#341 – All the way with DLJ

Dlj: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Recorded previously, but aired March 26th, 2017. Episode 341. All the way with DLJ.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. What's up, nerd? Getting close, man. I've got meetups scheduled for New Zealand. Wow. Two in New Zealand. So one in Auckland. Yep. And one in Wellington. Sweet. So if there's anyone listening and you're near there or you know people near there, let me know. I will relink in the info, but there's a place called Gelbraith in Auckland and then Fork and Brewer in Wellington. But I'll post details too.

Dave Jones: Right. So you're hopping across the ditch there from south to north.

Chris Gammell: Well, south to... What? No.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because you're going to south first, right? You're going to the South Island.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no. I'm going to Auckland first. And then there's a meetup that night. Oh, sorry. And then I'm flying down to Wellington, which is the bottom of the North Island. No, no.

Dave Jones: I thought you were going to south, though. I thought you were going to Christchurch. And then I'm going to the south after that. Oh, right. You're flying out of Christchurch. That's right.

Chris Gammell: Queenstown, actually. Oh, Queenstown.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: The adventure capital of the world, Queenstown.

Chris Gammell: Is it really?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Didn't you know that? The guy's going to Queenstown. And there's nothing else to do in Queenstown except adventure stuff, dude.

Chris Gammell: I'm going to be bungee jumping without even wanting to.

Dave Jones: That's where bungee jumping was invented by A.J. Hackett. And he's got a bungee jumping school there. So you can go to the original guy.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure you're going to be bungee jumping, but yeah, I'll be doing something.

Dave Jones: You're not going to be bungee jumping with A.J. Hackett.

Chris Gammell: That would be something, huh? That would be something. Yeah, I'm not much of an adventure person, I suppose, but nature and stuff. So we'll see how it all goes. We'll see how it all goes.

Dave Jones: How do you get, like, what do you just go to tourist lookouts and that's it? Is that your extent of, you know, communion with nature? How can you, like, like nature and not want to at least be somewhat adventurous? Jump into the void?

Chris Gammell: I don't know, Dave. You and I operate on different wavelengths, I suppose. All right.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm dragging your ass down a canyon then.

Chris Gammell: Oh, boy. Well, we'll see how that goes. I will get travel insurance for that, yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Actually, it's pretty difficult. Yeah, it's really difficult.

Chris Gammell: Sweet. Awesome. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You'll be fine.

Chris Gammell: I'll be fine. I'll be fine. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No one's died on my trip yet. They've been taken away to hospital, but, you know, no one's technically died yet. So it's all good.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right. Well, we had a good run. Almost hit 350. Yep. Ah, well. We probably will have a little bit of a blip in shows, to be honest.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, probably, yeah. We'll probably. We have no idea what we're doing here yet, do we? No. Because you replied to my email.

Chris Gammell: We'll have. Yeah, sorry. Now you know what it feels like. Yeah, we'll definitely have something going on, something coming out from us hanging out, but no plans yet. So we'll get there.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So.

Dave Jones: Christchurch. Sorry. So Wellington, Auckland. So nothing, no meet up in the South Island?

Chris Gammell: No. Who? No. There's not many people down there. Oh, really? Okay. Well, there you go. Yeah. I think the official population of Queenstown is 40 people. So.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's all like.

Dave Jones: They're all backpackers. Yeah. They're all backpackers. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And like European kids, it's on their holiday and stuff. So.

Dave Jones: Well, I can imagine because like, you know, the bottom of South, bottom of New Zealand is lower than Tasmania. Is it really? And Tasmania is like a cold place. Yeah. So it's lower than Australia is. So it's, you know, so the bottom of, you know, I think Christchurch is like about even with Hobart.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And Hobart's down in Tasmania and it's, yeah, probably, you know, it's like the coldest part of Australia.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You're just talking about like straight latitude, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Straight. Yep. Latitude. Straight. Yeah. And yeah. But the top tip of the North Island in New Zealand is lines up with Sydney. So it's got the same, you know, temperate as Sydney. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Or hot as hell sometimes.

Dave Jones: Oh, well. Yeah. No, I don't think it gets hot as hell in New Zealand. I think it's.

Chris Gammell: No, I meant Sydney's hot as hell. That's what I really meant to say.

Dave Jones: It can get hot as hell. Yeah. Yeah. Hottest summer on record. You just missed it. Gosh darn it.

Chris Gammell: Oh, darn. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I hope I, hope I didn't miss the pit of spiders and snakes as well.

Dave Jones: No, no, no. I got plenty of those. Don't worry about that.

Chris Gammell: Okay, good. So what have you been up to, man?

Dave Jones: I have, what have I been up to? I have started a new style of video.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. That's fun. How'd it go? I like these tablets.

Dave Jones: I got one of these Wacom tablets. You know, one of those pen touchy, arty tablet things that you write on and it copies it on the screen.

Chris Gammell: I have one of those.

Dave Jones: Oh, you do? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yes. I used to call them sketchplanations. That was my clever word when I'm explaining things.

Dave Jones: And have you used it for videos and stuff?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. For like three years, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. This is all part of your contextual electronics.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. But I always have problems like, I'm not very good. It's kind of like a hand and eye coordination. Like, I don't know about you, but I have terrible handwriting to start with. Yeah, mine's not great. So, and then you got to like, I don't know, like the angles and yeah. So it is an art to it for sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but no, like I started using it yesterday. So, you know, I took it out of the box, hooked it up and then just, you know, I had to learn how to use the tablet. Had to get used to the interface and I had to figure out how to capture it, you know, figure out a new paint program that I've never used before. Figure out how to capture it, how to set up the hotkeys and everything. And I was making content within the hour, you know, or two hours. That's not bad. You know, it's pretty good. So I think my first effort is not bad at all.

Chris Gammell: So here's the thing. So you had told me before the show, this is kind of like a Khan Academy style. Yeah, it's Khan Academy style. That's what Sal Khan used when he was getting started too. And like, that's what a lot of people do.

Dave Jones: I think they still do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I think the problem with all that stuff is like, it's boring, you know, like watching someone draw is like, I mean, you can speed it up. And I don't know if I've recommended on here recently, but I love this thing called video speed controller, scrum plugin. I probably mentioned it three times. Yeah, but it's great for stuff like this, especially where you can speed it all up. Right. But it's still, I mean, it's just you're watching someone draw stuff. And this was always my complaint in like physics class in high school too, you know, like. Like, there's a balance because sometimes when people are taking their own notes, they really like that because it kind of associates that hand-eye, you know, people taking notes often learn better that way. But I never did personally, so.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, you know, everyone's different. You're not going to, you know. Of course. There's no one style. But they're popular for a reason, you know. Well, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, they're massively popular.

Dlj: Right.

Dave Jones: And most people seem to like, although a lot, quite a few people mentioned, a lot of people mentioned that, you know, they miss seeing my face. That's why they like my whiteboard stuff because I get animated and I point and, you know, slap my forehead and do whatever. So a lot of people are, but they said they do like the tablet drawing thing, but they want my video, but they want my ugly mug in the corner, you know. But I do that on other videos and they complain, oh, your face is distracting. I don't want to get rid of your head. So it's like you can't.

Dlj: Get your stupid face out of the frame, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So anyway, so my next one, I'll try that. I'll try to put my little ugly mug in the corner somewhere. Yeah, whatever. You know.

Chris Gammell: People are stupid.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And then people complain about the white background versus the black background. Khan Academy uses a black background and they reckon it's better.

Chris Gammell: Have you ever taken one of those courses or no?

Dave Jones: No, I've never. I didn't know you take courses. I didn't. I don't know. I thought Khan Academy was just like a YouTube channel.

Chris Gammell: No, I mean, like they have a full, I mean, they got a bunch of funding even. But it's like a full-blown learning system.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Right. I didn't know.

Chris Gammell: And I think a lot of them are hosted on YouTube, but like it's kind of just to help do the order of stuff and, you know, like so that people could follow along or submit assignments, things like that.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that's my plan is to put, do at least, you know, a few of these a week. And, yeah, like and sort of like do them fairly comprehensive. Like as in like start from the scratch. Like I done introduction to digital logic. Right. You know, real like what is a logic gate? You know, what is an end gate kind of thing? And like I might follow on from there. And like so I'll end up with like a whole like course full of material.

Chris Gammell: You're getting right into my domain here. I am. I'm not threatened by the domain. I'm just saying that like. Mine's free. Yours isn't. I think that without. It's like this kind of stuff, right? So like so when you start talking about logic gates, you immediately start talking about like this is always a confusion that that I had or, you know, students I talk to have where you have all these terms that you're just like, you know, even if you start from the beginning. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, no. These terms you won't know. You're just right. Right. Exactly. You can't take a tangent to explain every single term. Exactly. You know, like there's got to be assumed. I actually hate educational material like that. That dumbs it down.

Chris Gammell: It's almost like you need like a project and then you could explain it as you go along. And then there's some kind of context. I don't understand how this works, Dave, but I think that might be a good idea.

Dave Jones: Context.

Chris Gammell: That was so sneaky.

Dave Jones: If only had somebody had a course that had context in the title. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. But, yeah, I think that that is that is always the tough part. Right. Where it's like, you know, at least if you have a thing blinking and then you go back, you say why it's blinking. Yeah. That can be a little bit more helpful. But even still, it's going to be confusing. Like there's always those points of.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I really wish that when I was in school, someone had just been like there's certain points where it's like it's almost like you're a dad. Right. You know, this is I have a dad. I'm not a dad. But, you know, like the why, you know, your kids ask. Or if you are a kid, you ask, why do I have to do that? And the father, of course, says. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? No? You're not going to. You don't know the response to that question, Dave? No. It's because I said so. That's the answer to that question. Right. And there's like an equivalent in education, right?

Dave Jones: There is. Okay. Yeah. I see what you're doing.

Chris Gammell: Where sometimes you have to be like, well, just keep going. You know, like. Yeah, yeah. It's not always relevant to say that. And I think that I think a lot of universities programs overuse that. Yep. But. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But see. And it's also an order thing of the way people watch it. Like I would. Like you can't just have your contextual, you know, like your demo, your blinky demo. And then not go back and cover everything. That's right. Of how you got to that demo. Totally agree. Yep. So like whether or not you put that other info up first is just a playlist order, basically. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: I don't know, man. I think that the. No, no. If people.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No. Yeah. If people are taking a structured course. No, I totally. I totally agree. But if somebody is just browsing YouTube and go, oh, I want to know how Kano maps work. I've heard about it, but I've got no idea. Right. I don't want to have to go sit through a lead blinky thing and then work my way back to Kano. I just want the video on Kano maps.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. So this is the thing that I've been restructuring for is like skills, right? So like. Right. So like understanding a Kano map itself is a skill. Yeah. And so it's almost like you need these like little bite-sized chunks of info. That's what I want to produce. So that when you're ready to, you just go off, you say, pause on the video talking about Kano maps because you're actually implementing it in logic. You go off. What the hell is that? Okay. I kind of get that. Go back. Keep going. Right. It's kind of like these. Right. It's like Wikipedia holes, but like little tiny ones. Right. You're not going all the way to the bottom. Got it. Dave, we're converging. We're converging in so many ways. I know. Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: Physically and. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: We'll start singing Ebony and Ivory at some point.

Dave Jones: But yeah, I, you know, I want to do that. I've always wanted to do that. You know, I've always thought that'd be a reasonable idea. But like people say, oh, why don't you stick with the whiteboard is because people don't realize how much effort it is to actually, you know, like it might not be a lot of extra time, but the hassle of setting up a camera, making, got, getting the SD card ready, setting it up, got your wireless mic, making sure that's working, make sure the batteries are charging, make sure your remote control is working, make sure your brightness and contrast and all your settings are all set up. And again, then you're almost like you don't want to edit video or something.

Chris Gammell: No, it's like, it's like another thing that someone talks about all the time.

Dave Jones: Actually, I do like the editing process. Like the shooting process can be a pain in the ass, you know, especially like setting up whiteboard stuff. You know, if you're the only person there and you've got to dick around with the camera and, you know, I stand in at the whiteboard with my remote control, I'm peering because I have my camera back. So I get an excellent depth of field. So like my head and the whiteboard are in the same shot. So the camera's way back. So I'm like peering at it, you know, trying to see, see if I've pressed the record button properly and, you know, to see if it's still in, you know, whatever, you know, like the

Chris Gammell: old man squints. Is that what we're talking about?

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And it's, you know, it's, it's a lot of, it's, whereas I found producing the tablet, just sitting at my desk here and producing content on the tablet was so easy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You know, I can turn out.

Chris Gammell: Hello, I'm the choir. You should continue preaching to me.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, you should, you know what you should do is you should hire someone to some, some young whippersnapper to press the button on your camera.

Dave Jones: I'm not doing that, but I am going to hire some young whippersnapper.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Tell me about it.

Dave Jones: The EEV blog is, well, has made an offer and is contemplating hiring a full-time, the first full-time EEV blog employee.

Chris Gammell: A design employee, right? A design employee.

Dave Jones: Yes. That is exciting. And a content design and content.

Chris Gammell: Oh, very interesting.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. So it's a, it's a big, like, cause before, yeah, I've had casual employees, right? And they sort of, you know, come, ah, come and go when you want kind of thing and help out. You know, it's not the same, you know, it's, it's not the same as having somebody committed full-time. So that's like, you know, when they're casual, it's like, I don't know if they're going to be in tomorrow. Cause it's like. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Cause the EEV blog is a casual outfit, you know, it's like.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, I wouldn't have guessed that. Right.

Dave Jones: You know. Right.

Chris Gammell: This means that the EEV blog enterprises continues to grow.

Dave Jones: It continues to grow. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's a good sign, man.

Dave Jones: Yes. It's by far the biggest expense I'll have. Oh yeah. Like having a full-time employee by far. You know.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, also coming from a, you know, you've obviously you've started selling hardware, so there's obviously a lot more cost to that, but given the previous of like video didn't have all that much, you know, bomb cost.

Dave Jones: No, it doesn't. It's just, no, it's time, you know, and electricity and internet, you know, like. Right, right, right. You know, and toys to tear down or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yep. Oh, great, man. I look forward to hearing more about that as it progresses.

Dave Jones: So that's, yes, starting next month, hopefully. If I've offered someone, I haven't heard back yet, but I've offered a position and we'll see if they can take it when negotiating.

Chris Gammell: Are you going to do like 360 reviews? You're going to like pull all your corporate experience forward and do peer reviews and what else? What? I don't know. 360? 360? What? You never did a 360? Oh, God, they're so bad. What's it? These are all like during review time. They're somewhere like you'd get peer reviewed.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. At the, right. You get your yearly, yearly performance review, we used to call them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The 360 review was like, so you like, you review your manager and then you also review like your coworkers or if there's people below you and around you.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's why they call it 360 because everyone, everyone reviews everyone else. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. It's like really upping the amount of work for. Got it. Yeah. What was the worst review you ever got? Come on. You know, Dave, the, Dave, the troublemaker. Did you ever, did you ever get any marks?

Dave Jones: Dave, the troublemaker who got always sat in the corner. They just, you know, it was understood that they generally didn't like me and I generally didn't like them. And that's the end of the review. You know, that was generally. Oh, you got away with that. Okay. It's not bad then.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Dave, Dave continues to make boards. So we have to like them.

Dave Jones: We, we never had the 360 thing where we got to review our managers that, that never happened.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so it was just your manager reviewing you.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, I remember, I mean, my, my situation is obviously very different now, but I remember like, that was super stressful. Like I remember like, and I remember the first one I ever had, I was like, you like, you expect all these, uh, these grades, you know, it's, it's kind of like grades. It's like, you know, one to five, it's like a one to five rating. Right. And you're like, oh, of course I'm going to get fives. Right. That's like an A, of course I'm doing a work. And they're like, well, we can only give out like threes.

Dave Jones: But your attitude's a bit, yeah, no, exactly. Yes. I've.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't miss that part. And it was like, oh, to get like a big raise, you need to get like all fives. And of course they already knew who they were getting the promotions or the raises to anyways. And it was like, so.

Dave Jones: No. It wasn't Chris. To get a raise at our company, the companies I've worked for, yeah, had to quit basically.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's why, you know, I've mentioned this before. Everyone would walk around with their, anyone, everyone would walk around with their signed resignation letter in their back pocket. You know, look, if you piss me off, I'm just going to quit. You know, here's my resignation letter. You know, that's like, that's like.

Chris Gammell: But they wouldn't literally walk around with it, would they?

Dave Jones: Some people had it in their desk. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, on their desk. But like, no one like had it printed on a t-shirt or anything, right? No, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: It's like, oh, yes, I hereby resign, sign here, you know, and it was just a blank signature and like, damn it, come on. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that is a good, I mean, yeah, and I think you have mentioned that before, but that is definitely, I mean, it sucks, like, especially if you like your coworkers and all that other stuff, but yeah, you're never going to make as much money in a raise as you will hopping from company to company. Yeah. Like companies want to keep giving you the one to 5% raise depending on company culture.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You basically had to call their bluff, you know, and their bluff is you won't quit. So you've got to say, well, I quit and then they'll come on, let's talk about it, you know? Yeah. Right. But you've got to actually say, I quit first before then they'll actually start to

Speaker ?: negotiate.

Dave Jones: Well, sometimes they just say, okay. Yeah. I know. Sometimes they do. Exactly. So. It's that game of chicken. That happened at your, I remember the day that you quit ABB. You quit your big job.

Chris Gammell: That was a little bit, that was a little bit different where I asked to go part time. Right. Where, where, and they said, we don't do that, but like, come on, if I was a better engineer, like, that probably would have been like.

Dave Jones: I remember you were pretty optimistic. We were chatting online beforehand. Yeah, we were. And you went, I'm, I'm going to go in and tell them that I want to go part time. And I went, they're not going to go for it. They're just going to sack you right there and there. It's all on audio. Yes. We recapped it right after that day. Yes.

Chris Gammell: It was February of 2014. Yep.

Dave Jones: You were pretty surprised. And it was like.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, I was prepared for it at least. I was prepared for the outcome, but I, yeah, I was.

Dave Jones: Right. I was mostly disappointed. You thought that'd be a bit. Yeah. You were disappointed. You thought that'd be a bit more.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I was, you know, the really surprising thing about that role. I liked everyone I worked with, but you know what? Every time I've tried to contact anyone there, nothing. It's really weird. What? Yeah.

Dave Jones: What, they've all gone or they won't talk to you anymore?

Chris Gammell: They just don't respond to my emails. They, I texted them. I like, I tried like two or three times, of course. I'm not going to be like, you know, desperate girlfriend. But like, I was like, oh, you know, I was still in the area. And I was like, eh, let's grab some lunch, grab a beer. I've got these meetups all over the town, you know, like whatever. Womp womp.

Dave Jones: Not, nothing. Oh, well.

Chris Gammell: So either, either I, either my work turned out super bad, which is totally possible. I, I don't know. Like, you know, they're not going to tell me if like, if I had some mistake that I didn't find, you know, they found three months later. It's like, oh shit. Right. But, um, and I really hope not. I really hope. But like, how do I know? And at that point, like, they didn't also, like, I was always available to call back for like, hey, come fix your thing. You know, I always said that if there was, if there was anything wrong, I was always available for them. And they didn't write, they didn't call. They, they didn't, they didn't do anything, man. So maybe their feelings were hurt. Right. I mean, like, that's the, that's the thing you come down to. Right. And this is what you're going to experience as well. Right. As, as a growing workplace.

Dave Jones: I got constantly tested after I left, you know, oh, do you remember where this point? Do you remember how this works? Do you remember like, oh, like that.

Chris Gammell: No, I just mean that like, but I'm just saying about like human emotions, right? This is just like, you know, I might've slighted them by doing that. And I don't know, like who cares? Like I can't control what other people do, but, but the truth of it is like, you're like workplaces are groups of human beings and they're going to have feelings. Yeah. So I, I don't know. It's just, you got to deal with like, it's just, it's just the, at the end of the day, it's a bunch of humans in a space. You got to, you got to deal with all that other crap. So you're signing up for that a little bit, but I think you'll be okay. I mean, like you're still.

Dave Jones: Yep. But oh, I will be the man.

Chris Gammell: You will be the man. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Dave Jones: That's bad.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're the guy that they're going to whisper about. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. How can it be good? Like, no, it's the bad. I spent my career fighting the man.

Chris Gammell: You know, my friend just started a new job as like, you know, well, she, she, she's, she's the man, right? She's the man in charge of this, this large, larger, it's probably gonna be 40 person operation eventually. Wow. Okay. Where she's also building it up. And she said that the hardest thing that she's heard from other people in similar situations is the fact that you don't have anyone to complain to. Right. You can't, you can't go to your coworkers and complain. No, no, no.

Dave Jones: You can't just hang out in the, hang out in the lunchroom and go, geez, he's an asshole. Yeah. This, this frigging guy. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Which means that I'm going to get all the brunt of it. Right. Right. Thanks a lot, man. I'm going to charge you consulting for bending my ear about employees. Oh, goodness. You're welcome. We'll do it on air. How about that? Right. Cool. Yeah. All right. That's, that's a novel approach.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that's a big step. So yeah, I'm. Yeah. Well, congrats. I mean. That'll be, that'll be good.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure it's all going to work out, honestly. Yep. I mean. Why wouldn't it?

Dave Jones: Everything I've done is always work out. Try again, you know? Yeah. You know. All right. Enough of that crap. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Uh, what else is going on? Oh. We've got some links. Oh.

Dave Jones: Oh. What? Oh.

Chris Gammell: Whoa, damn.

Dave Jones: I never thought I would say this. Like, I never thought this would happen.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I know what you're going to say.

Dave Jones: I knew there is a new Australian electronics magazine starting up. Print magazine starting up.

Chris Gammell: And I knew exactly what I was going to respond with when I knew you would say that. What? Hasn't started yet. Right. I wish them the best. I'm sure it's going to be great, but, you know. It's 2017. You know, to be fair, you know, journalism, not that this would necessarily be journalism, journalism and print and everything else, like, doing better for all the wrong reasons. But, yeah. I wish them well. What is this? So what is this fly-by-night operation called?

Dave Jones: This fly-by-night operation is cleverly titled Diode with a Y, i.e. DIY-ode. Get it?

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: It's quite clever. Apparently, there's already, Diode.com is already like a hackerspace in Canada or something. Yeah. But, yeah, this is, yes, this is the name of the new magazine. And it's starting up in 99 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes and 56 seconds.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, I don't know what I'm looking at here. Mine says 00 days. So I was like, oh, this starts in two hours.

Dave Jones: Well, it must be an American, yeah, thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you know what? It probably flipped over for you, but for people in the States, because we haven't crossed the day line yet. That's probably why. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, July 1st, 2017 is the first issue. And I've signed up for the first print issue just because, you know, I want to. Are you really that nostalgic for magazines? Yeah, I will support it. Yes. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: I mean, no, I'm not saying you shouldn't support it, but I mean, like, are you actually nostalgic for magazines?

Dave Jones: Yes, I am. I'm, yes, I grew up with them. Of course, I'm nostalgic. Whether or not I think it's a good idea to make one, I was going to make, I was going to do a magazine before I started the blog. That was one of my things. I was going to.

Chris Gammell: One of your many, many, many media empire properties is going to be a magazine. What? Your media empire properties. Oh, yeah. Right. You've got video now. You've got audio. Next up, man, it's print. Print and. Well, I was going to do it.

Dave Jones: Then I realized, no, because I'm a practical guy, right? I realized it was a dying medium, right? And that the blogs were a better way to go. So I went with the blogs, right? So, yeah, I like print, although this, I said this on the forum, right? There is still a place for these, right? Because Joe Average, right? No, no, no. Here is where I think they fulfill a need, right? Is that they provide credibility.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? If you get a project published in a magazine, you are credible. Your project is credible. That's a credible thing to do. If you, you know, we're always telling people, oh, yeah, whack stuff on your own blog and put it in your resume. And that's great. Okay. But people are going to be even more impressed if you've been published.

Chris Gammell: That's true. I mean, yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's where I think, you know, I talked to the guy, Rob, his name is Rob Bell, who is starting this up. And, you know, I said this on the forum publicly. I said, you know, what they should do is actually turn this into the, you know, the preeminent place to publish your stuff. You know, like. Like new circuits or. Yeah, new circuits, new projects, stuff like that. And really vet the projects well so that, you know, like it's an elite type thing that you got published in there.

Dlj: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, like. And yeah. Like, I think there's still a very good need for that. Whether or not you can make a business out of it, I don't know. You know, I'm kind of skeptical of that.

Chris Gammell: But you ain't trying either.

Speaker ?: So.

Dave Jones: No, but it's not my money on the line. So, you know, I certainly wish Rob the best and I'm going to fully support him and promote it as much as I can. But yeah, I think that's, you know, I think they still fill in need like that, you know, because your average, you know, head of engineering at some company probably doesn't, you know, like know about, you know, web like blogs and YouTube channels and all the rest of it. Right. They probably don't care. They're probably career engineers or whatever. And they're not, you know, savvy online, you know, engineers like we are.

Chris Gammell: Yes, we're so savvy. You know. Right. I'm sitting in my smoking jacket right now as I click through my RSS reader.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. James, fetch the next feed, please.

Chris Gammell: And get me more port.

Dave Jones: Right. Because we live in, what's the term where you're, we have a bias because we're immersed in the industry. So we think, oh, yeah, everyone knows all about the EEV blog. Everyone knows all about contextual electronics. Everyone knows all about every blog.

Speaker ?: Not in the slightest.

Dave Jones: Right. No, but when you, yeah. Like, you know, no, probably, you know, 90, 95%. Right.

Chris Gammell: Well, and I do agree with like, magazines is like, you know, one of the things that's really tough is when people say, well, where do I get started? Right. Right. And some people will say things like art of electronics or stuff like that. Yep. But something like this or something like Make Magazine and other stuff like that. It is, it's friendly. It's, you know, there's step-by-step instruction. You can even say instructables online, but like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's loaded down with ads and stuff, I think. Right, yeah, yeah. But I think it's more like just kind of this friendly, non-threatening, and it's like a one-time purchase thing. It's like a low investment. Right. And so, yeah, I think from those perspectives, those are all very good things. So, yeah, that's great. I also wish them the best. Absolutely. I hope they also put stuff online. Because I'm not getting a paper magazine from Australia.

Dave Jones: It's available as an online version as well, but it's also available in print. But one thing I think he's going to focus, it is an Australian and New Zealand magazine. And I think that's a mistake. I think he should go.

Chris Gammell: So all the writing will have accents? Is that right?

Dave Jones: That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is a bloody ripper of a project, you know, in the editorial, you know. Yeah, right. Anyway, so, yeah, I'm not sure that the market is there to sustain it. Because if you look at Silicon Chip, I think they're struggling to get like 10,000 subscribers now. Right. It's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's niche upon niche upon niche these days. Yeah, yeah. It's niche.

Dave Jones: But anyway, it's going to look schmick. Of course. Because Rob is a hobbyist, but he owns a publishing company, right? Sorry, like a digital media arts company thing, something like that, you know. So he's actually, you know. So, like, it looks pretty schmick. And you'd expect it to look schmick from somebody that's their business. That's what they do, you know. So he's kind of like, you know, taking his hobby interest and going, hey, I can make a new electronics magazine.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So that's probably the ideal person to do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of magazines and journals, did you see this link for the archive.org? No. No. So the Bell System Technical Journal. So obviously I've been deep into Bell Labs lore since that book, which I finished, which is great. Yep. And one listener who I was hanging out with, actually, he pointed me towards this. Basically, Bell Labs had an internal journal from 1922 to 1983. And all of these things went onto archive.org. And not only that, like, you read about it and you start reading, you know, you read about the interaction between these big names that you're, and it's just like, but it's as it's happening. So it's like, as they're figuring things out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just really, I mean, like, the Magnetron is a generator of centimeter waves. You know, it was just like, it was great. So.

Dave Jones: And they're great quality scans, too. I mean, they're. They really are.

Chris Gammell: I mean, archive.org, I highly recommend people support it. It's a great resource for, you know, a variety of media.

Dave Jones: Are you able to download them as, like, PDFs? Is that?

Chris Gammell: I'm actually not sure about, yeah, it looks like you are.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, download options, yeah. All these different downloads. What's Abbey, Daisy, EPUB, yep, Kindle, PDF, yeah. Here we go. I'm going to download this as a PDF, right? Yep, I can.

Chris Gammell: It's a little bit of light beach reading, you know, if you're going on vacation soon, you know.

Dave Jones: This is great.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, and there's a ton of stuff in there. Yeah. So, really cool stuff. He pointed me at one other resource, too. Oh, the Tim Green course. So, there's a four-part course on op-amp stability. So, he was just pointing me at all these different resources. Obviously, this is different. It's just the same person who pointed them to me. But this is a four-part course on op-amp stability. It's like a course that's given internally at TI. Oh, okay. Wow. It's all PPT, which someone complained about, but whatever. And it's just really good. So, there's the slides. PowerPoint, you mean? And then he also...

Dave Jones: By PPT.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sorry. Yeah, PowerPoint. Yeah. But he also adds the notes below. So, like all the talking points that he would normally have. So, you can just go right through. It's like a short college course almost. It's really good stuff.

Dave Jones: Sweet.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, well, there you go. There's your next... You could just take some of this stuff and just go put it on a whiteboard. Yeah. Totally. I mean, stability, too. Man, I swear. 10 plus years in and it's still... It's like... Yeah, no. It's a bit of an... I'm like, I don't really know it is.

Dave Jones: It's a bit of an art.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know... It's doable. It's just... No.

Dave Jones: It's entirely science-based. You know, there's no black magic to it. Right. Right? It's just how deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Chris Gammell: Well, I think what it really... What it is for me is like... So, like stability and filtering and all that kind of stuff. Like, a lot of... So, we were talking about education at the beginning of the show, too, right? A lot of the times, I'm like, yeah, just kind of push off the math for a while. Push off the math for a while. Yeah. It's like, you want to do stability stuff. You want to talk about filter stuff. It's like, sorry, you've hit the point where you got to go learn some Laplace transforms and you got to learn... No, you don't. I mean, you got to at least understand frequency domain stuff. You got to understand transfer functions. I think you do. If you're doing it right, I think you do.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: What you do is you feed in a square wave.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And you...

Chris Gammell: The technician's mode here. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. You feed in a square wave. You look at the output and you start tweaking those caps, the feedback caps, until you get just a nice rounded output edge. No. And then it's stable.

Dlj: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, yes, I do. That's how you do it. That's how you do it. It makes a stable circuit, guaranteed. Right?

Chris Gammell: Not in all cases. Not... Not... I'm sorry. Okay. Yes. I understand what you're saying, but this is... Don't... Don't... Don't... Don't design any missiles the way that Dave's designing filters right now. Please. Yeah. So, anyways... No, but come on.

Dave Jones: This is Victor who pointed all this stuff out to me. No, come on. For a lot of practical applications, that's more than good news.

Chris Gammell: Yes. I totally agree with that. You're right. You're right.

Dave Jones: Half of the... Nine-tenths of the power supplies out there that are designed would be tested using that model.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Right? I'm not arguing with that, but I'm just saying that when you get past that, right? When you are designing...

Dave Jones: No, it's a big step. No. Once you get past it, you've got to go all the way with LBJ, right? If you want to go past that.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Right? You can't just go, oh, like, I'll dip my toe into a bit of theory. No. You've got to go the whole way.

Chris Gammell: When do you do it, Dave? I mean, that's always the question. Yeah. These are like... This episode is like Chris's touch points summarized about education. You know? Like, when do you do it, Dave?

Dave Jones: Well, have you done a contextual electronics thing on op-amp stability?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You have?

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: Going to make it available?

Chris Gammell: Nope.

Dave Jones: How deep did you go down the rabbit hole?

Chris Gammell: Not that deep, no.

Dave Jones: See? There you go.

Chris Gammell: That's not what I asked you, though. I asked you, when do you go down the... I mean, that's always the question. When do you go... And then at a certain point...

Dave Jones: When shit breaks.

Chris Gammell: When shit breaks, yeah.

Dave Jones: It depends if you're required to.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: You know, if I'm not required to, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.

Chris Gammell: That is Dave Jones in a nutshell. If I'm not required to... No, that's practical freaking engineering, dude.

Dave Jones: Come on. You've worked at real companies, right? Sometimes you just don't have time to do that shit. Right? You just... You just need to get something done.

Chris Gammell: I'm not arguing that sometimes you've got to get stuff done. I'm just saying that I've also seen sometimes you need to pull out the math, and it really helps a lot. Sure. And I don't know where that point is, but I'm saying that with stability, the chance of pulling out math is a lot higher. How about that? Is that good? Of course it is. We're going to shake hands on that one. Absolutely. We'll duke it out when I'm in Australia. You know, like kangaroo style. Yeah. Kangaroo with boxing gloves. Okay.

Dave Jones: Like, I'll just have a t-shirt that says, I'm stable.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure that's true.

Dave Jones: We have to do some sort of stable, meta-stable t-shirt or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Well, there was another item on the list that you had pointed out that I had helped record, but it was kind of tied to this stuff. It was, thou shalt write stuff down. And it was about engineering documentation, but specifically, like, this actually talked about, like, testing. Yeah. Like, and it was really good. So, Garrett's one of the Hackaday writers. He gave a talk about that. So, it's really good, but it's, you know, it's tied to, like, project management and all that stuff. It's somewhere between, like, you know, so say you're testing a stability circuit, right? And you put in a capacitor, and then you remove it. Yeah. And then you put a new capacitor in. And it's like, you didn't record that last value, and then you spend the rest of your day trying to figure out which one it was. Yeah. It's like, yeah, that's when you should have done it.

Dave Jones: Did you ever have a company notebook?

Chris Gammell: I did. Yeah, I did it, Keithley. And actually, this is exactly where I hoped this would go. I met up with former guest, Ryan O'Hara. Yes. And he handed me about 20 frigging notebooks for the Amp Hour notebooks. So, you remember- Right.

Dave Jones: He had a stock of them, didn't he?

Chris Gammell: He had a stock of them, and so he gave you one, he gave me one. Yeah, that's right. I used it for my lab notebook here. But we will be giving them away at some point. They've got the really cool Amp Hour embossed logo. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Embossed logo. They're almost too good to use, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they really are.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, we will be giving those away at some point. This is like, but like, literally, I will, maybe the picture for this week's episode will be the pile of notebooks.

Dave Jones: Pile of notebooks, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And I had to carry them back in a backpack. It was crazy. On a train.

Dave Jones: Poor diddums.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: You don't use a notebook. Do you use a notebook now or no?

Dave Jones: I don't. I used to when I was younger. Yeah. I don't have a notebook. Well, I still have one, but I don't use it, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No. I mean, it is tough, right? So, you think about the things that we're doing on a day-to-day basis. You know, so much of it is captured in schematic programs and stuff like that. Like, a lot of the stuff we're doing or spreadsheets or, I mean, I don't know. I mean, even doing write-ups on final documentation, if you're not, like, maybe your products that you're designing would be a good example. Are you doing any of the documentation for that stuff or no? God, no. Yeah. Right. So, like, that would be another place that you'd have to if that was part of your deal, but it seems like you skirted away from that one, which is bravo, because that's, damn, I hate that part.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Some people are like that. Some people are super organized and they document everything. And that's what they like doing and more power to you, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, I do wish I was that special brand of crazy sometimes. Yes.

Dave Jones: Same here. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's just that I don't think they get to turn it off. I think that's the real problem.

Dave Jones: Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Now writing down, I had two and a half tomatoes today in my salad. So, track the changes over time. Oh, goodness. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, yes. Notebooks. We, yeah, we had company notebooks and you had to, you know, sign and date each page.

Chris Gammell: Oh, sign and date, of course. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yes. And, yep. And they stayed with the company when you, you know, said, no, I can't show you my company notebooks. You know, they were, they made sure they got them off you when you left, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Right. Well, I mean, that's what's used a lot in patent stuff, right? I mean.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They're legal documents. Yeah. They need to, they need to maintain them. So, yep. Yeah. That's interesting. It went horribly wrong. You know, your product killed someone. You can go back and show, oh, yeah, I actually tested that and, you know, like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. That was definitely going to kill them. Yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah. Speaking of things that can kill people. Oh, we got two that could actually fit that one. But, did you see this article about the farmers that are hacking their tractors? Because that could definitely kill you.

Dave Jones: God. I don't want to know.

Chris Gammell: No, it's actually, it's really interesting. So, this is actually all about, like, what Lewis Rossman talks about a lot. Right to repair and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. This is probably the, and we've talked about, I think.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes, yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so this is like John Deere.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Don't they get feral if you try and.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: These companies get feral if you try and do something to their tractor that's not authorized or something, don't they?

Chris Gammell: Well, there is that. But, like, this is the case. That's definitely true if you're leasing or anything like that. But these guys are buying these. I mean, they're literally, like, some of these things are, like, $500,000. Like, these are expensive pieces of equipment. But the idea is, if you break a part, you know, they interview a couple people on MSP. But, like, so imagine, like, your tractor's out in the field. You break a part. You already have that part in your garage. And you're ready to replace it. Well, until you install it, even if you know how to install it yourself, until a John Deere rep comes out and approves it. Right. It will not work. Like, so they have, like, firmware control at each component level.

Dave Jones: It stuns me that a freaking tractor has firmware.

Chris Gammell: Oh, dude. These things are super awesome machines. I mean, like, I would be...

Dave Jones: It's a freaking tractor. Wheels turn. It drags shit behind it. You know? Like...

Chris Gammell: I mean, dude, those are big wheels. Right? And you think about it. If you're going across... Like, so think about... Well, consider Kansas. Right? I mean, like, just think about if you can get 1% efficiency on the fuel costs, right? Yeah, of course. As you're going across fields, that could really... That could save a lot of money. Yeah, it adds up.

Dave Jones: Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: So, I mean, I think that that's kind of what it's tied into. So, what these guys are doing, though, is they're basically going online, and they've got cracked firmware from Ukraine, and they install it. Of course, where else? Yep. Yeah. And, you know, it just freaking works. And no robots have become sentient or have been connected to Ukraine and been talking. But, yeah, there's, like, this burgeoning black market for it. And it's all because Chinese companies come in, and they've copied all these parts, and, like, the parts have a lot of cost built into them, I guess, too. And that's a big part of their model, I guess. But, damn. I mean, like, this is it, man. Like, this is... Tractors and firmware. Jesus Christ. I mean, it's just so big, right? I mean, this would be like if we were trying to fix, like, a phone, right? A cell phone, right? Right. It's like if we wanted to switch out a part and then program our own firmware into it, whatever, it's just like we can't do it because we could do it. Lewis could do it, right? Because of scale. Right. But most people won't. Whereas on a tractor, everything's just so supersized and everything's controlled. It's like, damn, you know? So I'm not sure where everything is on right to repair legislation. I think it's leaning towards the farmers.

Dave Jones: Well, he, Lewis did a live, he went to wherever it was that they had a...

Speaker ?: Oh, he did?

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah, yeah. It was Nebraska. I did see, I saw that. Yep. And I didn't catch the tail end of it, but I got the impression that it was a balls up or something and...

Chris Gammell: Balls up is bad?

Dave Jones: Balls up is bad, yep. Like they lost? Balls up, it's a... It was a schmuzzle, you know. No? Speak English!

Chris Gammell: I'm so screwed when I go to Australia. What are you saying? These are not words. Because I know it's not just Dave. They all talk like this.

Dave Jones: Oh, geez.

Chris Gammell: All I know is if you say, I've got the next shout, it means I'm buying the beer, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the important one.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. In terms of other dangerous things, things that could kill you, photonic induction. He could definitely kill you. He could kill you. More likely to kill... I'd say he's more likely to kill himself, actually, but he's pretty safe, so... He knows what he's doing. He needs no mug. Yeah. This is actually a really sweet, like, life video. He's back, he got married, and he just kind of posted about going to India and getting married and stuff, and a little... May have been some onion cutting in my place, I don't know. May have been a manly tear shed, you know? Right. It's actually over the...

Dave Jones: You just had something in your eye, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, he just looks super happy, so it's a really nice video. But congrats to him. Congrats to him. And he's going to be making more zap, zap, zap videos, I guess. Right.

Dave Jones: So he's been gone for a while. I don't follow... Like, I'm subscribed, but I don't...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I am too. Right, exactly.

Dave Jones: I don't get updates. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: I only watch if they happen to show up in my feed somehow, because... Right. Google thinks that I want them. Or I think of it, oh, I'll go see what he's doing lately. You know, occasionally I'll just, you know, drop in and see what other channels are doing, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Well, speaking of protecting yourself from high voltage, man, we just got segue after segue here. Ron posted about a TI part, ISO W7841, which he proposed as chip of the week. And I think since we don't have any other chips, it's got to be, right?

Dave Jones: By de facto, it's... Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, it's one of their capacitive switchers for... Or sorry, capacitive isolators for, like, data lines and stuff like that. But then it's also got, like, a power bus that is isolated as well. So it can do a DC to DC across the isolation, which is really nice if you've never done that, because most people don't realize, like, oh, it's isolated. And then they connect the ground right back. It's like, uh-uh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? No. That's bad. Wah, wah, wah, wah. Right, right.

Dave Jones: So it does 5,000 volts RMS, quad digital channels. What's the bit rate? What's the...

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure. Usually that is the thing.

Dave Jones: Maximum data rate. 100 megabits per second.

Chris Gammell: That is... You got to be careful with that.

Dave Jones: Holy speedy, Batman.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've gotten burned by that before. Usually you pay... I mean, you definitely pay more. I remember, like, the older ones, it was like, at one megabit, it was like 50 cents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it was like 5 megabit, it was 75 cents. And then it was like 100 megabit, it jumped the way up, and it was like, that's $5. Oh, my God. Well, these ones are $5. Oh. Oops. Yeah. Well, there you go. But, you know, if you need it, you need it. So that's the other thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, these, I mean, like, we were talking a little bit about industrial last week, right? Or two weeks ago. Whenever we were talking about industrial last. These kind of things are all over the place.

Dave Jones: I don't remember our episodes, dude. You know this.

Chris Gammell: I just meant, like, relative, you know, blah, blah, blah, industrial.

Dave Jones: We just talk about the same shit every week, so the answer's yes. Pretty much. Oh, yeah, we talked about that the other day. Yeah, chips. Of course we did.

Chris Gammell: You know, YouTube and books. The same book. I'm switching books. Oh, man. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you to Ron for submitting that. I don't know, man. What do you want to talk about next? We've got so many things.

Dave Jones: Which we complained about before the show that we had Jack All, right? Oh, yeah. And I will just make some shit up. That's what we're talking about before the show. Well, how's your build going?

Chris Gammell: You're done with that? But you're done with your, speaking of zappy things, did your Nixie come back?

Dave Jones: No. The Nixie tube clock. No, no, no. I've got to tweak the layout before I send that off. I just haven't had time to do that lately. I've been too busy.

Chris Gammell: Gotcha.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I got one of my boards back.

Dave Jones: Oh, speaking about high. Yeah. Go.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I just. It was really stupid. Where it's like, you know, like you look at a board and you're like, oh, of course. Yeah. 7, 4, 8, C, 5, 9, 5. Of course I got those. Right. And it's like, you go through and you're like, you're just kind of looking at it. You're like, yeah, of course I've got like, I've got like literally hundreds of those. Right. Right. And then I get the board back and I'm looking at it. I'm like, that's an SOIC package. And I definitely only have dips. And it's like, oh, shit. You know? Yep. Check your bomb, folks. Check your bomb.

Dave Jones: I screwed up the width of my package. It was a wide SO.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I think we talked about that. It happens to all of us. Right.

Dave Jones: And I could just bend the legs under, you know, and just like hack it. But, you know, I'd probably fix it.

Chris Gammell: You know, I had a conversation again with a friend about circuit board milling. Because the space that I work out of, we're kind of considering getting one. And I've been like, eh. You know, if you're going to do one, get like another mill. Like, I like the other mills. They're nice. The new probe looks nice.

Dave Jones: If you're desperate, they're okay.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, like if you definitely need a board like right now. But, shit, you can etch one as well right now if you want.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it's tough, right? I mean, and I think the thing is, if you're, yeah, if you're up a creek, you're up a creek. Right. But most of the time, well, so this friend, he recommended too, which is the right, this is definitely the right advice. It's like, take the cost of the machine. Look at the cost of however many overnight boards you can get for that. Same cost. And how soon are you going to do the crossover, right? Write that in your notebook. It's like, that's the. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I can remember one of my early jobs back in, oh, you know, the early 90s. Yeah. Making boards actually commercially at my company, you know. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. I was making the, because we didn't have, we didn't have the prototype services back then. And to get a board made, yes, you had to go, you know, yeah, it'd cost you 800 or a thousand bucks to get your board made. It'd take two weeks. Right. Right. And, and, and then you had to get a purchase or, you know, you had to fill out the, you know, you had the purchase requisition and everything. And it was on triplicate paper, you know, so you had, you know, the carbon triplicate paper. So you had to hand fill it. Oh, I need to order this piece of paper. Don't miss those days. Right. And so it was a pain in the ass. So I just went, you know, so I just, I can remember when I started there and, you know, they went, oh yeah, we've got to order a board. It'll take a couple of weeks. And they went, and I just went, no, I can like make one and we can have it by the end of the day. And they went, you can do that? And I went, yeah. So, yep. And so, so I bought in my, my etching gear from home, you know, and I was etching the, etching my own boards. I was etching the company boards. So that was like. You were double. Oh yeah. I was, I was on an hourly rate, you know, so. Of course. I was a contractor, you know, so, but, but they were stunned. That was a revolution for them, you know, to holy shit, you could spin a board in a day. Wow.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, it changes everything.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was having this conversation too about, so again, the space I'm at, it was like, so there's this huge pick and place line, which is really cool. Not huge. It's not huge, but it's, it's big.

Dave Jones: The space has its own pick and place line.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's like a, it's like two pick and place machines. It's got a, well, it's got a paste applicator, two pick and place machines, and then a, a, a, a, a reflow oven. And then there's.

Dave Jones: Who, who runs it?

Chris Gammell: It's a local company that does other assembly stuff. I think this is like their older equipment. And then they put it in there and then they're going to hire people to be in there. But.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Because I was going to say, you need somebody who actually runs it. You can't have any bloody, you know, Tom, Dick and Harry coming up and having a go. Oh, of course. Oh my God. Oh yeah. A place machine. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, and that's the same thing that my friend recommended for, um, those board milling machines. It's like, if you want to have one, that's fine, but you better have the guy or, well, or the girl, like, right. So, to, to be doing that all the time. That's all they're doing. Yeah. And nobody else touches it, you know? Yep. And, uh, and that's kind of the problem with these shared spaces in general, but, but even beyond that, right? So, say, no, you have someone sitting there, but you think about the cost of like someone loading up a full machine, right? Obviously just the usual assembly stuff. Right. I was like, you know, we could hire a tech for like 30 to 40 bucks. I was rewatching Akiba's, uh, Hackaday Supercon thing. And he was talking about, there's this placement service in, obviously it was Shenzhen, but it was like a placement service in Shenzhen where, you know, they, they buy the stencil and they just, you know, they put together five boards and they'll reflow it, right? Right. And they're all oven. But it's just, you're paying someone just to do that all day long. And you can get three to five boards out of it and, but pay them for a day's wage. It's probably still going to be cheaper than getting it all set up and all that stuff. Of course it is. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's going to be order of magnitude cheaper.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, and they do have a, they do have a manual pick and place, like a, you know, like a little arm you can manipulate and stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah, a little arm that, yep, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Uh, it's a, uh, who is it? Mancorp, I think? Yeah. It's a little Mancorp, uh, yep. Yeah. Manual arm. So that's cool. And that's, and then there's, you know, there's a separate reflow oven. That's not the big one. So, I mean, all these things are good, but it's just, it's like these scale problems, right? Like how do you go from five boards to 50 boards or 50 boards to 500 boards?

Dave Jones: There's no half-assed approach. Once again, you've got to go all the way with LBJ, right?

Chris Gammell: You can't just. Did I miss this phrase? Sorry. Did I, did, is this another, what is it?

Dave Jones: You should know it, but you're too young. Because it's like.

Chris Gammell: LBJ like, like Lyndon B. Johnson?

Dave Jones: Lyndon B.

Chris Gammell: Johnson. Yes. Is that like a campaign slogan you had?

Dave Jones: It was a campaign slogan and people think, I, why am I repeating an American campaign slogan? And I'm not. Well, technically I, technically it is. Technically, yeah. Okay. But our prime minister at the time famously used the line when he said, we're going in to join the war in Vietnam. We're going to go all the way with LBJ. You know? That was popular. Yeah. Yeah. You bet. And he stood on the steps of Parliament House or whatever. I don't know. And he went, we're going all the way with LBJ. And it's a common phrase here, you know, to go all the way with LBJ. So, it sounds like that would not be a positive phrase. No, no. It's almost a mocking thing, you know? Yeah. Right. But it's just turned into a generic phrase, you know? So, nothing's meant by it.

Chris Gammell: I'm so screwed when you go to Australia. I'm so screwed.

Dave Jones: What are you saying?

Chris Gammell: Anyways. Yeah. But yeah. No, I agree. And it's like, you know, I've been writing about a lot of this stuff recently too. And it's like, you know, like at a certain point, it's like, you stop everything you're doing. Your board, your five boards are done. They're tested or whatever. It's like, you are ready to redo your board for manufacturing. Right. And you're going to make 500 of that thing and hopefully in a couple lots of 500 until it's ready to go to the next stage. And then it's going to be redone again and cost reduced. It's like, damn, these are people's jobs. Like, that's what you do is you cost reduce or you optimize for these mid-run processes, you know? It's like, that is a full-time thing. It's not easy. You know? That's manufacturing engineering. It's tough. Totally. So hats off to all the manufacturing engineers out there because damn, I hate it.

Dave Jones: That's why you've moved into social media.

Chris Gammell: Yes. That's my main. There's lots of futures there, Dave. Yes. I'm a maven. I'm a maven.

Dave Jones: What do you tell people these days? What do you do for a living? What do you, you know, somebody, you know, you're at a.

Chris Gammell: What I always do is I carry some sand around in my pocket and I throw it in their face and I run the other direction.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Much easier. Right. And then after they call me and they're like, why did you do that? And I go, silicon, duh. Right. Right. It's all around us and in your eye.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. You should take the sand out of your pocket and go like, you know, I make magic with it and like sprinkle it like magic dust all over the. All in front of it.

Chris Gammell: Where did the sand come from? Your pocket. It came from your pocket. Speaking of manufacturing.

Dave Jones: No, so come on. I want to know. What do you tell people?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I tell people I work on. What do you do for a living? I say I design electronics, which I do for contextual electronics. And I talk about electronics, which I do for here. And I do that for supply frame. So. Right. So there.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, technically you don't do this shit for a living because we don't make anything out of this.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know. You know. You don't. No. Right. Ha ha ha ha. Yes. I'm just imagining like me counting money that I got somehow for ads. We don't have. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of manufacturing. Google Glass didn't disappear, Dave. I don't know if you knew about this. I bet you didn't think I was going to say Google Glass today. Come on. Yeah. This is. I just wanted to. I just wanted to pull a Dave signature move. And say told you so. Right. Because that's what we do here, apparently. But this is what I've always talked about. Like, I think this is pretty much the only. No.

Dave Jones: I said this as well.

Chris Gammell: I said this is the only potential use for this to ever possibly work. Exactly. So. And I think, you know, obviously this is overblown as well. Right. I mean, those things heat up like crazy. But, you know, future revs, especially if they are putting money towards it. And if they are, you know, ruggedizing this thing. I think it's a really legit thing for like, you know, Amazon warehouse or whatever. Right. Any manufacturing facility, whatever.

Dave Jones: There's lots of niche uses. It's just people aren't going to be wearing this shit in the street, though. That's.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. I think we've all gotten to that.

Dave Jones: We've established that. Right.

Chris Gammell: I might bring mine to Australia. We'll see. We'll see.

Dave Jones: You're right.

Chris Gammell: No, I don't think the apps even work anymore for the commercial stuff. But there's other good stuff, too. Like, there was one.

Dave Jones: They're two grand each. They want to work well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: There was an article I found a couple months ago, actually, about this, too. It's actually really great. Stanford's using it for autism. So, basically, to help kind of recognize. Like, one part of autism is not being able to recognize. As I understand it, is not being able to recognize emotions. And so, basically, the image processing helps to recognize and then kind of displays what the other person might be feeling. And then it kind of just helps to train in those ways. And so, I think that's really cool, too. And so, like, medical stuff. My buddy who's a doctor got it as well. And he always said it was very useful, you know, once you get past the. You know, if everybody in the hospital is worrying, it would be different, right? Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There you go.

Chris Gammell: So, we'll see.

Dave Jones: Meh. Whatever. It's still completely failed.

Chris Gammell: As, yes. As a, yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because, you know, the vision failed.

Chris Gammell: How it was presented, it definitely failed. Exactly. Yeah. Well, maybe it could be repurposed as a Swatch OS. What? Sorry. I don't know. I always crack up at these stories, too. Swatch. Swatch, apparently, is like, you know what would be a good thing right now? Start competing with the Apple Watch. Yeah.

Dave Jones: People still buy Swatch watches. I like.

Chris Gammell: Apparently, yeah. You know. Right. For the quality. I don't actually, I never understood the Swatch thing. I mean, it was like 90s? No, it was some viral marketing thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, 90s something. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I see them in airports sometimes. I didn't get it.

Dave Jones: Some, you know, colorful watches. You know, before that, they're all bland and boring or something, apparently. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Apparently, we're going to have another entry into the market. So, watch out. Every company making wearable IoT crap that nobody actually wants.

Dave Jones: I think I'll get my new employee to go back and do my micro watch. What do you think? I'll take on Apple myself. Screw them.

Chris Gammell: I did. So, I'll crush them. You'll crush them? I mean, the one thing I did like that I wish Pebble would have stuck around for is the idea that they put that. They did like, they modularized it, right? So, it was like, that was probably the, I mean, a lot of these other people could do it. But like, the fact that Pebble was doing that just because then it's like, yeah, you kind of dropped us in as a module for whatever. That could have found a lot of the uses, I think. And so, that's unfortunate that that got squashed in the acquisition slash buyout, whatever. So.

Dave Jones: I did follow that, what actually happened to it in the end.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They're part of Fitbit now. Yeah. They got bought out by Fitbit.

Dave Jones: Yep. I don't know what actually happened to the watches themselves. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know either. I don't know. Again, I don't wear watches. So. Yeah. Freak. I know. I know.

Dave Jones: I cannot go anywhere without my watch. I feel naked.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Well, did we hit our mark, Dave? No. Did we hit our amp? Did we hit our amp?

Dave Jones: Tune in next week when Dave takes on Apple.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We're not recording next week, Dave. Oh, aren't we? I'm on a plane all day. Oh, right. I will be crossing a day line.

Dave Jones: Shit, is it next week? Really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Holy crap. But you won't be here until the week after, right? Right. Exactly. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: And even this. I mean, people are listening. They're like, what are you talking about? I'm going to. This is getting posted Sunday. What you're listening to now. Obviously, we shifted all that stuff. It's been going okay, I guess. I don't know. People still listen. Yeah, I guess. If you do, we're eventually going to be giving away Amp Hour notebooks. So stick in there. We did give away that book. That eventually, you know. Yep. And we do have. Oh, we have scopes to give away at some point, too.

Dave Jones: Oh, we have scopes to give away. No one gives a shit about notebooks, dude. Everyone wants a scope.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I would, too. Scope's nice. I like it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Well, me and Dave will figure out how to give away scopes.

Dave Jones: There's quite an innovation in the scope space recently. Roden Schwartz just came out with a really schmick 10-bit ADC scope.

Chris Gammell: The one that Mike reviewed?

Dave Jones: I saw some of that. Yeah. He's done a quick review. I haven't watched it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, but they came, like, it's pretty pricey, you know. Is it? But they came out with this killer launch deal where it was like a limited time, limited numbers, limited time only. It was like two grand, but it was like a six grand scope.

Chris Gammell: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

Dave Jones: But it was like a six grand scope for two grand. And it was like, wow. It's like, you know, ridiculously good value. Like, stupidly good value. You'd be crazy to buy anything else if you're looking for a two grand scope.

Chris Gammell: Especially if you're buying for, like, a company where you, if you can be like, hey, boss, I'm just going to buy three.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah, yeah. Just one happens to me.

Chris Gammell: I blew up two, but who cares? It's, you know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That was an absolute bargain. And then there's a new Siglet one as well. Yeah. Which I shot footage of. That's the one you found in your trash, right? Well, no. I've got it on loan anyway. Anyway, I was going to release a video and then they told me not to. So, yep. I don't know. Some shit's changing. I don't know. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: You should tell them to go all the way with LBJ, man.

Dave Jones: Right. I know.

Chris Gammell: What would it be? Go all the way with DLJ.

Dave Jones: Bingo. Go all the way with DLJ.

Chris Gammell: Yes. We've got a title.

Dave Jones: I've got a new t-shirt. I went all the way with DLJ.

Chris Gammell: Who the hell is going to wear that, Dave? I'm not wearing that. Nope. Not wearing it. Never. Maybe if you lose a bit or something. Excellent. All right. Well, hey. If we missed any articles, you can always go on our subreddit. We always post more stuff there. And, well, I will probably...

Dave Jones: Well, you can follow us on the Amp Hour because the stuff gets posted.

Chris Gammell: It does.

Dave Jones: Anything I read automatically gets posted on our...

Chris Gammell: On our Twitter.

Dave Jones: Twitter. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: The Amp Hour, no spaces. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. And we don't do any of that Facebook shit.

Chris Gammell: We actually do. Oh, do we? Yeah. It doesn't post the articles on Facebook. Right. I post the episodes there. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You manually post them there?

Chris Gammell: No. I use my social media powers, Dave, that you... Right. So eloquently referred to before. Oh, man. I'm really wondering, are me and Dave going to get in a fist fight when I get to Australia? We'll find out. I guarantee he'll win. I know. I will never win. But I'm just saying, will we get in a fist fight? Tune in soon to see. Catch you next time. See you.

Speaker ?: Bye. Thank you.