#306 – Catalyzing Change Agents

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded July 6th, 2016. Episode 306. Catalyzing Change Agents.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: What's up, nerd?

Chris Gammell: Hello, buddy. How was your vacation?

Dave Jones: It was good. I went to the snow. Nobody knew about that. Well, I tweeted some photos, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I saw you guys built like a rocket ship out of snow or something.

Dave Jones: A rocket ship?

Chris Gammell: Sorry, what was it?

Dave Jones: It was Thunderbird 1, thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: You know I wasn't the Thunderbird era.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah, okay.

Chris Gammell: I was more Power Rangers era, you know.

Dave Jones: Power Rangers? Oh, give me a break.

Chris Gammell: Which they're making a new one of, if you didn't see.

Dave Jones: No, care factor zero. Yeah, I know. Right, right, right. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so how was the snow? I mean, so, snow, huh? You like wanted to go see snow. You know, we don't go to see that normally around here.

Dave Jones: Right, it just happens.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's just called life, man. Right, okay. It's everywhere.

Dave Jones: I don't know why anyone would want to live in that environment. I mean, it's just, like, yeah, like, I enjoy it for a visit. Well, our city started on fire a lot less.

Chris Gammell: I don't know about yours.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's, no. No, thanks. Like, there's, you know, there's people who, you know, they're so obsessed with the snow. No, they live and, you know, they, like, practically live on the slopes. Like, they live and work there, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no, it's just, no. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: I don't know what to tell you because I've done it for so long since my childhood, so. Right, okay. You get used to it. I know I escape the snow a lot more now these days, so that's important. Right. It's fun to visit, but, you know. Yeah. Anyway.

Dave Jones: It was all right.

Chris Gammell: You know, I think it's probably a cop-out, but I do, I know I get more stuff done in the winter. Not that I wouldn't get, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say.

Dave Jones: No, I feel like there's more hours in the summer, you know, because there's more daylight. I just feel like there's more hours in the day. Yeah. And, nah, summer. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Right. I don't know. Anyway. No worries. You're not going to be going, you're not going to be moving to Cleveland anytime soon, huh? No, I don't think so. I don't think that was in the cards either way, so.

Dave Jones: Goodness. Speaking of Cleveland.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of, okay.

Dave Jones: There is news. Martin, your mate, Martin Lawton. Well, our mate, Martin Lawton. Of course. He's been on the show. He's a bit. He's your close buddy. You drink with him every week, don't you?

Chris Gammell: Every month, yeah. Every month. We do a meetup, yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. And, yeah, he's given up, sadly, giving up full-time, had to give up full-time video blogging. He's done a video.

Chris Gammell: He's not giving it up. He's just selling all his gear. He's not doing any more equipment reviews.

Dave Jones: Yes. Well, yeah, he's basically saying that I can't do this full-time anymore. I have to potentially go out and get a job. Maybe, yeah. We'll see.

Chris Gammell: I think he's doing the right thing, though. Okay, right. So, he's going to be selling off some of his gear. But I'm actually pretty excited about it. We had talked to him.

Dave Jones: Yes, you were. Yeah, he mentioned this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think maybe in his video. You're excited because, well, you and I both like the concept of a minimalist portable lab. Right. And we've talked about it on here before.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, it gives an interesting opportunity. If you're going to sell all that gear, what would you keep? You know, what's the bare minimum?

Chris Gammell: I think you go to nothing and then you build back up, honestly. Oh, right. Really?

Dave Jones: Right. Well, that's assuming you don't currently have the suitable gear.

Chris Gammell: Right. But I think that that's actually why it's a good exercise. Because, okay, so a lot of people watching his channel, a lot of people listening to this, a lot of people watching your channel, you know, it's people that are getting started, right? It's tough. Yeah, yeah, of course. It's tough to figure out what is actually, you know, not just what to buy, but the sequence with which to buy, right? I mean, these are all difficult choices, especially, you know, if you're younger and you're maybe cash strapped and, you know, it's just, and they're big purchasing decisions. So, yeah. And you and I, I've talked about this quite a bit. I mean, we've talked about, you know, portability kind of also plays into it because it's kind of the same price range, it feels like, as well. Like, usually handheld, smaller stuff's going to be a little bit lower cost than like a... Yeah, bench stuff, yeah. Right, right. I mean, like even a raggle scope, I mean, it's not cheap. It's not super expensive, but 400 bucks is not a small amount of money.

Dave Jones: Well, it was when I was a boy. They were double that. They were $800, even back in the day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know. You're old, yes. We know you're old.

Dave Jones: But I get this all the time. I get emails and I see it on the forum. Should I buy an oscilloscope? I'm beginning in electronic. Should I? Yes, is the answer. Like, you know, there are some essential gear. Like, you can do a lot. I mean, as a young kid, I did a lot without a scope. I didn't get a scope for years. I was a hobbyist for years. Yeah. You know, granted, I wasn't 10 yet. But, you know, like... Yeah, yeah. No, for like five years or something, I dabbled in electronics. I didn't have a scope. I just couldn't afford one. You know, it was...

Chris Gammell: Well, I think it's just that they're more accessible these days too. So that helps quite a bit. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Totally.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So I'm excited for him. I think... I mean, I know it's not like in the best situation, but I think it's a...

Dave Jones: I was going to say you're excited for him. I think you're more excited for yourself. No.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I just think it's a... You know, like sometimes when these kind of challenges come up, like these are... Right. They're solidifying events. You know what I mean? That's not the right word. But the...

Dave Jones: It's like losing your job or something like that. It's like a solidify... Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Like, you know how that goes.

Dave Jones: It's a change agent, right? Yeah, exactly. Change agent. Insert wank word here. Change agent. Catalyst. Catalyst. That's the word.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah. And I mean, like honestly, like that can always open... You know, you've got to look for Silver Lange anyways. So that's... I think it can open new venues and new interesting things can happen. So that's what I'm excited about.

Dave Jones: Touch wood. Hang on.

Chris Gammell: What?

Dave Jones: Touch wood. Yeah. That hasn't happened to me yet. I've been... How long have you been doing this blog? Like seven and a half years or something? And there's nothing that's... No, but it did happen.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like not like that, but I mean, like the change agent for you was losing your job, right?

Dave Jones: The Altium thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. The Altium thing. Right? That was... Yeah. That, yeah, made me go full time. Right.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And you... I mean, like it's not that...

Dave Jones: But what I'm saying, it wasn't a bad change agent. I wanted to leave anyway. It wasn't, you know... So it wasn't like, oh my God, now what do I do? It's like...

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: I mean, but these things can... You know, you never know what's going to happen from it. It could be bad, but... Totally. I think, you know, I talked to some friends about this. Like, you know, like this is a... If you're in this industry, I think we're very lucky to be in a relatively well-paying industry. And there's a lot of interesting work out there. And it's just, you know, you just got to keep looking for it if you're looking for it. I know people get frustrated too, especially if they're in an area where they can't find a job at that moment. Because if, you know, if you're locked to a certain area, right? Well, say you're on a continent where there's, you know, there's always so many options. Limited opportunity and you've got a wife and two kids.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. I mean, that happens in a lot of situations, not just, you know, in a continental sense. So you just got to keep looking and keep trying different things.

Dave Jones: I had this, I had an email the other day, actually from the father of a recent graduate who's working in the industry and earning bugger all. I mean, like, it was like, I don't know, 35,000 a year or something, which is like nothing. In Australia? Yeah. It's practically like minimum wages.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like Maccas, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like Maccas. And the guy's a great, you know, the guy's an engineering graduate. And he's working as a technical, you know, almost like application support kind of role. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he's, I don't know why his father, I guess his father's concerned and doesn't know anything about the industry. And he contacted me and said, you know, hey, what can I do to help him out? You know, you got any advice and things like that? So I wrote a lengthy. What would you say? Well, I wrote a lengthy reply. And like, among other things, I just simply get a better job. I know, and I had to explain to him, I know that sounds like a ridiculous answer. Right, it's a truism almost. But it is the answer. I mean, you know, don't just quit your job and go, look, but like I said, like go to the industrial parks, right? Go walking around, do the hard yards, look at all the companies there, research them, find a direct engineering contact there. You know, it's easy to find direct contact emails and things these days on the web, right? Everyone's, you know, you can almost find anyone's.

Chris Gammell: I found one actually.

Dave Jones: Right. So I think we've talked about. You were stalking someone and you found their email.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no, no. So we've talked about, you know, we've talked about like the whole networking thing before, right? But sometimes it's hard to actually, you know, so basically if you go, you can go on LinkedIn, right? And you can find someone that you want to potentially talk to. And I'm not saying you should spam people, but if you find someone that you specifically want to talk to. No, spam them.

Dave Jones: Well, I mean like. No, don't form email them, like send them a personal email. Right, exactly. Spam means you don't personalize it. Right, exactly. That's basically what spam means.

Chris Gammell: Right, you're spray and pray. Yeah, spray and pray. Yeah. And so, but what can be hard is, so you might be able to find someone on LinkedIn, but, you know, like you're searching for their different formats and stuff like that. If you go to emailhunter.co, basically. Oh, really? Okay, I haven't heard of this. You can type in a domain and you can, if the emails are anywhere on the web, it crawls for all these different emails and looks for the format.

Dave Jones: And the format, and then you can insert their name in the format, like it'll be first name dot last name, or it could just be first initial. Chris.gammel or cgammel or whatever it is. Yeah, or cgammel or something, yeah. And you can actually, I've always done that manually. I didn't know there's a service now. Wow.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, there's a service now and, you know, for better or worse. Yeah. But I mean, people are going to figure this stuff out anyways. Like you could find that. If, say, it's not on this site, you could just go searching for, you know, blank at eevblog.com or something like that. Right. And you could try and find it like that.

Dave Jones: And then you could find, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sometimes. You sometimes won't. I mean, honestly, it is hard to find sometimes.

Dave Jones: Well, let's try it. What's it called? Email?

Chris Gammell: Emailhunter.co. Mine's actually- Emailhunter.co. It's like, it's limited on how many you can use in a day. So I've already used mine for today. But you can try it.

Dave Jones: Okay. Here we go. eevblog.com. There we go. I typed my own name right. And there it is. Dave at five sources. Dave at eevblog.com. Right.

Chris Gammell: So it's like places that might have been posted on the internet, stuff like that.

Dave Jones: And then it gives you the pattern first. It puts like brackets, first name. So it knows mine's a first name.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And wow. Yeah. Okay. So it's kind of nice.

Chris Gammell: And so this is probably a good thing too. So, okay. So say you're the person you're advising or his son really. You know, what should go in that email, right? So I think that there's a couple important things there. One is be upfront, right? Like, hey, I found your email. I, you know, I basically, I was found you online. I am very, very interested in your company. In your company. Yep. Yep. Totally. Are interested, you know, interested in them personally, right? Play to, you don't have to be, don't be insincere about it, but if you're actually interested in this person, you know, you can play to people's ego a little bit. And.

Dave Jones: As somebody who gets countless emails every, personal emails every day and has for the last 20 years or however long I've had an email address, advice emails and everything else or seeking, you know, help or whatever. Don't waffle. Just like, don't spend a whole paragraph explaining, oh, I really like your show. And I, you know, I'm sorry to contact you and I hope it's not too much trouble, blah, blah. Just get to the point, please. Yes. Right.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's so, but there's, there's, there, yeah, I agree. There's, you need to be succinct, but it's, it's also, you know, it depends on what you're asking for too, right? You can't just email someone and be like, hey, I really like your company. I was hoping for a job. It's like, that's not how it's going to work. Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But don't waffle on.

Chris Gammell: I totally agree about that. Don't waffle on. Yeah. And be upfront. I mean, if you can, if you have something to offer in return, right, that's always good to lead with. Right. So start with, you know, so, so I've been emailing people for trying to kind of find out more about their business and stuff like that. But it's also like, hey, I'm an engineer. Like, you know, I, I have value in return and I can, uh, you know, tell you about my perspective on your business. Right. So that's something that I can offer. Um, and so like, I mean, there's, there's no guarantee you'll be able to do that, but you never know. Like you might have something where you, you, there, there is some kind of value you can provide to that person. And then at the end of the day, it's like, you know, some, some of it, like I said, might just be the curiosity and, and their ego. That might be what you offer them. Um, and hopefully that's in the best way possible. You're just kind of hoping to understand about how they got where they are, what they're, um, you know, what, what you should be doing in order to get in a similar situation, stuff like that. And a lot of times that, like that just interest will get you in the door and they'll actually read your email, which is, you know, the hardest part. I will caution people since Dave's on the line here. Uh, the, you know, so we'll just mean like someone, someone like you, right? Someone, if you, if you go straight to someone that gets a lot of email, you're going to, you're going to get lost in the shuffle. Right. So understand.

Dave Jones: But people are, yeah, if you're look, if you're looking at it like a public figure, then yes, they will be getting a lot of email. But if it's just, you know, something like the head of engineering at some company, they're not going to be.

Chris Gammell: No, but it depends on the size of the company too. Right. So if it's a CTO, if it's Apple, you know, if it's a CTO at like a startup, a local startup, that's, that's way different than the CTO at Apple. Right. Right. And you just got to keep an eye on that stuff too. And like, like we were saying before, just, you know, be very cognizant of their time and not only in writing your email, but also in what you're asking. You know, if, if you're looking to get on a Skype call, it's a lot different than maybe, you know, joining, buying someone lunch, right. Where they're going to have to go out to lunch anyways. Right. So there's a, there's a big difference there. And just kind of keep that in mind.

Dave Jones: I have, I've, I can't recall a single instance where I've done this and I've done this a lot over the years, you know, like searching for direct contacts of companies looking for jobs. Cause I'm always looking for a job just for fun. Sometimes just for kicks, you know, to find out what a company's like and stuff like that. So I just go for interviews, not even wanting the job there. I'm just, you know, actually curious about and keeping my skills up in terms of, you know,

Chris Gammell: I mean, like knowing what you should be knowing, right. Yeah. Yeah. Knowing how people are interviewing. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Totally. And I, I don't think I've ever failed to get a reply from somebody I've found a direct contact for. And like, I'm talking always like, this is like engineering department contact, right. I don't think I've ever failed to get a reply from them saying, oh, and it's usually the response of, oh, thanks, but we don't have anything at the moment, you know, but we'll keep your, you know, that almost all of them say, but Hey, you know, I liked that you emailed me. Well, you know, your skills seem to fit our company. And if anything comes up, we'll.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, you have to have very realistic expectations, but, but oftentimes, you know, I think having a personal connection with someone over, you know, like the expectation that someone's going to have a job ready and waiting, like, oh, Dave finally emailed. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. This serendipitously dropped in at our lap. It's like, that's very unlikely, but you know, having another contact or, you know, hoping to see someone at a conference then like, that's, that's how it's done, man. I mean, like, it's all about just trying to be first in their mind when they're, when they're racking their brain, you know, like when a, when an FAE would come in and be like, Hey Chris, do you know anyone about, you know, that that's looking for a new gig for this lighting company? I'd think about it. And if I had talked to someone, even, you know, an intern or someone new that had emailed me or talked to me, whatever, like, like I'll, there's, there's almost no downside. And because I want to also be contacted again when that FAE would have the next job that I might be interested in. Right. You want to be that person that has connections. Right. I mean, that, that is, that is valuable in the workplace and in, in the job market. So it doesn't always have to have beer involved either, but it doesn't hurt. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Speaking of change agents, another, I'm glad it didn't happen. Um, but it caused a mass panic on the internet. Um, Lewis Rossman, who you're no doubt aware of fellow video blogger. Um, well you should try and get him on the show, although he'd probably talk. I think he's probably pretty busy right now, but yeah. He is pretty busy and he might challenge, um, uh, Vincent, uh, Himpey for the longest show ever. Oh.

Chris Gammell: Well, first off, explain his background to people.

Dave Jones: Uh, Lewis Rossman. He's a, uh, repair, uh, tech. He has his own repair business. Uh, Rossman repair group in New York. I think it is. Yeah. I think he's up in Queens.

Chris Gammell: He said he's like 183rd or something like that. He's pretty far North. Anyway. Yeah. He's up there. Maybe the Bronx. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Geographically. Okay. Anyway, somewhere in New York. Yes. In quote marks. And, uh, yeah, he repairs, he does all these, he does a lot of videos. He does like at least one a day or something like that. Cause he's got like a streamlined automated, um, you know, video capture thing. And he does, and he basically repairs, um, he specializes in repairing Apple gear. Right. And, um, among other things, but it's mostly Apple stuff. And cause Apple apparently rip off, you know, if you send your notebook back to Apple to be repaired, it's like a thousand dollars or something and he'll repair it for, you know, 150, 200 or something. And so he does all these repair videos showing you how to repair and the amount of content he's got is absolutely phenomenal. Um, so definitely, uh, check out his channel and, um, subscribe if you want to know about, you know, uh, component level repair. And he does, you know, like as he's actually repairing, he will do a screen capture like a live. They're very long. They're not mostly not edited. So they're like, you know, an hour of him troubleshooting a fault in an Apple laptop or an iPhone or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And anyway, so that's what he does. And he did a video, uh, the other day was a week ago now. And he basically didn't say much at, he didn't name names. He didn't say what was happening, but he just said, he implied download all my videos now because I may not be here tomorrow.

Chris Gammell: He didn't imply anything, Dave. He said, isn't it interesting how there's YouTube downloaders?

Dave Jones: Isn't there internet? Yeah. It was so, you know, it was very cryptic, but everyone who's watched this channel knew what it meant. It meant Apple was going to sue him and, you know, or something like that. So that's what, so it hit, you know, slash dot and Reddit and, uh, every, you know, every tech website on the planet picked this up and went Apple's suing Lewis Rossman, even though he didn't actually say that. Right. But anyway, it was quite funny to watch it spread. And, uh, they, they're going to shut him down because, you know, he's been fighting for the right to repair bill. I don't know much about this, but in the U S there's some bill he tried to put through We had mentioned at one point. I think we might've. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think when it was, cause it's, you know, it's going state by state around here. And, um, I think the last time we saw it was Minnesota, I think. Okay. And yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Anyway, it went through New York and he was a big, he was one of the big players behind that. He went and testified in front of Senate or something. Yeah. And, um, yeah, it lost apparently. Um, but anyway, Apple doesn't like repairers. They like to shut them out and stuff apparently. So anyway, um, there, yeah. Um, and he had to follow up a day later, um, with another email saying, no, they're not suing me. Um, all I got was a letter from their lawyer, uh, their law firm who has a history of shutting down.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's why he was kind of like a cease and desist type of thing. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, no, it wasn't. It didn't really say much at all. Um, actually, unless he's done a second, a third video on it.

Chris Gammell: I, I, I only saw the one.

Dave Jones: So anyway, I, I saw the original plus the follow up.

Chris Gammell: He did a really good, uh, AMA. That's actually, I, I had not, honestly had not watched this stuff, uh, prior to the AME, AMA that he did on Reddit. Right. And it was really good. Um, you know, he just kind of talks about a lot of the issues with repair and stuff like that. So I mean, yeah.

Dave Jones: By the way, on his channel, he does lots of, uh, life lesson. Yes. Business, business lesson type. Rants as well, which are, uh, some of them are really good. So yeah, definitely worth checking out anyway. So he said, no, I'm not being sued by they, they haven't actually sued me yet. And, um, they actually strangely said that he was a, that they were a fan of his channel, which we had like the lawyers, apparently we're a fan of your channel. So, which is really strange anyway. So it, yeah. So this thing, it totally exploded. Like, oh, they're going to shut him down. And now hopefully it's looking like, you know, um, they do want to be friendly. And so maybe they've got, I think they've got issue with like a couple of videos that show Apple schematics and things like that. I think that's what it might come down to. Um, you know, in like, cause Apple don't release schematics. So you have to get them from Russia or something, you know, like you've got a, right. Like some marketing shenzhen. Well, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Bunny talked about, you know, finding those and, uh, I think that video or that post he did about the, uh, Gunk iPhone. So.

Dave Jones: All right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, anyway, so that's. Hope we can have on the show at some point, you know, that'd be really good. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that, that looked really bad. Um, and yeah, I was like, everyone was emailing me, Dave, you've got to do a video supporting Lewis. And it's like, but he hasn't said anything yet. You know, like, like he hasn't even named names, you know, well, what's happening. So I held off, but no, if they, yeah, I would have done something supporting there. But anyway, that might have a happy ending. I hope so.

Chris Gammell: Hopefully. Yeah. It's good.

Dave Jones: It's all good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, what, uh, what else? Uh, there's some other big ones on the list here. Big?

Dave Jones: Speaking of big, the mega proce. Mega processor. Sorry. I can't do a radio voice. Can you do a deep radio voice?

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: No. Hmm. Mega processor it is. Hmm.

Chris Gammell: That's not what I was talking about, but okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I want to go there. And the reason I'm using a Yoda voice is because the Juno probe made it to Jupiter. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You were, were you watching that or someone else was? Yeah.

Dave Jones: I was watching, I was trying to do a live show. It was complete balls up. Hangouts on air sucks ass. Have you ever used Hangouts on air?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I have with you actually. Um.

Dave Jones: No, I don't recall. Use that. No, I'm not talking about Hangouts. I'm talking about Hangouts on air. Oh, oh yeah. I've done that for my course. They're two entirely different products. In the past, yeah. Really? Does it work?

Chris Gammell: Uh, not very well.

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, no kidding. Anyway. So I was trying to team up with Fran. We were going to do like a Hangouts on air and live stream it while the Juno probe was doing its orbital insertion and it failed miserably. Anyway. Well, the probe worked. Yes. And anyway, the reason I did the Yoda voice is because I just tweeted this. Um, the head of the, uh, I'm going to get it wrong at NASA, the head of the space probes division or whatever it is, you know, the, the head of missions division is, his name is Yoda.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Jeffrey Yoda. But it's spelled E-R. Oh, last name's Yoda. Okay. Yeah. Yoda. Last name's Yoda. Yeah. I just think it's cool. And I think he should like be the head of NASA because the head of NASA should be called Yoda.

Chris Gammell: It's just awesome.

Dave Jones: Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm just childish like that.

Chris Gammell: It's okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, this megaprocessor, um, who's the dude that did this? Uh. What's his name? I do want to.

Chris Gammell: Forget his name.

Dave Jones: I do want to, uh.

Chris Gammell: But, uh, yeah, no, this thing is, is my, it's like a, it's like a room.

Dave Jones: James, James Newman. James Newman is the one who gets the credit. And it's like, yeah, it's a room sized processor. It's like two meters tall and 10 meters long. And he's modularized everything. And it's, it uses 40,000 transistors, 40, 42,300 transistors. Wow.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Wow. It doesn't say, does it say anything about how warm the room gets to? I mean, like, cause you kind of lose, I mean, I know it's, it's not.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, he's driving tons of leads. Like, like there's leads like displaying the status of everything. So that's the only thing that's going to chew power apart from that. You know, it's bugger all.

Chris Gammell: Um, you get switching losses, stuff like that. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Over the, over the lines, but no, it's working. I don't know how fast he's actually clocking this thing either. Well, in the example, he's clocking it at one hertz so that you can see it go through. But no, I think he said it runs at like kilo, hundreds of kilohertz or something. You know, it's not. Um.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I suppose if you're using discrete stuff, you'd start to run into like capacitive problems on the gates and stuff, making sure that all sticks together.

Dave Jones: No, here we go. At, at full throttle, it runs at a whopping eight kilohertz.

Chris Gammell: Eight kilohertz. Yeah. Eight kilohertz. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's, that's good.

Dave Jones: Um, but, but that's probably all you can do with the capacitance of the lines. Think of the, uh, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: The relative distance between parts on this thing versus on a, on a regular chip. You just have lots more dielectric and, uh, conductors, right?

Dave Jones: Yep. So it's, yeah, there's too much capacitance on the line. You just can't drive it fast enough.

Chris Gammell: Right. Hmm. Do you think, do you think it's still, I mean, so what is it? This is based on the, this is the 8051 or something else?

Dave Jones: I actually don't know what processor it is, whether or not it's his own design or, uh, no, somebody else did a 6502 one.

Chris Gammell: Well, Eric, Eric did the, um, did the, the monster, which is like the MOS 6502. Yes. That was the one that was at Maker Faire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You said, but, but, but it's like a desktop size thing, right?

Chris Gammell: The, the, the monster one?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: No, it was, it was like a panel. It was like the size of like a full PCB panel. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Right. But it, yeah, it's, it's a desk size. So it actually fits on the desk.

Chris Gammell: Oh yes. Correct. Correct. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Um, so there's that, no, I, they don't mention the processor here. So I assume it's his own design processor. So just for teaching purpose, I, I assume he's like a teacher or something. Um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, well, that's my question to you is, do you think, do you think it's necessary to understand processor level, how things are working these days? That's a, that's a good question, right? I'm an expert question.

Dave Jones: I've got to answer no. And the reason why is because we've talked about this before. There is just more and more things to learn every year in your engineering degree course, right? There's just more and more stuff and the course doesn't get any longer. So something's got to give, right? And if you're spending a semester learning as, you know, as I did, like, you know, Mike, you know, they'd have these custom microprocessor trainers and it's similar to this, right? You would have all the individual sections and you could individually with switches, you could flip bytes in and you can understand how the processor works. Right. And I think it was a Z80 clone or something, you know, anyway. And yeah, okay. It was good back in like the late eighties when I did it. Right. But like now, no, like 30 years later, I don't. Yeah. No.

Chris Gammell: I think it's interesting too, like people that are writing assembly might need this more than,

Dave Jones: you know, just being closer to the hardware. Sure, but does every engineer, no, I think this is one of the things, what I'm getting at, this is one of the things that can give, right? Oh, sure. That we can sacrifice in for the greater good of an engineering degree.

Chris Gammell: Right. You can always dive down through the abstraction layer later. Of course. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. So I think this is what, yeah, one of the things that I think should be called.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's tough. You know, especially with the broad, like painting with broad brush type of thing, right? So like on Embedded, they always ask their guests, what language should students learn in school? Yeah. It's always interesting to hear that. And? I mean, it's varied. Everybody says different things.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Are you asking what I think?

Dave Jones: Well, there's only two, right? There's C or Assembler pretty much from a practical aspect.

Chris Gammell: I was actually going to say Python.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Oh, well, no, I'm talking about, yeah. No, that's a, to me, that's a different level. To me, there's Embedded Level, which is C or Assembler, or maybe even C++, right? Sure, sure, sure. But I said first.

Chris Gammell: You want to learn that first or you want to learn that second? Oh, right. Okay. You know what I mean? No, no.

Dave Jones: I'm a big, like I started with Basic, right? I'm a big fan of high level first and then drilling down, top down. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Top down.

Dave Jones: No, if you start with Assembler or C, C is not, C is a cryptic thing too. Like it's not, C is not that great.

Chris Gammell: We're going to start with C, but we're going to start with K&R and nothing else.

Dave Jones: What is main? Why do I have to put main? What does this mean? Like, what's all this bullshit? You know, like. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think that's always the problem with all these kind of things of like asking these questions is where, who, you know, who's your audience as well? Right. So that's trying, it's just trying to get the broadest base. And I think like for the processor stuff, most people would probably be better off. I don't know, like understanding the, how things like, so like we were talking about the capacitance between different components, right? Understanding that that's even a thing, right? Getting to that point and understanding that as you get bigger, you're going to have more and more of that issue because you just have more stuff, right? Just kind of having that general feeling is, that's an important thing, right? Kind of rules of thumb and, and, you know, feelings about, you know, like intuitive type feelings about basic physical laws and electronics. That probably has more direct implication on a day-to-day basis than a lot of, than a processor thing. However, if you're an embedded person and especially if you're writing assembly, then maybe, you

Dave Jones: know, you need to get down into the registrar.

Speaker ?: Well, of course, no.

Dave Jones: Unless you're doing a specific embedded, you know, or computer science strand in your degree, then yeah, that's the only place you should learn that sort of stuff. So, yep. Yeah, it's tough, man. I mean, obviously it's, we're talking about EE here, right? We're not talking about computer science, right? That's a whole different ballgame, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, something we have zero clue about, even less than our normal lack of knowledge.

Dave Jones: I mean, it's, yeah, it's like, um, I, I did like, you know, uh, you know, a class on like a compiler design or whatever, like who cares?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Like, you know, I'm not doing a computer science degree, like, you know, it's just, no, but it's general, like, nah, piss off.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, no, it was, it's just stupid.

Chris Gammell: Well, and it's, you know, there's always going to be specialized areas, right? Uh, so we have another item on here. The, uh, inventor of the Kalman filter passed away. Kalman filters are not something you need to learn right at the beginning. However, if you're working on sensors or if you're working, you know, with real, real data, you're probably going to run into a Kalman filter and it's going to smack you in the forehead, right?

Dave Jones: So I, I don't think I've ever, I can't say I've ever used one.

Chris Gammell: I have seen the block diagrams and I ran away very fast.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. It's a bit of a complex beast. The theory behind it is quite, you know, I had no idea.

Chris Gammell: I, if I'm being completely honest, I, I, I had always assumed that Kalman was long gone. I, I, you know. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I, I don't know a usage, like I've never encountered the usage case.

Speaker ?: No, no, no.

Dave Jones: I'm sorry.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I, I, I figured that, uh, so Rudolph Kalman passed away. That was the news item. Yep. I, I figured that Kalman existed in the, like the early 1900s kind of thing. Right. Okay. You just didn't know him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No, I, I didn't even know his name, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Sorry. Yeah. Right. So. Sorry for all you Kalman fanboys. Right.

Chris Gammell: But this, I mean, so if you look, if you look at Kalman filters, if you just look at the Kalman filter wiki page and stuff like that, I mean, like it is, it can be a pretty, I mean, first off, it's pretty important. Um, like I said, in the, in, especially in like sensor fusion, stuff like that, where you're kind of putting a lot of stuff together. Um, but it's all about estimation and feedback of that estimation, uh, trying to make sure that you, your sensor data doesn't run off into the weeds kind of thing. I remember actually, uh, Dave, uh, the guy who was on last week, um, he had done a guy, I think that was the first time when he was doing his master's thesis, he was telling me about it and he was doing, uh, a pretty good example. He was trying to track where his boat was based on accelerometer readings. But if you think about an accelerometer and if you think about the errors you have just from small amounts of acceleration, and then you're trying to, uh, do what? Two integrals of that to find distance. You just, the error terms pile up like crazy. And so the only way you can handle that is trying to put it into some Kalman filter. And I think it was still ridiculously hard.

Dave Jones: All right. I don't think I've ever seen as much math on a wiki page as like for, for what, there's something you think should be simple, like, oh, it's a filter, but no, it's a, it's much more than that.

Chris Gammell: It's a feedback system really. I mean, like there's, and there's a, but you're right, there is a lot of math in there. And the theory is.

Dave Jones: No, there's integrals and as soon as I see integrals, I run away.

Chris Gammell: Matrices and derivations. Yeah, matrices.

Dave Jones: I used to be a matrices fan boy, but no. Yeah? Like, yeah, but not anymore.

Chris Gammell: Not for like Spicer, for just in general? Like he's just like doing.

Dave Jones: No, just in general. I liked the concept of matrices. I liked solving them and I don't know. I went through a phase. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's a weird phase. I pray that my sons do not go through the same phase. It's a deep, dark time.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Mmm. Powerful matrices are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh dear. Anyway. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it is used, I think Matrix Math is used in, well, I know it's used in Spice. Is it used in Layout?

Dave Jones: It is used for.

Chris Gammell: Layout?

Dave Jones: I believe it might be used for topologically based auto routing. Don't quote me on that.

Chris Gammell: Is it based on Layout?

Dave Jones: Layout? Because you want to segue into some huge news?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's not that huge, but it's interesting.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's pretty huge when a major player gets, well, hey, did we mention it last time that, yes, we did. Farnell bought, Farnell was sold to Wotzy Nuts, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The Swiss company. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The Swiss company. Yep. Daily or something. Anyway. Whatever. Who cares? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Done and dusted. So we did mention that last time.

Dave Jones: And then like days after that, then came the announcement that Farnell, or now the new owner of Farnell's, have sold off Eagle. Yes. They sold off Cadsoft, which they still had as a division, a saleable division with inside Farnell. And they sold them off. Rumor has it, maybe about in the $20 million range, 20-ish million.

Chris Gammell: Oh, really? Oh.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. On the Art of Fruit blog, they did an estimation based on the income and the company income and they knew all the debt. Because there was a reduction in, there was a sudden reduction in debt in the company financials when the company was sold. So, oops, there it is. You know, like they popped a number out of about 20 odd million or something.

Chris Gammell: Well, so what do you think about this? I mean, I have feelings.

Dave Jones: Sorry, I didn't even say who bought it, who they sold it to. It was Autodesk. It was Autodesk. They sold it to Autodesk, right?

Chris Gammell: People with large pockets, yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. Who now own, now, I didn't know some of the companies Autodesk owned, or I did and I've forgotten. Such as who? They now own almost the full suite of, I'm going to have to get the list up. Hang on. I'm going to have to, yep.

Chris Gammell: You mean on the ECAD side or on the MCAD side?

Dave Jones: On the MCAD side.

Chris Gammell: So MCAD is what? Fusion 360. I knew that one. I used that one. They have Inventor. They have the whole 123D stuff. Yep.

Dave Jones: There's 123D, which can do simulation. And they've got another one. I think it might, have they merged it into 123D? I don't know where it came from. But it can do simulations of, they've got a whole simulation thing that can simulate entire modules. So it can simulate Wi-Fi modules and everything. So apparently they've now got a full suite of stuff that you can actually, and simulate processes as well. So you can now-

Chris Gammell: Are you talking about like Circuits.io? Is that what you're talking about?

Dave Jones: Circuits.io, is it? Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So it used to be Circuits.io. That was a simulation tool. It's kind of like- That's where it came from. Okay. Yeah. It kind of looks like, what's the one? Fritzing. So it looks like Fritzing. Right. In terms of like the, it's got breadboarding stuff and- Yep. All that stuff. Yeah, yeah. All that stuff. So that's Circuits.io. It started as Circuits.io and then they called it like 123D Circuits, I think, or something like that. Right. Something like that. There is a layout component to it, but not, but about the same as Fritzing, I believe. It's not super developed.

Dave Jones: Anyway, they can simulate like an Arduino. They can simulate a Wi-Fi module and everything else. So you can actually, you don't even need the physical hardware anymore. Apparently you can like simulate-

Chris Gammell: Nah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. But anyway, that's what they're claiming. That's their big-

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, they also, it's also on the MCAT side. Obviously they have auto, what do they call it?

Speaker ?: Jesus.

Chris Gammell: AutoCAD? Yeah. AutoCAD. Right. Yeah. That was them. Right. Yeah. So-

Dave Jones: And that was their main product. Yes. That was the main one. Right.

Chris Gammell: And then, but then the other one is Tinkercad as well. Tinkercad, yeah.

Dave Jones: Web-based. Yep. So they've got a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah, they've got tons of stuff. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got, and now they've got the whole suite. They even got Matt, who you used to work with. Yep. As did you. And who I used to work with at Alty. Right. So he's now the head. Is he the head of something or other there? Anyway, he's the one who Art of Fruit interviewed. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And Matt, if you're listening, just answer the bloody questions.

Chris Gammell: I'm still thinking the same thing. He'd answer it, but I mean, it's-

Dave Jones: No, there was some, like, Art of Fruit gave him a whole bunch of questions to answer, and he answered them, he answered some of them in depth and gave yes, you know, yes and no answers, you know, to these things. Right, right. And then they'll ask about, are you going to go do a subscription, what are your, you know, all your products are subscription and cloud-based. And he didn't, like, it was the biggest non-answer I've ever seen in my life. He should be a politician. Like, you know, I know this probably had to be filtered through their, you know, vetted by their- Well, if you look at the bottom, it says- Yes, I saw it at the bottom, vetted by two marketing people or something. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I mean, these were all really good questions, though. I mean, like, Phil and Lamor sent over really good questions, and, you know, yeah, Matt, skip some of them. That's fine. Totally. I don't know what you're expecting. I would expect even less answered, so I don't-

Dave Jones: Well, no, I wouldn't. I don't like bullshit politician answers. Just say, we don't know at this time. That's it. Oh. That's all you have to say. Sure, sure. You know, just, sorry, I can't answer this. It's up in the air. We don't know. Right. Okay, so now let's- Please don't speculate, you know. No, no, that's our job. Come on, let's get into this. No, but yeah, exactly. From the answer he gives, the only conclusion I can come to is that the answer was yes. They plan to go cloud and subscription-based. If he just came out and said, we don't know yet, I wouldn't have speculated. Now I'm speculating that he was practically saying yes, as from what I can see. So, like, I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Okay, so here's my perspective.

Dave Jones: Go.

Chris Gammell: I don't give a shit at all.

Dave Jones: Right, because you're a keycat man.

Chris Gammell: Well, here's the thing. I mean, like, I still, like, cannot believe that, like, of course, we're going to talk about it on here, right? This is the kind of stuff we talk about. But, like, there's so much strife over this. It's like- Well, there should be. It's not that good of a tool. Like, it's not like-

Dave Jones: But it doesn't matter. It's the de facto standard tool in the open source hardware industry.

Chris Gammell: Well, obviously, I'm trying to change that. Just because you don't like it. But, yes. I know.

Dave Jones: Just because you don't like it does not change the fact that it is.

Chris Gammell: Well, what it feels like to me, I was selling some of this earlier today. It's like, you know, for the longest time, I would hear something about, like, people talking about Apple products or something like that. And I would just be like, what? Stop. Like, why? Why are you talking about this so much? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now, of course, at least my ears- Well, no, no. Now my ears perk- Now I have a Mac, and at least my ears perk up, right? So at least I'm interested in listening, not participating, but at least listening. And I think that's what it is. It's like, now that I'm outside the ecosystem, I just, I don't get it. But I do understand that, you know, when people's everyday workflow tool is impacted, they get a little jumpy, and that's fine. But, obviously, I have moved on. Right. Because I used to use Eagle, and I don't- Yeah.

Dave Jones: You hated it. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, I didn't hate it. I love it. I mean, like, that's the tool I learned on. It was great. Right. But, like, there are so many other options out there. I think it really comes down to the, you know, like, Adafruit puts out great libraries. SparkFun puts out great libraries. It's just baked in. You know, that's what it comes down to. That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of people using it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. So, you know, it's a real- Yeah. So that's why people are jumping up and down, flapping their arms, you know?

Chris Gammell: Sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, I would say-

Dave Jones: This needn't. This needn't. Oh, go. Finish your thing.

Chris Gammell: Well, I just think that, you know, it's a- CAD programs are like religion, right? Oh, totally. Totally. What was the name of that? What was the thing we called it at the beginning? The qualifying event or something like that? Or the life-changing event?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. The catalyst, the life-changing event. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The catalyst event, right? Whatever that was. Change agent. That's what it was.

Dave Jones: Change agent. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Unless you have some kind of change agent in your life, like say you leave a job and you leave your Altium license behind or you leave your- Right. You know, your pro-Eagle license behind and you were working on, you know, used to working on large boards. Unless you have something like that or you make this very specific decision, like same thing for like, it's not just like Eagle to something else. Unless it's, or something, you know, like I wouldn't go and learn Altium either unless I had a contract where I had to learn it. Now, of course, that's self-defeating because how would I ever get a contract if I don't already know Altium? But unless, actually Bob Davidson talked about that when he was on the show, I think for the impedance matching episode we did with him and Dave Vandenbout.

Dave Jones: Ah, I don't recall. You were here. You were here. Ah, right. Well, there you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. But he talked about learning, learning Altium specifically because he knew he was going to look at contracts and a lot of the contracts of Altium stuff, right? And like, that was a conscious decision though, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's not just some like fly-by-night casual thing that switched CAD software, I think. And that's... Oh, no, no, no, no. That's the main thing. No, it's huge. Right. And that's why every time anything comes up, it's an argument in a comment section somewhere. Right.

Dave Jones: Now, this needn't have happened. All this fuss and arm waving needn't have happened because Eagle would have been dead if Altium followed my advice, which they didn't. And now I can say, I told you so.

Chris Gammell: And now we come to that part of the program, huh, Dave?

Dave Jones: Yes, where I say I told you so again to Altium.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: They could have dominated this whole market with their Circuit Maker.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they really could have.

Dave Jones: The early advanced copy of Circuit Maker that they showed me had the right direction.

Chris Gammell: Circuit Maker, let's make this clear too.

Dave Jones: Circuit Maker is their free one. Is their completely free one with no restrictions whatsoever.

Chris Gammell: But it's all tied to the cloud.

Dave Jones: But it's all tied to the cloud and non-local. And you can't pay to do whatever. It's just stupid. There is such a thing as going too far to the free end of the spectrum. That it actually made it. Nobody, hardly anyone picked it up. And they were going to run with the model. When I saw it, they were almost ready to release it. They were going to run with the model where they would have like, you could buy eight layers. If you need eight layers for a month to do an eight-layer board, you can just buy that for a month.

Chris Gammell: And it was like, it would be like 50 bucks or whatever.

Dave Jones: You know, 50 bucks or whatever. And if you need an auto router, you can buy that for a couple of days. You know, like it was a great model. And they would have killed it. They would have killed the market. And put Eagle out of business in six to 12 months. Right? If they really played their cards right and, you know, seeded the industry with it and everything else. Sure. But anyway, so they went and did a three-tiered solution where they released the completely free circuit maker. And then they had this weird middle-tier program, Circuit Studio. Yep. Right? Which then...

Chris Gammell: Right, and that's the one that you posted about. This is the I Told You So.

Dave Jones: This is what we're going to do. This is the I Told You So. Right. Right. And they also did an exclusive deal with Element 14 slash Farnell. Well, they'd sell it through them, which was just a ridiculous idea. Let's probably not even go there. Right? They should have just sold it direct. Dumb. Anyway. They priced that at like $3,000 to $4,000. It was the dead zone. It was the no man's land of CAD pricing. And I would love to see their figures because I'm sure it's like... I could probably count them on my hand of the number of people who bought a Circuit Studio license. You know? Right. And it never would have worked. Everyone screamed that from day one that they announced this thing. Nobody's going to buy this. It is priced way out of the market. No one's going to buy it. They're going to spend double that and go to the full Altium. Right? Right? So anyway. Yeah. I said in my original video, it needed to be under $1,000. You know? Preferably like $500 or something. And sure enough, just... They haven't formally announced it on their website. If you go there, it's still like $4,000. And if you go to like... If you go to the Farnell website, Element 14, it's still like $4,000. Yeah. But they have apparently, somebody posted on my forum, they have sent an email to all existing users saying we're dropping the price to $995. And with $125, I believe it is, maintenance per year. Yep. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. This is a good... That's a decent price point. That is a decent price point. So...

Chris Gammell: And that's competing with like Eagle Pro, right?

Dave Jones: As competing with... Totally competing with... Actually, the full version of Eagle is like $1,500 or something. So I think the full version of Eagle is even more. Which I keep saying, if you want to do a single-sided board, single-sided board with two components on it that are spaced more than 160 millimeters apart, you've got to pay $1,500. It's ridiculous. The Eagle pricing is the dumbest thing in the history of pricing. It's like... It's just like... Ugh. Hang on. Like... Hang on. I'm going to headbutt the mic.

Chris Gammell: There we go.

Dave Jones: There we go. That was useful. That leaves a pattern of the metal grill in my forehead. Right, right, right. Anyway. So yes. That's news. Altium have finally admitted defeat because I'm sure nobody bought it. I have no inside... I have no inside knowledge at all. I don't know what their sales figures are. I've got no idea. But I'm guessing it's pretty darn close to zero, just like their $4,000 nanoboard that I worked on. Right?

Chris Gammell: Ah, yes. A relic from the past. It's funny.

Dave Jones: They literally sold none through DigiKey. And this is public knowledge, by the way. It's not... I didn't actually have access to their sales fees. But you could see it. Because you could see the stock on DigiKey.

Chris Gammell: Right. The stock's always the same, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, the stock on DigiKey is always the same. It never went down. Nobody bought one.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Like, so it was just, you know... They made some direct sales or something to some idiots. But yeah, anyway. It was crazy. And then they had to slash that. They had to slash that price in half. And then they finally admitted their mistake. And then they... Then we developed the 300... Was it 350 buck version? The real low cost version? Anyway. Yeah. Something like that. And that was mildly successful.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm going to make one last pitch for KiCat here. I'd expect nothing less. If you are feeling in a particularly enlightened mood and you're ready to switch religions, give me a call. Right. I'll post a link to the getting the blinky. May you see the blinking light.

Dave Jones: Well, I have not tried Circuit Studio because I always thought it was the dumbest idea ever. But now I might try it because I will be tempted possibly to buy it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, save some money on the...

Dave Jones: Yeah, because I won't buy a full Altium license. I don't need it. Right. So I simply will not buy a full Altium license.

Chris Gammell: Right. Why would you? No.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no. It's absolutely crazy. Right. So... But, hey, $1,000 with $125 maintenance a year, that is... That's pretty decent pricing. So that really puts them in the ballpark. So they're now a serious contender. And it's almost coincidence... Is it a coincidence or not? I don't know that this Altium announcement came days after the Autodesk Eagle announcement. Because that's got to be their number one competitor. Right?

Chris Gammell: I guess. I don't know.

Dave Jones: It really has to be. So, yeah, this announcement... Well, this email. Still not... I don't think it's a public announcement anywhere. It might be by the time the show goes to air. But, anyway, they emailed and said, yeah, $1,000. So, yeah, I'm rather excited by that. I might download it and give it a bell.

Chris Gammell: Give it a shot. Give it a shot.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Because, well, I have to...

Chris Gammell: Because Dave is never changing religion, so that's what we're hearing here. And we know that. No.

Dave Jones: Once again, I've got to give KeyCad another shot. Like, I played... I dabbled around with KeyCad before they released the new big stable version release. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right? And... You'll hate it. So, I have to...

Chris Gammell: I know you will, but...

Dave Jones: Really? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Probably.

Dave Jones: Well...

Chris Gammell: Someone said that you should do a reaction video to me, to my soldering job. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I have not seen your soldering. It's pretty bad. You were doing some SMD soldering?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's just... I was doing it super fast under a camera, so...

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I could have soldered. Like, I don't know. Like, the...

Dave Jones: No, I... No. All... People think that I suck at soldering, because they've looked at some of the videos I've done soldering. Yeah. And it's like, no, it's just so hard under the camera. I don't like soldering under a camera. Yeah, it's pressure. And talking at the same time, and trying to think, and do dialogue, and...

Chris Gammell: There's exactly one thing you should do while you're soldering, and that is listening to the amp hour.

Dave Jones: Of course.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: I agree. Which now will hopefully, correct me if I'm wrong, be auto-upladed to YouTube.

Chris Gammell: Yes. We're going to try that. So, it's part of our...

Dave Jones: Is it automatic, or is it another step?

Chris Gammell: No, no. It's automatic. I mean, it'll be... Yeah. Yeah. So, we already have a YouTube channel. We used to upload stuff, but it was like, I'll be encoding and everything. Yeah. It got in the way.

Dave Jones: It's an extra... So, now they do the encoding for us. They be...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Libsyn, our provider.

Dave Jones: Yep. Our service provider, Libsyn, do that. And they automatically encode a video version of it with a thumbnail, of course. There is no video.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's no... There'll just be a thumbnail.

Dave Jones: But, yeah. So, you can listen to the amp hour on the YouTube from now on. We don't know if we can upload that catalog, right?

Chris Gammell: No. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. So, yeah. No, someone actually emailed me about linking a specific time. And that's not really possible for our stuff currently. So, that actually would be really nice for the YouTube thing.

Dave Jones: Actually, I have not tried it. Can you just drag and drop an audio file to YouTube?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. Yeah, like an MP3 versus MP4.

Dave Jones: Because I... Yeah. Because I just discovered... Yesterday or the last week I tweeted this. I just discovered, accidentally, that you can drag an entire subdirectory of videos to the YouTube upload screen and it will... Oh, wow. ...upload a thousand videos at once. Or it will schedule a thousand videos. Right, right. It was like a... It took me like five minutes to figure out what was happening. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: My computer is on fire. This is weird.

Dave Jones: But, yeah. I didn't know you could do that. So, hopefully, if you can do that, then if it can upload MP3s directly, then we might be able to drag and drop all previous episodes. That'd be sweet.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So. Speaking of your channel, so you finally published the stuff that you talked to the rover guy about.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I still got more stuff on that. I still got more stuff.

Chris Gammell: How much total do you have?

Dave Jones: I had like four hours of material or something. Three hours of material. Good lord. It was a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we just kept the camera rolling for three hours, I think. So, like some of that's already gone on my second channel. There's one clip which I accidentally left out, gone on my second channel. And like the views aren't... Actually, I haven't looked this morning, but the views aren't great. So, I don't... Like I might be pissing off my main channel audience if I spam. You know, I've already posted two in a row. That's in addition to the two I've already posted. So, and I could release others like today. But yeah, I don't... Yeah, they're not getting many views. There's not much enthusiasm for it. That's too bad. And yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, well.

Dave Jones: That's all right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure we have other things to mention here, but before we get past our time, we are going to be doing a call-in show next week and I'll obviously post about it. And so, we'll do it the same way as last time where we'll just basically, you know, send us an email and we'll send you a link to the Skype chat and you can just hop on there. And then basically people figure out who's going to go when because we do have, you know, different time zones, stuff like that. If you are in Europe or Asia and it's not going to work out time-wise, you know, we usually record about 8.30 p.m. EST. And so, that's pretty late over in Europe at least. Send us an email with your question or a video or an audio file, whatever. We'll play it on air and we'll answer it as best we can. So, but yeah. Cool. Call-in show.

Dave Jones: And I did a hangout the other day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah? How'd that go?

Dave Jones: With my, yes, it went very well. I enjoyed it. I'm going to do more. I did a hangout with my supporters on the Patreon thing. Oh, cool. Patrons. Is that what they're called? Patrons? Yeah, I think so. Yep. Yes. Yeah, so I did that and seven people showed up, which is awesome. So, you were answering questions or what was it? Yeah, I don't know. We were just shooting the breeze, you know. Oh, cool. Wasn't, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's nice. I mean, like, that's your version of grabbing a beer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Just you're doing it over cables.

Dave Jones: And no, that will not be published. So, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's understandable. That's part of the patron thing.

Dave Jones: And there was a lot of confidential stuff sit on there, you know.

Chris Gammell: Ah, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so I probably wouldn't have posted it anyway or I would have edited it even if I could record it. Hence why I was trying to do Hangout on Air the other day for the Juno thing. Because regular Hangouts does not save the video and does not save it to YouTube. You've got to use Hangouts on Air to do that. So, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's, uh, that's...

Dave Jones: It sucks.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it's better to do it not on air and then, you know what I do for, well, I'll tell you about that afterwards. I use XSplit and I just stream stuff directly. Yeah, yeah. So you don't have people watching it. But I guess you want to do that anyway. So, anywho.

Dave Jones: So you use XSplit to record?

Chris Gammell: I use XSplit to stream and I can then have Skype play into that.

Dave Jones: So you use XSplit. I'll tell you about it afterwards.

Chris Gammell: People don't care about this stuff. Yes, they do. No, they don't.

Dave Jones: People ask all the time about that sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: They don't really care. All right. It's, uh, yeah. So one other announcement. I'm actually going to be in Chicago the weekend of the 15th. So if people want to hang out, so I'll be there 15th to the 17th. And, uh, I don't have any meetups planned yet, but I will be around then. Uh, might stop by Pumpy Station One or, uh, stuff in the area. So if people are interested, shoot me in there.

Dave Jones: Chris needs friends, folks. He needs more friends. All over the world, Chris needs friends. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Hey, man. You can never meet enough people. Hey, look. Networking is important, but also drinking beer is important. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Some people actually find interest or are interested in other people, Dave. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah, fair call. No, I'm.

Chris Gammell: You don't talk to anyone other than me and sometimes Fran if the connection works out.

Dave Jones: No, that's pretty much it. Yeah. That's my entire social circle.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm sad. All right.

Chris Gammell: So what else is on our list? We must have one or two other things that we should talk about since we're running out of time here.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Uh, we don't care about the internet of things. That's vetoed. Lamore, um, did an interview with, uh, the CEO of.

Chris Gammell: I didn't watch it yet. Did you watch it?

Dave Jones: DigiKey. Um, I've watched some of it. Um, okay. And it seems to be good. And everyone's saying, yeah, really great interview. Um, yeah. So if you want to know all about DigiKey, then, uh, watch that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Lamore's been doing some big, big name interviews like the, she had what Horowitz and Hill or it was just Paul Horowitz.

Chris Gammell: Just Paul. When was it on there? No. Uh, but yeah. So that's good. I'll have to check that one out. Yep. Um, the daredevil camera. That thing, I mean, that thing's been all over the internet, but that thing is amazing. No. Did you see that one? No. I have not heard. So basically this person did a, a, a matrix of MEMS microphones and then did an FFT and basically recorded sound bouncing off of things and use that to visualize.

Dave Jones: Oh, visualize. I've, I've, I've seen, I've heard about it, but I have not looked at the details of it yet. I figured that's what it was just from the title alone. I figured out, oh, they must have a bunch of, uh, hundreds of microphones and then doing, uh, being formed in FFT. It looks like, uh, yeah. Oh, really? Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: No, it's like, it looks like 64. Oh, well.

Dave Jones: Come on. Order.

Chris Gammell: To the right order. It's a hundred. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely more than one. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, more than 10. Like, you know, 64 is, is like two orders, right? It's like.

Chris Gammell: Well, and I guess then they did tape them together too. So yeah, that's true. Uh, but yeah, really, really interesting stuff. Like, I mean, um, especially cause it's all homebrewed and stuff too. Like, I mean, well, it's not homebrewed. It's professionally, it's nicely laid out and stuff, but really awesome. Awesome data.

Dave Jones: Speaking of awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And speaking of orders of magnitude.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I, I'm going to plug my own video here.

Chris Gammell: Dave just got 10x more awesome.

Dave Jones: I'm going to pat myself on the back here. Um, I was like, I just got the thought yesterday or whatever it was, um, that I would do a video on orders of magnitude. That'll be, you know, that, that's an important topic. Right. And then I, you know, I started thinking about how I would, uh, you know, do that. And then I went, then I got this warm, fuzzy feeling that maybe I'd talked about it before. I'm on a blog somewhere. So I searched YouTube and sure enough, I've got an orders of magnitude video. You've already done one, huh? I've already done it. And I watched it and it's pretty good.

Chris Gammell: It's getting old, huh? Dave.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And only I can turn or, you know, what, what is orders of magnitude into a 16 minute?

Chris Gammell: That's a, that's a lot of, that's a lot of.

Dave Jones: But coincidentally, I throw Jupiter in the video. Jupiter's in the video. So there you go. You will have to watch the video to find out how I reference Jupiter into a orders of magnitude video.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you just want to know what is orders of magnitude, the first five minutes covers it. The rest is, you know, extra.

Chris Gammell: I think you should try and get, uh, Eggo to sponsor your channel for the amount of waffle that you have. Eggo. Uh, who's Eggo? You don't have Eggo waffles? You don't have those? No. Lego my Eggo? No. Sorry. I guess this is a brand thing. It's a brand thing. Yeah. It's a, it's a waffle. It's a, it's a brand of frozen waffle. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: Anyway. Yeah. So we'll link that in. I like, and I always, it's funny. Like I go back and look at these old videos I've done. Hang on. EV blog order magnitude. See how many views it's got. And I'll look at these old ones. Here we go. It's got 16,000 views. Right. And I uploaded it four years ago and it was number two 86 for those playing along at home. Um, it was in my new lab. I thought it was, it might've been old lab, but no, it's in the new lab when I first moved in. Like, and it's got like 16,000 views. It's like, you know, and that's having been on my channel for four years. And I think it's a pretty good video on a pretty important topic. Right. Terminology orders. What are orders of magnitude and that sort of thing. And, um, yeah, I, yeah. Like a lot of my old videos have these low number of views. It's like people haven't gone back and discovered them, you know, whereas if I upload new video now, if I upload, if I re uploaded that exact same video now to get 50,000 views in, you know, a week and it's just, yeah, it's just strange. And a big disappointment. That's just the brakes, Steve. That's just the brakes. I know. There's so much content out there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: People, you know, I don't, like people get like, you can't go back and systematically watch my videos. So I understand, you know, it's just, I don't know, like important videos like that one that I think are important.

Chris Gammell: Um, perhaps you should reference them in your other videos, you know, be like, see the link below. Yes.

Dave Jones: I'll have to throw in orders of magnitude into my next video and then include thumbnail. Here it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Exactly. There you go.

Dave Jones: Yep. I'm doing more of that lately. I'm sort of like linking, I'm getting more into the, putting more effort into the editing to link things like that in. So you might've noticed.

Chris Gammell: Insider baseball, Dave. Insider baseball. Insider baseball, man.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Insider baseball. What's Insider baseball? You're talking about stuff that, you know, YouTube stuff. Oh. Insider baseball, it's like people talking about the game versus, uh, versus talking about the, uh, what would it be? Insider baseball is like, instead of talking about the, the baseball game that was being played, they would talk about how the game was scored. Oh, okay. Right. Right. Like the mechanics of how bats are made, right? Yeah, yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure I'm using that term wrong, but yeah.

Dave Jones: All right. Gotcha. All right.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, we hit our hour. We're good. Our time's up. We're contractually obligated. Yeah. Yeah. So, may you all have a, uh, a change agent or a catalyst in your life and switch to KiCad. And we'll hear about it next week.

Dave Jones: Maybe, maybe, maybe I'll do like a shootout video.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. There you go.

Dave Jones: KiCad versus Eagle versus the new circuit studio. Maybe. Hmm. Although it's not fair because KiCad's free. Right. So.

Chris Gammell: It's true. Yep.

Dave Jones: You're, you're, you're sticking to KiCad, aren't you? Yeah. KiCad.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Have you noticed that the industry's kind of split down the middle of how they pronounce it?

Chris Gammell: Usually it's a pretty good indication that they might've been listening to me at some point. So.

Dave Jones: Oh, do you think you're the pioneer of KiCad?

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think so. But it's just, usually it's, uh. Right. It's easy for me. It's like, it's like my purple PCB, you know. Right. All right. All right, man. We'll talk to you next week. Don't forget the right end if you want to talk to us on the show next week.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye.