run apps that was the that was the killer thing it was the apps

Chris Gammell: which nobody saw coming well i mean i think the screen actually i was listening to something about it was back when cus was going on one of the things they talked about was like just like the importance of glass these days like like not the device but like the actual like you know like yeah yeah corning comes out with a new type of glass like everybody pays attention because it's so

Dave Jones: that's that's bendable you know and doesn't break yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely it's actually a material science um thing which saves the day and that that could be the future you know because somebody comes out with this great form factor which everyone loves it could be the form factor yeah that becomes the new killer feature you know i it's got to be something else it's not going to be the mundane stuff that us poor electronics designers work on daily yeah hmm if only we were smart enough

Chris Gammell: well i mean so um i don't know this i don't know if you're interested in this book at all actually but it's it's kind of interesting from the the well it sounds out of date dude what's that it sounds out of date well it's a little out no but i mean like it's like general i it's some people don't like clay christianson either that's fine whatever um but the interesting thing about it actually is like the when he talks about you know how do you actually prevent all this and it's like sometimes you have to start over right and like so if you have a big company and you're making you know you're making a bunch of money on something you basically have to kind of you have to like you'd be like no we're just gonna start chasing a new market and try something different and ignore the old stuff and

Dave Jones: that that can just be well you can't ignore the old stuff that's almost gets you doomed to fire because you've got to have a cash cow somewhere you've got to have that you don't necessarily

Chris Gammell: and yeah yeah yeah i don't know it's hard to see that though right i mean like i don't know like have you ever were you ever having like skunk work projects anything like that

Dave Jones: oh nothing comes to mind no so we sorry i've tried a couple like you know very very low level

Chris Gammell: skunk work stuff at past jobs you know just like like a more like a google 20 time idea where you know and that's tough and hardware and i think we've talked about that on the show way back in the day and it's hard to do because it like because of the context switching everything like that but ultimately i feel it feels like those are the things where you know you're designing something because you want to try out something new and then oh crap what is this you know this new thing that kind of pops out and maybe it'll it'll hit a new marketplace and you could try it's the

Dave Jones: google model isn't it they just throw crap against a wall and see what sticks yeah i mean they have so many projects they just go yeah we're gonna fund every single you know wacky idea and you know yeah

Chris Gammell: well some of that's transitioned over we'll buy every wacky company with an idea right right and

Dave Jones: yeah and see which one wins right right yes i don't know that's sad that's not a bad way to do it yeah well you get past some of the one of my favorite uh pundits actually um uh says what should yahoo you know yahoo's like going down the toilet right what should yahoo do right because they just got like 50 billion dollars from the sale of um alibaba right because they own alibaba right so they're you know they've got like 50 billion dollars sitting in cash or whatever right yet yahoo as a company does nothing right they're just you know they're they're so out of the game nobody cares right and what should they do with all that money and i'll link in the article um and he says what they should do is become the capital investment firm in silicon valley right literally put money into like fund every single startup that comes along that's a terrible idea every single one of them you know and bingo you're going to end up with you know some nope winners no it's called what's better than

Chris Gammell: pissing away your money which well yeah maybe or giving it yeah i mean giving it all to investors

Dave Jones: whatever i don't know man why why is that why is that not a good idea like maybe not funding every single you know i've got a free energy device you know let's do that i've heard about that yeah oh yeah we can end the show with that maybe um and you know not don't be that reckless but you know they could be like the number one funder in all the silicon valley they've got that much cash yeah i don't know why not why is it why it's called that that is actually an uh that's called

Chris Gammell: spray and pray right where you you fund everything and then you hope a couple things i'm not saying

Dave Jones: yeah i'm not saying just rely on prayer right i'm saying yeah do some due diligence i don't know man

Chris Gammell: if you just give away that much money like honestly if you give away that much money but they're going

Dave Jones: to piss it away anyway that's the point right maybe if that's your company's like that a huge company like yahoo is she's always been like just you know like a loser for the last you know 15 years or whatever right i mean come on who uses a yahoo product right hardly anyone yeah right who uses yahoo as a bloody search engine or or whatever it used to be and you know yeah yeah no i get it i get it right um well i do i use uh flicker which is owned by yahoo but still you know like anyway

Chris Gammell: i don't know so i think right yeah spray is the thing but yeah i i would i would compare them more to like so if you're that big it's more like like the gates foundation so like the gates foundation a really good thing again they're funding tons of interesting stuff but it's still you know a ton of stuff but not everybody right if you fund if you give everybody money yeah i'm not saying everybody

Dave Jones: but you know yeah but they can become the number one i guess so right it's just like the gates foundation is the number one uh you know philanthropy um organization in the world yeah i don't kind of

Chris Gammell: think there's that many good ideas out there i don't know yeah i don't know yeah there's not but

Dave Jones: you can at least why is at least not attempt to yeah do that what else would you do with all that money put it in a savings account a savings account yeah that's going to maximize shareholder return

Chris Gammell: half a percent of course that's not an actual answer but i don't know

Dave Jones: anyway i think it's not a bad idea i i think it's like i don't know it's pretty good to like do like the

Chris Gammell: the elon musk thing you know put some stuff in space or something yeah but that's the thing that's

Dave Jones: the startups right you've got to fund that right it's starting from scratch right elon like tesla started from scratch solar city started from scratch i believe anyway that started from scratch yeah someone else oh well you know yeah maybe a couple of them were space sense yeah spacex started from scratch let's hire one person right let's hire two five twenty you know like yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know 50 billion bucks could buy you a mars shot right speaking billion bucks could

Chris Gammell: put people on mars speaking of mars i applied i don't know if they're going to actually let me do it but uh the next week nasa is having a bunch of people over to their the facilities and i applied to to to possibly go there's there's a cleveland facility i don't know if you knew that it's called no i had no idea that's at a facility yeah it's called the nasa glenn center i assume they bought it for the price of a vcr no it's been a long time actually it's pretty pretty uh right yeah i don't know what do they do in cleveland what what is nasa doing cleveland uh they do a lot of microgravity stuff uh and then there's i know i knew someone who was in the laser group out there um so they do

Dave Jones: like laser research as well i mean like freaking space lasers space lasers right yeah why is the top of my head warm right now oh they that is that where is that where a trillion is that where how many hundreds of billions did they spend on the star wars program did uh reagan spend on star

Chris Gammell: wars oh i don't know is that the one that's supposed to knock missiles out of the sky yep this is way

Dave Jones: before you were born i think yeah reagan yeah famously yeah yeah i don't know you know here's uh poor old gorby right gorby gorby you know he's once again he's before your time says hey let's get rid of all nuclear weapons and reagan goes yeah i'd love to but i want star wars so no deals off we're gonna fund star wars yeah thanks for saving the earth you dickhead um and then they poured i don't know like a trillion dollars into star wars and it yeah they just went yeah it doesn't work you know so i don't know and now it's coming back again because they are shooting you know drones out of the skies with freaking lasers now you know so maybe it was like you know 30 years ahead of its time freaking laser beams man yeah i know anyway i tell you space that's some 80s history space lasers are

Chris Gammell: not uh what i'm actually scared of uh it's actually the uh the robots uh did you see the robots did

Dave Jones: you see this new uh atlas robot from boston dynamics i don't think i dare to look no oh my god so basically is it creepier than the the spider than the big spidery one oh no this is the one that's

Chris Gammell: actually like a bipod like a stand-up robot and all right uh before they they used to show there was a bunch of videos like and it was like tethered to wires and stuff like that but now yeah right now they got rid of a bunch of the stuff autonomous battery packed and yeah it's there's yeah yeah there's video of it doing like the uh the karate kid thing and ah right doing the crane technique yes right i can't i just can't even imagine like the the systems that are required for all this stuff like if they're all individually controlled we i don't think we'll ever get a boston dynamics person on the on the show that is allowed to talk about it but i mean just like thinking about like the

Dave Jones: control system well they're bought by it didn't google buy yeah google owns them now yeah well maybe they're a bit more openy maybe yeah yeah yeah yeah so maybe we should try and get someone on why do these robots always go so slowly their arms are moving slowly like this is it i'm lifting my legs slowly is it why is this a limitation of the hardware no i'm sure that's just because it looks

Chris Gammell: a bit more dramatic well have you ever looked at like the um the reverse kinematics that have to be calculated for like robots like this like six axis robots yeah but we've got freaking processes that

Dave Jones: operate 20 zillion gigahertz yeah right right right but when you think about it okay so that that might

Chris Gammell: be for a single arm right but then the whole rest of the body they're whacking a thousand processes with a yeah maybe maybe maybe it's just i don't know man but but uh it's this thing is it's crazy creepy looking so uh i just can't help it you know like the the creepiness factor uh i know i don't think it looks as creepy as uh no not this one pet man is the one that actually usually creeps me out but uh i don't know robots just they're awesome but they're creepy to me but yeah this so this is gonna be used for the uh the darpa challenge as well so basically this is okay this is uh the hardware that gets programmed i believe now by a couple teams yeah the robotics uh darpa's robotics challenge finals on the 5th and 6th of june so cool that's that's bonkers i love i mean that i mean that's really cool right that's that's like a really good use of a lot of that stuff is i mean you can always have doomsday scenarios with robots and yeah murdering humans but

Dave Jones: oh no it's good stuff you know yeah yeah you have to love it as a as a you know as a nerd you have to love robots it's it's compulsory yeah yeah man because there's just so much hardware and and you know and algorithms that go into it and control system control theory and oh yeah the

Chris Gammell: control theory especially yeah and that's i mean that's the stuff too like like i feel like i like over time i've developed a slightly more intuitive feel for control system for control theory but like

Dave Jones: the actual see i've never hold that i've never been a you know it's something that i've never had a good feel for you know all that control system theory stuff i've never been really good at that

Chris Gammell: intuitive side of things just like how things respond and stuff like that just like you know like like pd loop type of stuff but then when i think about the math involved and like doing z transforms when you get into the digital domain stuff like that oh if you want to do it properly yeah if

Dave Jones: you want to go into the deep theory of it which is required for a lot of practical yeah right a robot's not going to just do it by feel or like no no you can't you can't go on on digi key and buy a you know a robot pid control chip you know it just doesn't you know it just doesn't happen right right everything has to be tailored for your particular bot yeah so yeah well anyway so it'll

Chris Gammell: be interesting to see what comes out of that we'll have to keep an eye uh on the on the calendar for for june when they when they have that that crazy ass contest oh hang on i have to watch this video on

Dave Jones: this uh on the page because it's got a speech from kennedy it's showing some cold war nuclear stuff

Chris Gammell: oh i love that sort of thing yeah the historical stuff yeah that's what i'm like yeah yeah i'm yeah

Dave Jones: i'm a big nuclear history oh yeah if people don't yeah oh yeah people don't know no i'm fascinated by nuclear history i've read dozens of books on uh nuclear weapon uh theory and and and design and the history of the physics behind it and all that sort of jazz yeah interesting so what about it it's one of i i just find it i just find it fascinating it's you know it's it's one of the greatest achievements um you know it's one of the greatest technical achievements of all time you know go go read richard rhodes book the making of the atomic bomb right which is the complete history of like actually developing and making the first atomic bomb and you know as a as a nerd you can't help but think well that was you know one of the greatest achievements of all time yeah it's fantastic you know i'll have

Chris Gammell: to check that out that's that's i mean that sounds like an interesting mix it it did win the pulitzer

Dave Jones: prize it's a pulitzer prize winning oh really oh wow okay yeah yeah he famously won the pulitzer prize for a uh history for a tech you know for a history for a nerd a nerd book you could say it a nerd book yeah yeah basically yeah and like i must warn you it's like 900 pages or something it's it's big wow you know it it is the complete history so it's it's highly researched yeah anyway fantastic and he's got tons of follow-up books you know he's got like eight of them or something i've i've read them all

Chris Gammell: cool man yeah i'll definitely i'll link that in for people too and i'm gonna probably check that out that that sounds really cool yep so what else is going on we're almost we are out of time and i gotta go i gotta go do videos and stuff man oh you're doing videos what there on the road yeah i record them in your hotel room i can i i have been running actually so i run ki cad and lt spice on a ubuntu vm now so i run right i run the windows version of lt spice on wine in ubuntu running on a vm on mac i have no idea what you just said it's a windows program running on a linux box running on a windows or running running on a mac box okay why uh so i so i have a consistent experience with my i have a windows at home so that's why it's it's probably silly but yeah whatever

Dave Jones: whatever floats your boat yeah right uh speaking of which like this on the road thing you know how you develop you know you did a basic version of that portable lab oh yeah yeah yeah you know i was thinking about that again because i don't have a lab at home anymore i've got nothing oh yeah okay right i got nothing and it's just like like i was just thinking like the last day or two that i should revisit that and maybe with the new employee maybe we can you know do some you know really um actually put some money because that needs time and money to put into you know like yeah because you and i talked

Chris Gammell: about that as well we talked about you know developing that i mean again it's not probably going to be something that people really need but uh yeah no i i just think it's cool you know and at

Dave Jones: the end of it i'd be happy to get a cool video out of it and something that i could actually have at home and keeps the wife happy see because if i just take home scopes and power supplies and sit them on my yep sit them on the table in the study right like i'm just going to get divorced right yeah right right this is not going to happen whereas if i can have a case that just sits in the cupboard and it's completely you know zero clutter yep is the key right exactly it's your it's

Chris Gammell: your it's your go bag for electronics right yeah yeah yeah exactly bug out bag that's what it's called

Dave Jones: a bug out bag it's a bug out bag for you uh yeah uh doomsday preppers yeah

Chris Gammell: no but that's good though because if you're stuck and you can't go you can't get into the lab or if you're just kind of inspired that can that can put a break yeah you put breaks on it just need to do

Dave Jones: a home at something at home i need to fix something you know i need to do you know or i need to just try something yeah that makes sense like so i'm you know i'm thinking that that's yeah one of the

Chris Gammell: things i'll get the the uh new mini me to work on cool yeah i uh i would be very interested in that i think the the balance between the i was actually i was thinking about bringing that with me i'll probably bring it on future trips but uh it's it's heavy man and i see a lot of people in airports with uh those pelican cases but not the not the big one and and uh well it's just a

Dave Jones: just the case alone the pelican cases weigh like five kilos don't they just like yeah even more no

Chris Gammell: more uh so it's usually i think mine is like 25 pounds whatever that is in kilos so oh 25 pounds

Dave Jones: divided by 2.2 yeah yeah yeah so 10 kilos that's that 11 kilos 11.3 kilos really yeah that's it's yeah man that's it's dead weight yep that's yeah because i went to the next size up and the next

Chris Gammell: size up was something like 40 pounds and actually went outside of the size limits of oversized bags so that's why i went to the smaller size ouch see that that's the problem well that's

Dave Jones: the price you pay for the heavy duty nature of it right it's you know the duck's guts yeah yeah so

Chris Gammell: it'll be interesting so yeah i hope you i hope you do that it'd be cool that'd be cool to see that

Dave Jones: yeah yeah cool that's the idea all right yes i had fun with the um oh sorry i just said i had fun

Chris Gammell: with the free energy oh yeah we'll definitely include that video that was that was fun it's your second second bullshit title or uh video huh oh no i've done a few oh a couple i've done okay yeah i've like four or five now oh okay it's like a series yeah yeah it's a youtube youtube playlist

Dave Jones: i have a youtube playlist for debunking yep yeah yep that's good yep cool man well hey if people

Chris Gammell: are in the bay area uh probably south bay and they want to come see me i am giving out t-shirts tomorrow and uh so come see me say hi what polo shirts uh polo shirts and t-shirts actually so

Dave Jones: oh right choice yes choice and your swag that's impressive yeah awesome all right that's all right

Chris Gammell: we'll be back next week and uh potential guests uh lined up so i'll let you know sweet see you then see ya

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