#344 – Back Into The Swing Of Things

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, released May 14th, 2017. Episode 344, back into the swing of things.

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

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of the brand new Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Brand spanking new.

Chris Gammell: You know, I was supposed to finish this when I was in Australia. I was supposed to finish it when I was there. I did not.

Dave Jones: Has it got that new course smell?

Chris Gammell: No. No, that's the thing. It's not really that. I mean, like, so most of the course stuff is not that new. It's just about website stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. And you've just rejigged it all.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, a lot of that stuff. It's basically preparing to release new course stuff. Yep. Right. So, yeah. Brand new stuff. I have a forum now. I mean, I'm sure you saw that. I heard the announcement of the forum. I have not looked at the forum. It's no EEV blog forum for sure. Right. Yeah. But there is a forum tied to the course and it's open to people, even if they're not members of the course.

Dave Jones: Forums live and die by that critical mass thing.

Chris Gammell: Totally agree. Yes. I've learned that from you, actually. I have attributed much of your, not much of your success, but I think that one of your strongest, one of the strongest things about the EEV blog community is definitely the forum. Like, you guys are, it's fantastic, right? Yeah. I mean, it is the gift that keeps on giving. It is the, right.

Dave Jones: Right. Although there's a hilarious comment, which segues. I was reading the comments in the, there's a link in the Reddit thing about the Hackaday and learn, learn PCB design for $200. Is it worth it?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was, that was about, oh God, I'm forgetting his name now. Oh, yeah. Robert Ferenick. Robert. Yes. Who we've had on the show. And this was actually, they referenced the amp hour on there. Yes. Yes. So, yep. Anyways.

Dave Jones: Anyway, the Fedeval Academy. Anyway, I was reading the comments in here and some of it, it's, it's hilarious. Yes. As somebody said, oh, look, just check the, they were talking about KeyCAD, which is one of your, no, sorry. Were they talking about KeyCAD or Altium Designer or something or other? And somebody said, just check the EV blog forum threads and you'll know what sort of all the bugs and everything, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, and, and then somebody said, I've seen some of the things which pass for informed discussion on the EV blog forums and they are far, far worse than anything our favorite semi-hysterical Aussie can manage. Which, and then it goes on with talking about testicles and barbecues and setting them on fire. As you do, as you do. As you do. Anyway, I just thought that was funny. It just reminded me of that. Yeah, that was interesting. Not, not, what I'm saying is not everyone's a fan of the EV blog forum. Oh, well, of course.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like anything online, but like. Oh, of course. Not everybody's a fan of you or a fan of me and it's like, that's fine, right? That's humans. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's great. Opinions. It's, much like a-holes, we all have one, right?

Dave Jones: It'd be much better if everyone had the same opinion as me.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, right.

Dave Jones: Just, I am right and yeah, everyone.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That's sad.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, that was, that was an interesting, it was, it was interesting reading that stuff too. I mean, from my perspective as like, you know, whenever you ask people to pay for knowledge like that. Of course. Of course. That's what you do. Pay a course, right? Right, right. And so, same thing for Fed of All Academy, right? Same kind of thing. And yeah, I thought it was, it's interesting. I think it's like the, I've actually been taking an online course for some business stuff and it's- Oh, right.

Dave Jones: And it's just interesting.

Chris Gammell: What's that? Paid? Yeah, paid. Pretty, yeah, yeah. And it's just interesting.

Dave Jones: Is it really expensive or is it just like a few hundred bucks?

Chris Gammell: It's like the equivalent of like a couple of course hours at a university kind of thing. Right. So, but you know, it is just like this variable pricing kind of whatever and you know, some people are cool with it, some aren't. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting, interesting market.

Dave Jones: So, well, I, what it comes down to is like, you know, um, his courses are, um, you know, very advanced, right? It's, you know, using, it's not just using, well, it's not just using Altium, but it's how to lay out, you know, really advanced boards. Exactly.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: DDR3, right? Like how many people really need DDR3? Right. Yeah, exactly. But if you're doing that sort of stuff, right, you're using Pro Tools and you're investing a lot of money in this project. Like a couple of hundred bucks for a course. And in the tools too, right?

Chris Gammell: A lot of people talk about that, right?

Dave Jones: Altium is like five to five to $10,000 depending on how you negotiate the price, right? Yep. And it's like 200 bucks for a course on how to use it is like chump change.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Exactly. You know? So it's like, yeah, but to your average hobbyist, it's like, oh, I don't want to spend 200 bucks. There's a hundred videos on YouTube that are free, you know? Well, okay, go for it. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. You know? I mean, that's the thing for like any, any, I mean, even like, so even this business course I'm taking, like it's all this stuff, it's all, it's all online. It's, it's all about like the experience that you get from it, right? Right. It's like, it's like, yes, the information's all out there, right? We're reading links that are public websites a lot of the times and it's yet, but it's yet, it's about how you coalesce it. And then kind of like how you also are working with other people. Like that's, that's a pretty big piece of it. And really when you think about the university education too, it's like, you know, like it's all in a textbook, right? Teachers are teaching out of textbooks, but it's about- Yeah.

Dave Jones: You can just go read the textbook. Exactly. Or you can watch, as we've said, you can watch the videos online. Of course. Every lecture from the entire MIT engineering course is online.

Chris Gammell: Go for it. Yeah. And that, that's, I think that's increasingly interesting. Like, you know, what are you really paying for at an MIT? It's like, yeah, you're paying for the, you're paying for the people that you're working with. Sure. You're paying for the, working with the professor sometimes. I mean, obviously they're hard to get to, but, and then you're obviously you're paying for the output, like the, the, the name on your, on your, your diploma and your resume and stuff. So I think that's probably the biggest one to me, but that's the least important in the grand scheme of things, right? And to, in the actual learning perspective. So, but that's why you probably pay $60,000 or whatever it is. Oh yeah. Oh, actually I forgot. We, we have the output. I forgot we have the output of the, the survey that we did.

Dave Jones: The survey we did. We had a proptu survey, which we recorded on the road to Gundagai.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Apparently you were singing that song wrong as well. It's surprising that you would sing anything wrong, Dave.

Dave Jones: Me?

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: There's a track winding back.

Chris Gammell: Huh?

Dave Jones: No? No? I, how was I singing it?

Chris Gammell: Someone said you were singing it wrong. I don't know. I didn't know what it was. I mean.

Dave Jones: Oh, what, just the wrong, the wrong words or just the wrong tune?

Chris Gammell: I don't even know, man. I, I just remember someone saying you were singing it wrong. So. Yeah, probably. Um. Yeah. But yeah, let me, let me send you this, uh, let me send you this link. I don't know if we might even bother with, uh, talking about this stuff on here.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we, yeah, we want to know. I, I thought it was really, I thought it was really interesting.

Chris Gammell: You know, it was a, it was a very, very wide range of, of, uh, of people, you know, responding. Obviously we had people, let's see. So just at the top. We have Italy, US, UK.

Dave Jones: They're coming from all around. Okay. You would have to sort by country. So that's what I'm going to do right now. I've got the listening.

Chris Gammell: Well, and that's the other problem too, is I didn't really give choices. So like sorting, this is kind of an ad hoc, uh, uh, survey, but, and then also I, I, so I have this sorted as, um, by year attending. And that was probably the most interesting to me is sorting by.

Dave Jones: Oh, you can see prices going up. Can you extract a graph from this?

Chris Gammell: Uh.

Dave Jones: Of the increase in engineering course prices?

Chris Gammell: If I can, I will, I will post that. I will post that.

Dave Jones: That's worth doing some work on because we've, maybe, maybe I'll do a video on that. Actually getting, um, do we have people's personal info in here? No. I don't think we actually asked for any, um, emails. No, we didn't ask for any personal info. So I could make all this public.

Chris Gammell: It would definitely need to be cleaned up, but, but, but first off, thank you to everyone who, who answered. That was actually really, really interesting. Yeah, that's great. So the oldest one we have is someone from 19, uh, they started attending school in 1968. Obviously the most recent was 2016.

Dave Jones: And you'd have to adjust for inflation as well, of course. That's true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think a lot of this will need data cleanup, but, and, but yeah. So like between different schools, we had about a hundred, 110, 115 people. No, sorry. Ooh, 150. We had about 150 people respond.

Dave Jones: That's a lot of data.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's a decent number of data points.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you got each individual thing. Oh, but it's worldwide, so.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, and yeah, so, I mean, it's, it's just generally interesting for me. I mean, we, we, obviously we had talked about that because you and I were talking about that in the context of, uh, of, I think my student loans, right? That's how we got started talking about that. Yeah. That's right. And, and, uh, and then we, we were kind of asking, you were, you were saying that, uh, Australia has gone up, but it's not as much as you might think and, and all that stuff. So, um, yeah, it's, it is, it is definitely interesting and it's sad. I mean, it's not sad, but it's, uh, at the same time.

Dave Jones: Well, we've got 50 data points from the U.S. That's a lot. Just from the one country, we should be able to.

Chris Gammell: That's true. But, but each school's different. Each year's different. Each, you know, like all those things. Yeah. So either way, I think the data is interesting, but it's, it's probably not like, this is not a true survey.

Dave Jones: Do we have a final average number for each country or rough? Like, you know, we can, how much is an engineering course in the U S for example, average?

Chris Gammell: Oh, I don't know. I have no idea. Per year.

Dave Jones: Oh, come on.

Chris Gammell: Well, no, cause there's different currencies. I didn't do any data stuff here, Dave. I literally just sent it to you.

Dave Jones: So, um, but yeah, I have to just do it live in the background here. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But it's, it's, um, but like I said, it's interesting to see also to kind of see where a lot of our listeners went, um, because that's kind of all over the place too.

Dave Jones: I'm not even, I mean, I can give you, I can give you an average right here. I'm giving you, I'm looking at about, I would say the average in the U S is about 20, 18 to $20,000 a year.

Chris Gammell: That sounds like public university, but sure.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: So Dave, a Dave video may be forthcoming about this, but, uh, it is, it is interesting. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You're right. There is a lot of cleanup in this data required. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cause some of it's like in Australia dollars or. And it's formatted wrong. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Rupees. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Malaysian dollars. Malaysian rupees. I don't know what that is. MYR. But anyway. Um, but yeah.

Dave Jones: How many Indian listeners do we have?

Chris Gammell: Uh, I don't know. Uh, not, you know, our, our main contingency is U S then followed by like UK, Germany, Australia is kind of all equivalent. And then it kind of falls off from there. So.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So yeah. A lot of the, uh, the Commonwealth, we had a lot of Commonwealth plus Germany.

Dave Jones: Got it.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah. So, um, so education. Yeah. So my stuff's restarted. Robert stuff's been featured. We've been doing, uh, uh, some stuff here with the surveys and.

Dave Jones: And my shit will all be free.

Chris Gammell: Great. Great. My shit's still free. Yeah. That's great.

Dave Jones: And we'll be making more of that because David too is going to be making. That's right.

Chris Gammell: So we, we, we alluded to that, but we did not actually mention it, but he officially started, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. He's now the first full-time EV blog employee.

Chris Gammell: And he hasn't quit yet.

Dave Jones: No, he turned down two real jobs for this shit. Right.

Chris Gammell: For this fake job that you gave me.

Dave Jones: Right. I've got a photo on Twitter of him, like sitting on the floor with like, just doing, like filing down a thing with a like real sad look on his face. And, and, and the caption is, I turned down two real engineering jobs for this. You know, so, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Nice. Oops. Well, you know.

Dave Jones: Anyway. No, no, it's great. Yeah. He's, uh, working on stuff. That's all I can say.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Really?

Chris Gammell: That's great, man. Uh, let's see. That's more cleanup from, uh, the, from the trip, obviously. Oh, so we should mention the reason we haven't had a show in a couple of weeks is, well, David, David too, was starting and that, that was making you busy. And obviously I was busy with, uh, with my getting, getting back into life after holiday and I'm finally back. And that's nice. Um, so we're back.

Dave Jones: Yay. We're back. And I've got a work experience student this week and it's all right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Everything's happening at the moment.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, it's the busy season, but I did want to say about the.

Dave Jones: Oh, and there was Easter as well. We had, you know, Easter. So it's like a four day long weekend here. And like, there's just tons of stuff. And I went, I went on holidays and you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But I should mention that, uh, you posted the highlights from the meetup. Um, so we had, we had a great Sydney meetup. I don't think we actually mentioned. Have we not recorded since then? No. I guess we kind of, we did talk about it in the car, I guess a little bit, but, uh, you posted the video since then. So since the car recording and, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: That was great. How much further, how much further do you think the Voyager probe is since then when we saw it communicating?

Dave Jones: I, I can't, I can't remember the Doppler, but was it coming towards us or going away from us?

Chris Gammell: Uh, what? What? It's always going away from us, isn't it?

Dave Jones: Is it? Is it?

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Hmm? Hmm. Wait, it's. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No, but seriously, it is leaving the universe or it's leaving the solar system, right?

Dave Jones: It is. But the earth, you know, travels around the sun and the earth's moving faster than the Voyager probe.

Chris Gammell: I mean, this is all like sun reference though, isn't it?

Dave Jones: Yeah. But our earth can be on the side of the, oh no, cause no, sorry. It's leaving the, it's leaving the, it's leaving the, it's leaving the, it's leaving the plane in the, is Voyager 2 going out on the plane or is it going up? Sorry. I think it was going out.

Chris Gammell: They said because everything goes out, right? Right. No, no, no, no, no.

Dave Jones: Because no, they, they deliberately sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in different directions. One is going out with the plane.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Of all of our planets orbit on a plane, right? Basically. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Pretty much. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. Fairly much. You know, there's a bit of wobbling and Pluto's all over the place. Pluto's a real planet. And it's, yeah. So there's one going out on the plane and then they shot the other one at 90 degrees going, or, you know, at some angle going out. So they wanted to get data from different directions. That was the only chance they had. So they deliberately sent them in different directions. And okay. If the one, if the one, I can't remember which one's going where, but the one that's shooting on out on the plane, sometimes will be coming back towards us. Because it's, because the earth's moving faster. If the earth is moving around the sun towards the, the probe is moving slower than what the earth is relative to the sun. So therefore we're actually going towards it. So you'll get a Doppler shift in the other direction. It'll be, it'll appear.

Chris Gammell: So it's like, we're kind of like coming around the corner. So like if, so if we were in the opposite.

Dave Jones: That's right. If we were on the opposite side of the sun heading in the opposite direction, it'd be going, it'd be traveling faster relative to us. So no, but there's a point where earth swings around the sun and we are actually catching up to the Voyager probe. So there you go.

Chris Gammell: Until we get sucked back into the gravity well. And then we go back around, we go back around again. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So there you go.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: A little known fact. So I, yeah, I could, I forgot to.

Chris Gammell: I'm not sure I believe you still, but.

Dave Jones: You don't believe me. Okay. We'll go verify it for yourself.

Chris Gammell: That's fine. Yeah. That's what science is all about, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I went to the science march after I saw you. That was fun.

Dave Jones: Ah, really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hang on. Hang on. I'm looking at the real. Yep. Yep. I will send you. I'll prove it right here, right now. Okay. This is not a live video, but I will prove it to you. Voyager 1 is heading away from us and Voyager 2 is heading towards us. Interesting. There it is. You can actually see the live count. Look, distance from Earth, kilometers. It's actually coming. It's counting down. 17,039,615,900,800, and 80, 870, 860 kilometers.

Chris Gammell: Of course, I'm going to post this on Sunday, so it'll be different by then. But yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. But it's basically, as I talk, about every couple of seconds, it's getting 10 kilometers closer, the Voyager 2 probe. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're right.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. There you go. Which, if you go look at my video.

Chris Gammell: If you trust this internet stuff, Dave, come on.

Dave Jones: Well, these fake Voyager probes that never happened, you know, like it's a conspiracy and NASA's lying to us.

Chris Gammell: Right, right, right, right. I bet there isn't even a golden disc on there.

Dave Jones: No, it's fake. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I bet it's silver and they put recordings of Dave's voice on there or something. Anywho.

Dave Jones: Anyway, if you go back, look at the EEV Discover channel, LinkedIn down below, and watch our Voyager 2 videos, you might notice that the Doppler could show negative somewhere. I'm not sure. And that's why, it's because it's coming back towards us.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I remember they showed the shift on screen there, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. The numbers were all on the screen and popped up. So, yeah. Cool. I didn't think to comment on that at the time, but I should have. So, yep. Cool, man. Cool. There you go. You learned something here on the end.

Chris Gammell: I did learn something. Well, I learned something today, yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Cool.

Dave Jones: And you didn't believe me until I proved it to you.

Chris Gammell: Well, you don't believe me all the time. No.

Dave Jones: It should be the way. You know, it's like, if it sounds far-fetched.

Chris Gammell: Trust but verify, right?

Dave Jones: Trust but verify. Yep. And Shari and I talked about this.

Chris Gammell: Right. On our talk. Which we posted as our episode last week. Quote-unquote episode.

Dave Jones: He came to Sydney. Yeah. Yeah. He came to Sydney and we talked about that. There was a lot of debate.

Chris Gammell: Anything behind the scenes that we should know or no?

Dave Jones: Behind the scenes? What do you mean?

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, anything that people can't hear in the audio that you should be talking about now? No?

Dave Jones: No? Are you trying to hint at me to reveal something? No, no.

Chris Gammell: I just meant that, like, is there something more than the audio that we posted as the episode last week?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no, no, no. No, no. We basically pressed record and you pretty much got almost practically every word that came out. Yeah. It's just, like, my videos that I did, I sort of split them up into different topics, three different topics. But I think what you get on the amp hour version is, like, just the one continuous discussion. That's right. Yep. Yep. Yep. We stopped the camera twice just to check battery and card, memory card and that sort of stuff. But basically, it's every word.

Chris Gammell: That's great that he came to town. I'm sad that I missed him, you know? Yep. But hopefully I'll get to meet him at some point.

Dave Jones: Didn't tee up anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. He was only here for a day, so we didn't have much time.

Chris Gammell: Right. That didn't help. Yeah, that didn't help.

Dave Jones: No, no. It would have been nice if we could have done something bigger and better. But no, it's very nice of him to come this way.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, cool.

Dave Jones: So, yes, there was much debate over that, about, you know, about debunking and science and, you know, there was a lot of discussion. I don't know if we want to rehash it here, but probably not. No, that's okay. People should definitely go listen or watch that.

Chris Gammell: I think that's the best thing. But, yeah. But, yeah, no, he's very passionate about that kind of stuff, too, and that's good.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes, he is. Right. So, that definitely comes across.

Chris Gammell: Well, like I said, I was at the science march, you know. Oh, yeah. How did that go? It was very rainy, just like today, here in Chicago. Right. DC was very rainy.

Dave Jones: I couldn't go to that because we were, I was on holiday up the mountains or something. Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

Chris Gammell: It's, you know, it's not, I don't think it was, like, overly political. I mean, it was very politically motivated.

Dave Jones: I was hoping it wouldn't be co-opted by various political groups. I was hoping that it would just stick to science and nobody, you know, nothing else.

Chris Gammell: I don't think it was. Okay, good. I will say, so first off, the programming was really cool. So, I forget the guy's name. Is it Derek? It was Veracetum. Veritasium. Veritasium. Veritasium. Is that Derek Miller? Derek Miller. Yeah. So, he was one of the hosts. Yep. And so, it was Questlove from The Roots, one of my favorite drummers. And, you know, so it was interesting, you know, just, like, a wide range. And the interesting thing was they were doing a lot of, like, historical context stuff that, like, similar things happened in the 70s. I didn't really quite get it. And I kind of learned some of this stuff that Australia was doing this kind of stuff in the 70s, not in the 70s necessarily, but just in terms of, like, ecological awareness and just, you know, like, a lot of public policy stuff around it.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but not science related. I mean, I don't recall.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I think that stuff's tied together, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, you kind of, yeah. Well, everything comes, almost everything comes back to science eventually, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yes, sure. Right. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: In some way, shape, or form.

Chris Gammell: But, no, it was really good. And, of course, Bill Nye got the biggest cheers. That frigging guy. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Although I won't comment on his recent TV. Yeah, I'm going to comment on it.

Chris Gammell: What? I haven't watched any of it, and I don't plan to.

Dave Jones: There's an episode in his recent TV series which has caused him to lose a lot of reputation. Yeah. Ah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Anyway, let's not go there.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, anyways, it was good. It was a good time. It was, you know, I'm not sure how much impact it had, but.

Dave Jones: So, were you waving a banner? I had no banner?

Chris Gammell: I had no banner. I got in, like, the night before. Ah, right. I was just walking in the rain. Right. Yeah. But, yeah. Lots of snarky signs. Right.

Dave Jones: Yep. Well, that's the idea, right? You've got to out-snark the next person, right? With your side, it's got to be, you know, wittier and more profetic. I guess so.

Chris Gammell: I think that's more of a thing to keep people occupied. I mean, I think it's more about, like, showing numbers that there's just lots of people that care about this particular thing. And, I guess. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool. And, of course, the politicians just go, you know. Yeah, right. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Tell someone who cares.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: That's fun. Ah, well. On to better things. What do we have on the list this week? I got a lot of stuff, huh? I guess we've been, the last time we talked was, like, a month ago?

Dave Jones: At least, yeah. It seems like forever.

Chris Gammell: Jeez. Well, what's been going on there?

Dave Jones: Well, like, this ridiculous amount of horsepower you get on, well, not, no, GPUs these days. Nvidia have just released the Volta, which is the, sorry, the, yeah, the V100 Tesla chip, GPU chip. And it's got, like, 21 billion, am I, yeah, 21.1 billion transistors on an 815 millimeter square die done in a 12 nanometer TSMC custom process. It's like, this is ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. How much do these dies cost? What does one do with that?

Dave Jones: Like, what do you mean, what does one do? It's artificial intelligence stuff they're targeting.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I guess, but I mean, I don't know what I do with one processor, Dave, so let alone however that many is, right?

Dave Jones: However many tens of thousands of little GPU-y type things are in here. There was an interesting discussion that we did, Sharia did with, I did with Sharia. He was talking about GPUs and how they don't need to be, don't need to be precise for a lot of applications and stuff like that. And that was fascinating.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that is interesting. Why is that? That was in the talk.

Dave Jones: Because a lot of stuff, like when you do an image processing and stuff like that, it doesn't matter if you have little errors here and there. It doesn't, like visually it does not matter, right? You know, if you're doing scientific computations to see if your plutonium bomb is going to explode properly with the, you know, the huge supercomputers they use to simulate those, yeah, accuracy matters, right? But when you're doing visual compression, visual playback and streaming and video stuff, you can have errors in your CPU and it does not matter. You know, you don't need 24-bit precision, 24-decimal-place precision in your math, right? Actually calculating all this stuff, no, like four or five bits is just fine. You know, so a lot of the horsepower is wasted.

Chris Gammell: Because you're just iterating on it and like refining results?

Dave Jones: If you've got a pixel out in one frame and you're at 60 frames per second, it doesn't matter. You will not see it, you know? And he was actually using the example.

Dave Jones: Okay, all right, I see. He was using the example of a talk that he watched, which I think is LinkedIn somewhere. Anyway, a talk about how, you know, I think it was Google was doing their AI. Or was it, no, it was Facebook. Facebook, the Facebook CTO or something gave a talk on how they do their AI and stuff like that and how they're analyzing images, right? Oh, yeah. And then it's like the, was it the Google one where you could ask a question, show me a photo of a cat or something. And it knows what a cat looks like.

Chris Gammell: That happens on Google Photos right now. If you upload your photos, it is so creepy. I'll type in dog and it'll find pictures of my dog from the past six years. Like every picture or like truck or whatever, right? Yeah, and it knows.

Dave Jones: But when it learns that stuff, right, it's a learning algorithm that does that. You don't need accuracy. It doesn't matter. Right. You can be just 10% in the ballpark and that's good enough to get the result of the machine learning.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You do not need supreme accuracy. And that's what these GPUs try to do, extreme accuracy. And they're very like, and it doesn't matter.

Chris Gammell: So I was talking at the Melbourne meetup, I was talking with Andy Gelm from LifeX. Well, you know him, right?

Dave Jones: LifeX and he's the head of the Melbourne hackerspace. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. And so we were talking about, I think he's going to-

Dave Jones: I was there when it was in his garage, you know.

Chris Gammell: Aha. Right, right, right. Yeah. And so we were talking about some of the stuff he's doing. I'm not sure how public it is, but it was something related to similar topics. But we were talking about robotics and we started talking and he blew my mind because he's like, we're talking about robotics and how they're getting bigger and all this other stuff. And he was telling me like that reverse kinematics, right? So that's like a big piece of robotics for a long time. It's like, okay, so you've got a six axis arm and you want to know where any single point of that robot is in time, right? And you need to basically calculate, okay, well, you're accelerating, you know, there's lots of cosines and sines and tangents and whatever. And then you have to like back calculate all that stuff in order to find a point in space, right? That's the idea. That's what reverse kinematics is as far as I understand it. And what he was telling me is that like the advance in robotics right now is that you just ignore all that. And what you do is you point a camera at the damn thing and then you move it and then you say, all right, I moved this thing. Now, where is it? And you say, okay, well, when you move it, like when you apply this command, it moves to this position and then you move it a little different and then, you know, and it just like feeds back on itself. And it's like, oh my God, I literally never thought about that. I thought they were, I mean, I'm sure there's still reverse kinematics happening.

Dave Jones: And does it learn that or does it reprocess the image every time and calculate it every time?

Chris Gammell: No, I think, I think it basically, well, I, I'm way out of my league. I was so out of my league then. Of course you are. I'm even more out of my league now, Dave. I know. I'm just trying to stop you deliberately. I am guessing that it's, it's basically fed back as like a, if I think about just like a single, single axis of motion, this is my assumption, right? If you apply, you know, say you just apply 10 milliamps to a motor, right? Or whatever it is. And it's going to move some amount, right? You could then say, if I apply 10 milliamps to this one axis, it's going to do this. You could start to just isolate variables and then start to do it in combinations. That's what I assume. I don't know if that's actually the case, but I, that's kind of like how I would try and break down the problem, I guess, is I would isolate it to an axis, do all these things within one axis, do it within two axes, see how things move and then start to map this stuff out, right? I mean, that's, that's what I imagine I would do. And I'm sure that there's a lot more there, but like-

Dave Jones: It's probably more complicated than that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, and I guarantee it's more complicated, but it, but either way, like, but just thinking about that, like not needing to-

Dave Jones: Okay, right. So they get, they're using modern camera technology, modern visual processing to eliminate-

Chris Gammell: And machine learning, that's the main thing.

Dave Jones: And machine learning, to eliminate the kinematics requirements.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. I'll put a link in for reverse kinematics because like, if, if math makes you anxious, like it does for me, reverse kinematics is going to make you real anxious. You're in for a treat. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. But yeah, that was, that was a good one too. That was another good meetup down there. Sorry. I should have said thanks. I guess I didn't, we didn't talk after I went down there. So I hate to tell you, Dave. What? I think I like Melbourne better. I think it's a, I think, I think it's more my, my, my flavor.

Dave Jones: I, I told you you would like it better than Sydney, didn't I? I told you.

Chris Gammell: I don't remember you saying that, but very possibly you did. I did. I said you would like it. Yep.

Dave Jones: Okay. I said you would like it more. And why did you like it more? And it'll be the exact reasons I told you.

Chris Gammell: Because-

Dave Jones: It's more arty. It's more cultured. It's the, it's more vibrant laneway atmosphere. It's the foods bit like a more, it's more foodie culture. It's more social. It's more, whereas Sydney is more business-like and formal.

Chris Gammell: I was just going to say, cause you weren't there, but I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah. You're right. It is. That is spot on. You're right. You're right. You're right. So, yep. It was fun.

Dave Jones: Cool.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Now you're back in Chicago.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Good old Chicago.

Dave Jones: Sitting there going, I'm in Chicago again.

Chris Gammell: I love Chicago. Chicago is very similar to Melbourne, I think. I think they, that's why I felt so at home. People should come visit. That's what I'm trying to say.

Dave Jones: They might be a sister city. Who knows?

Chris Gammell: Maybe. Yeah. All right. So what else we got on this list? There's a lot of stuff. Oh my God. There's a ton of stuff on here.

Dave Jones: No, Boston. Boston is the city, is the, is the, is the sister city of Melbourne. There you go. Oh, okay. Who knew?

Chris Gammell: I like Boston. It's okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, I posted a link about the spaces in Chicago. I don't know if that matters. It doesn't matter. I did, I did get a little angsty about the term maker entrepreneur. I think that's really silly.

Dave Jones: I just got the full on blue screen of death.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, man. Well, that's what happens when you, when you start talking about Boston. Yep.

Dave Jones: So if the audio of this one's funny, you know why? Cause I've lost my audacity recording. We're probably using the mumble recording and who knows?

Chris Gammell: They don't care.

Dave Jones: They don't know.

Chris Gammell: We don't even know if we have any listeners anymore. We don't know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: All right.

Chris Gammell: They're all like four weeks without, without a show. Come on, man. No. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. They just gone down the toilet.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So you're saying Boston is the sister city. What was I saying about Boston? Oh, I was asking you if you cared about the maker entrepreneur, that terrible term. Ugh.

Dave Jones: My, what? Oh, sorry. I mentioned, I mentioned. What does that mean?

Chris Gammell: There was a, there was a, a post about all the, uh, all the maker spaces in town here in Chicago. I don't know if it matters, but, uh.

Dave Jones: How many are there?

Chris Gammell: There's like six or seven.

Dave Jones: Right. Well, no, technically Sydney has a couple. Like, it depends what you're talking about. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Like, some are fab lad. I don't know. Like, there's, there's a lot of hype around that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Right. But what I was saying before you dropped out was the, uh, maker entrepreneur as a term just means like someone who doesn't really make money. Right.

Dave Jones: That's funny. Oh, God.

Chris Gammell: I do like my space. It's still a great space. I love Chicago. I'm glad I'd be back here. But, uh, yeah. I don't think, uh, well. I wish all my, my friends the best. All my hardware friends the best.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Can I talk about lack of entrepreneurial? Sure. Incentive. I've got a work experience, uh, student at the moment for the whole week. Um, so year 10 here in Australia, I don't know what that's equivalent to in the U.S.

Chris Gammell: That's usually like a sophomore in high school as far as I understand it.

Dave Jones: The, it's basically the last, well, no, it's not, I'm not going to say it's not the last year of high school because we have years seven to 10 and then there's 11 and 12. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: 11, 12 is like junior, senior. And so that's like, that's like, uh, pre-college, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Pre, there's two years of school pre-college. Right.

Chris Gammell: So like a year 10 would be like a 15, 16 year old kid.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yeah. Basically 15, 16 year old. Okay.

Chris Gammell: That's, that's a, okay. Well, let's temper, temper our, uh, expectations with that, but go ahead.

Dave Jones: All right. Okay. Anyway. So yeah, um, it's fairly typical here to, you know, have a work experience student for a week and, you know, companies take on students and stuff like that. Uh-huh. And I've had one before, of course. And then I had, I was going to have one last year and, um, they, like, I actually met this kid and he, um, uh, like at a, at a previous talk I'd given at the school, like, cause I give regular talks at high schools about, you know, being a YouTube, YouTuber or, or, and or an engineer. Right. So, um, yeah. So I met this kid and, um, yeah, he would like, he already had two companies, like, and he was like 15, like real entrepreneurial kid, you know? So anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this is not the direction I think it was going in. Okay. Anyways, go ahead.

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just giving a side story here. This is another one.

Dave Jones: Right. This is just a side story. And, um, anyway, so this is contrasting. This is contrasting one school to another. Okay. So this is the school that I've been to before. And, uh, Ryan, if you might, I, some viewers might, might remember Ryan. He was from the same school as, as this guy, this kid. Anyway, um, he was really entrepreneurial and they said, Hey, you know, can you come do work experience at the EV blog? And I thought, you know, like, you know, he's more into, you know, business and entrepreneurial, like, what's he going to learn at the EV blog kind of thing? You know? So I thought he was like, he's, you know, talent and enthusiasm was a bit wasted at the EV blog. So I got him, I used my contacts to get him a spot in a, one of those, um, entrepreneurial accelerator startup courses. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're doing those at colleges now. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That are usually very hard to get into.

Chris Gammell: I have mixed feelings about those, but we'll skip that. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Anyway. Right. Anyway, it's one of the leading ones here in Australia and I got him into that course. So anyway, so he's probably off doing great things now. Who knows? Um, I don't know. But I've got a work experience student at the moment and he's, you know, and he's great. Right. He's interested in engineering. He's interested in electronics and hardware and stuff. Right. So cool. And, and, and we're having fun. But, uh, he was telling me that practically everyone in it. Well, he was the only one in his year. This is a different school. Who's doing anything remotely interesting for work experience. It's like all the rest of them are just working at Coles and Woolworths for those in Australia. They're like a supermarket chain, you know, or they're working at a, at a, at a cafe. Yeah. You know, just like, like really like, you know, which is nothing wrong with that sort of thing. If that's what you're interested in and want to do. Right. But I'm not sure. I'm sure it's not everyone. You know, he was telling me about a friend of his who, who is a, uh, who's a game developer. Right. And he's actually developed and published games like, you know, 10 dozen games or something. Right. So, you know, he's really into that. So obviously the natural fit would have been to get him work experience at a game company. Australia is very big in, uh, game writing. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. So we've got no shortage of companies. As even in the local area, we've got one just, just down the road that, that is, you know, does games and stuff. Uh, you know, really advanced stuff. So surely. But no, no, he's working at the local supermarket.

Chris Gammell: So is this, is this a dart of, uh, uh, of available companies to go work at? Or is this.

Dave Jones: I, I, I, I just don't think they tried.

Chris Gammell: Who didn't try?

Dave Jones: I just don't think they asked the kids what, like the, the, the, the school, the, you know, the teachers.

Chris Gammell: Uh-huh. Okay.

Dave Jones: Try, right? And this is why they compare one school compared to another. I see. I see. Like, and I just felt that that was so depressing.

Chris Gammell: So you're saying that, yeah, that is a little depressing. Like, because I think it actually is a great idea for a program. You know, I thought about that in the past too, where it's like, you know, you talk about high school students and a lot of them just don't know. I mean, some very much do. But like, I, I speak from a personal experience. I didn't know what engineering was in high school. Like, I eventually learned that, like, yeah, I want to do that. But like, I didn't know that until I was like legitimately looking at colleges and programs. And it's like, I don't want to do physics, but I want to do something like physics. And I really enjoyed physics, but I wanted to make it practical.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the, that's the definition of engineering. That's right. Applied physics. That's right. You know, basically applied physics. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: With all apologies to our physics listeners.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. No, of course. It's not pure applied physics.

Chris Gammell: We love you to death. It's just, you're just useless. That's what we're trying. I'm just kidding.

Dave Jones: It's kind of monkey wrench applied physics, is it? Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that's right. They are elegant and we are, we are greasy.

Dave Jones: We're just getting shit done. Yeah, right, right.

Chris Gammell: We are covered in solder paste. Gaffer tape and getting stuff. Yeah. Yes. Yep. Anyway. No, yeah. So that is unfortunate because. Yeah. But it's only for a week. That's kind of, that's kind of rough for only a week.

Dave Jones: What do you mean? It's kind of rough. Oh, that it's only a week. You want it to be longer.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah. I mean, like, I think that a lot of, like, so co-op programs. Internships, that kind of thing. It's like a longer time. Like, I think companies are more willing to invest in the amount of time just because then there's some kind of payback for it. In my experience.

Dave Jones: Oh, maybe. But then, then you get like, this is an unpaid thing, right? And you've got to take care of it, right? This takes.

Chris Gammell: We don't have much else than unpaid here in the States, Dave. Come on.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. Well, this impacts my schedule, right? Of course. If you're wondering what, you know. Right.

Chris Gammell: No, that's what I mean, though. Like, so like you, you are doing this as a public service. That's not very nice of you.

Dave Jones: It's a public service. Right, right.

Chris Gammell: And I think that's really good. But like.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: But now imagine that on a broader scale, like an engineering company or other things, right? Like, they're all. Right. Taking on that amount of. It's, you know, effectively burden, but it's a good thing to do. But there is burden there. So that's what I'm trying to get at.

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. So why would you want it to be longer? Yeah. Like.

Chris Gammell: Oh, because, well, I think the idea, I guess, for internships and specifically co-ops, at least, there's benefit for the company, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, but it's not an internship or a co-op. It's just to give them a taste of what that particular field is like. Right. Because they might think, oh, I might want to be an engineer. Okay. Go spend a couple of days or a week in an engineering company and find out, oh, no, I really don't like that.

Chris Gammell: You don't want to be. Oh, no. Oh, no. Not that.

Dave Jones: Anyway, we did tell him all about what it was David and I were extolling the virtues of working at a large engineering company and wank word bingo.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. You know.

Dave Jones: Yep. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. So we were, yeah. So we're not sure if we scared him off there, but yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, I was, yeah, I was a bit disheartened. I thought that was.

Chris Gammell: It's unfortunate, but like you said, it's hopefully isolated to, you know, individual schools and

Dave Jones: stuff like that. It's just that school. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That particular school.

Dave Jones: Anyway. So whereas the other school, like a friend of mine was the careers advisor there. You know, they actually had a careers advisor person and that's why originally Ryan, she got him to, she knew about me because, you know, she was the, because she's actually a friend of ours. Oh, cool. Yeah. And yeah. And she happened to be the work experience, the work. Yes. Think I'm a Bob person.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Anyway. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Cool, man.

Dave Jones: Have you, have any of our listeners had work experience students and have they worked out or have they just come in and gone, I don't care about anything.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, like.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's also on the coordinator. Hopefully they pair up the people that are actually potentially interested.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the idea. Like I, you know, I think what they do is if you, maybe, you know, if, if, if you say, I have no clue what I want to do, then they put you at the local cafe or the local shopping center. Right. Supermarket. I think so.

Chris Gammell: I would say that if we do, I mean, we have some younger listeners and if you guys are listening and you don't have this kind of program, uh, I would say first step is go out and, you know, ask, uh, family, friends, parents, whatever. If there's someone in the, in the industry that's even close, you know, talk to them first and be like, Hey, I'm looking just to, you know, another term, at least in the States was shadowing as well. I'm just looking to shadow for a week in the summer or whenever you can do this on your own. You don't have to, you know, do it through a school program. Uh, so that's one thing. And then, you know, if you, so then, you know, a lot of people are interested in this kind of stuff. I remember you said, Dave, when you were growing up, you know, your folks did different stuff and you didn't necessarily have like the mentors. Um, you know, you can write.

Dave Jones: I had no one. Right.

Chris Gammell: No one. Right. Exactly. Zero. And you, you turned, you turned out weird, but okay. Uh, you know, and, uh, but, but I think, I think in that case, uh, I wouldn't write, I wouldn't write to someone like Dave, right? Because obviously Dave is very busy. Right. But, uh, but like try and find a name of someone at a company, right? Target a company and then try and write to their, you know, maybe even a PR director. Like, Hey, I'm looking to do this. I think it'd be good PR for your company. If you had a high school student come in or whatever it is, right. You know, be, be, have some ingenuity about how to contact people, but just, I could, I

Dave Jones: could blog the experience, you know, offer them something in return.

Dave Jones: Right. Say Snapchat.

Chris Gammell: They'll jump at that. They have no idea what that means. Uh, we don't either. I have no idea. I have no idea what Snapchat means. Oh, we're old. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, uh.

Dave Jones: I thought your job was social media.

Chris Gammell: No, Dave. I told, I explained this in Australia. No.

Dave Jones: You try and explain it to me what, what, what you actually do. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it involves crap like that.

Chris Gammell: Right. I actually, I do know what Snapchat is. I just don't use it. Uh, but anyways, yeah, I would say that, you know, approach, approach these companies, you know, and maybe like, again, if you're, um, you know, if you're a student, don't necessarily go to like SpaceX where it's going to be like, well, that's. Everyone's trying to get in. Right. Exactly. Try and find something practical that is like.

Dave Jones: Go to widget rocket motor company. Exactly. Rocket motor company or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. If you like, yeah, exactly. If you like SpaceX, try and find out, you know, who's the supplier to SpaceX or whatever. Exactly. Or similar aerospace companies in the area. Like that kind of thing is the way to go. Definitely smaller companies is a definite way to go. Cause you're going to get a lot more access as well. And this is true for internships and co-ops and everything. Like if you're an intern or a co-op, I guess we're kind of going, what is today? So I guess it's May. We're going into that season. So it's probably a little late, but if you, uh, I think, I think it's way better to do small companies because when I was at a small company, I got to do a ton of stuff. When I worked at a small company, I passed so much stuff off to interns at college. Cause you're like, yeah, I'm too busy. Just go figure this stuff out. You know, like, I don't got time for this.

Dave Jones: So, uh, would you rather, if you're going for work experience, would you rather just like shadow, as you said, like hang around in the, but like, you know, would you rather approach him? Look, I don't, I don't want you to task me with anything. I just love to hang out for a week and just, you know, sit in the corner and listen and watch.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's definitely like the low impact.

Dave Jones: Because that's, that's less burden on them.

Chris Gammell: Wait, so what, like if you go, sorry, is, is, is your work experience student doing, doing stuff or what?

Dave Jones: No, no, no, not really. It's just watching and we talk about stuff, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not showing him how to operate. Yeah. We did some whiteboard stuff. We were showing him how stuff works on a whiteboard and stuff like that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's going to be tough because you probably have a little bit less background info kind of thing, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And like, like he's not interested in making videos and stuff like that. So I'm not going to show him how, although I did show him my video editing process. He was really just sitting here watching me edit a video, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And I was trying to, you know, comment on what's important and what's not. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's going to be the tough thing. Like, I mean, like any, any job has a lot of that. Like, you know, I answer emails for an hour or two a day, right? It's like, yeah, you know, you're going to have some downtime, but you can't expect it to be all uptime kind of thing. But hopefully you just kind of, as things happen, you, and you get a feel for that too, right? It's like, if you're at a big company or really any company and you realize that whatever job you're shadowing is doing email for four hours a day, it's like, maybe you don't want to do that, you know? Maybe you want to find something else, you know? So, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the thing. You don't necessarily have to shadow a person, just hang around in a lab and you'll naturally gravitate towards the most interesting person.

Chris Gammell: I totally agree with that too. That's just, yeah. And that's, and that's a good one too, is like, if you are requesting, you know, see if you can find someone to, to ask to be with, right? Like, not that you would know it, but like, be like, yeah, I'm really looking to, you know, shadow an electrical engineer, whatever, but, you know, whoever's available, I'd love to just kind of see the most stuff. And, and if that becomes kind of the thing where they, you, you kind of walk between different groups or, or different people. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. That's definitely, yeah. Get the smorgasbord of engineering experience.

Dave Jones: So, so, so then you're not tied to, you know, cause if you're tied to one person all day, then they feel a bit of pressure to, you know, entertain you all day, you know, and nothing gets done kind of thing. So, you know, it's, it's better just to, yeah, like, oh, hang out, you know, and I'll just wander around and talk to someone for an hour and then bugger off to someone else. And yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Definitely.

Dave Jones: Oh, something's blowing up over there. I can smell something. Right. I'm off. You know, I'm going to, something's happening.

Chris Gammell: Just chasing the mayhem down, huh?

Dave Jones: Follow the smell.

Chris Gammell: That's, that could be bad.

Dave Jones: Usually, usually the most interesting stuff is either stuff that smells because it's blowing something. So something's happening or engineers that smell are often doing the coolest.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah. No, that's good.

Dave Jones: Just right. The way, if you know what I mean.

Chris Gammell: Right. You're sweating the hardest, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: All that, all that, the brain sweat, the brain sweat. Yep.

Dave Jones: We're getting into stereotypes now. Yes, we are.

Chris Gammell: So it's not good. Yep. Hmm. Well, let's see. So we've got about, what, 10, 20 minutes left?

Dave Jones: I don't know because my, I had the blue screen of death.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: And my, all my counters reset.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: I had to reboot the machine. How rude of it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you know.

Dave Jones: Nah.

Chris Gammell: I, I didn't put this on the list, but I actually just, I bought a kit for a reflow oven. I, you know, I was doing reflow with just a hot plate and. Yep. I got rid of it and I was going to build my own.

Dave Jones: Oh, a kit for a reflow oven. Gotcha.

Chris Gammell: Right. So like just taking a standard toaster oven.

Dave Jones: I control a kit for a standard toaster oven. Yeah, exactly. So you don't have to modify it. You just, you just control the element from the external mains and then whack a temperature probe in it.

Chris Gammell: Actually, this is, this is a little bit more of a modification. There's like foil all over it and all this. It's the. Oh, okay. The control Leo too. I think I might've mentioned it before, but I had never actually pulled the trigger on it. I was always going to build my own. And then I, I wimped out on that and, but now I just want to have, just have my own reflow. And yeah. Cool. Do you do, I mean, do you do much at home or no? Or do you do much in the office?

Dave Jones: I don't do a lot of reflow. No. No.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: No. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's nice. I mean, especially with like a lot of, a lot of these, uh, lower cost stencils. Well, like we've had Brent on the show before from us.

Dave Jones: Well, you basically get free stencils with a lot of services, PCB services these days. You know, they're like a free Mylar stencil or whatever, you know, cause they're practically free to produce.

Chris Gammell: They, yeah. You know. Right. I, I have not used a, I mean, I'm mostly still using Ash Park, but, um, man, someone was telling me that even one of the China services, it's like, it was like, uh, you pay rush, I think it was PCB way, PCB cart. One of the, one of the ones. PCB way. Yep. Yeah. But it was like, you, it was like a four day delivery for like the rush was like four day delivery and it was like super cheap. And I was, I was very surprised at the four day delivery piece. I, yeah, I've never, I haven't, I have not yet used them cause I just use Ash Park.

Dave Jones: I've done a video on that. I just got one from, um, Elikro. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Elikro. I've got it right here. Um, yeah, I just, yeah. And it was like a two day thing or something.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's 50 odd dollars. Like it was cheap as.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty nuts. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. It's yeah. I've done a video on this. I did.

Chris Gammell: Oh, is that part of your, uh, your Nixie tube thing? Okay.

Dave Jones: That, that was part of that. Yeah. It was basically all about looking at getting a PCB manufacturer. And I went to, I did the Ash Park thing and you know, it, it didn't work. It didn't accept my Altium files properly. And they said, they actually replied to me. They sent me an email saying, oh yeah, we've, you know, there's some issues with Altium files and.

Chris Gammell: Oh, with Gerber output or what?

Dave Jones: Yeah. With Gerber, with interpreting various Gerber outputs. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it was like edge cuts or something was weird with that. And yeah. I remember reading about that.

Dave Jones: Edge profile and the, and the, and slots. They can't handle slots properly. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So, I mean, but, but, but even like a nine volt, like even like a DC input jack has slots. That's right. Yep. Yep. Like if you're not supporting slots, you're not in the business really. I mean, it's anyway, maybe everyone, you know, everyone seems happy with them, but yeah, it just didn't work for me first go. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Um, yeah, well, that's, that's cool. I mean, two day delivery though for 50 bucks for those, for that, was that one board or how many boards was that?

Dave Jones: Oh no, I've got five of them for the price. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, this stuff is effectively free at this point, you know, it's like, that's, it's, it's, it's really cheap.

Dave Jones: Compared to what it used to be when I was a boy. Yeah. It's free. Yeah. You know, like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I have not seen the one where they give you the, the, uh, the stencil though, but our stencil, I use our stencil and there's a bunch around here.

Dave Jones: It was in my video. If you watch my video, you wouldn't know.

Chris Gammell: Oh, do I have to?

Dave Jones: That, I was going to like, um, yes, this. Elecro, uh, company, they were offering stainless steel. I believe they were stainless steel stencils because they were in a frame. Right. So they're telling you, you can order a stencil in a frame. And the only one, as far as I've ever seen, only stainless steel stencils come in a frame. Right. And these things back when I was doing this, like, you know, for a business, like for a job, you know, like a stainless steel frame stencil costs like 500, 800 bucks.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right.

Dave Jones: And, and they're offering it for like $18.

Chris Gammell: I think it's just because the laser cutters have gotten so cheap, you know, like they're all using laser cutters. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But, but, uh, yeah, but I was just like framed, you know, so they've got to print the stainless steel. They've got to laser cut the stainless steel. They've got to wrap it around the frame and make sure it's all hunky dory. And like, it was like 18 bucks for like a 300 by 400 millimeter frame stencil. That is pretty nuts. I mean, even just shipping that is pretty, pretty crazy. Mylar. Oh yeah. It's just, it's nuts.

Chris Gammell: Yep. I finally used a laser cutter. I, I actually had never, I feel like I'm keeping like going through these like maker trials, you know?

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. I've never actually used one. I've seen them operate.

Chris Gammell: I tell you what, like software sucks. Like it is just, usually. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's so, I don't get it. I guess it's because it's machine, like it's hardware makers, like the hardware makers in this case, there's like full spectrum or something like that. But like, it's like just the worst interface, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's just, it's like, it's like a printer driver, but you can't, you can't move it. You can't resize it. I so much, I know that people are saying, they're screaming at their, at their podcast players right now and they're, they're going to shout something about KiCAD's interface, but it's fine. We're just getting more of that. But, you know, and it's just, it's so unintuitive that I think, I think that that's, that actually is a, that's what a lot of the newer tools are all about, right? They're pretty standard, you know, it's all gantry type stuff. It's, but it's about like low cost and decent software, right? So like something like the, what's it called? The Othermill, right? Othermill has interesting, it has good software, it, you know, Otherplan and, you know, the hardware is what it is. It's, you know, it's not bad. From what I hear, it's not great, but it's, it's, you know, it's not like super precise, I suppose, is the way to say it. And, but yeah, it's like that software stuff makes it actually usable. And so you don't need a person running it. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Of course.

Chris Gammell: That's my laser cutter experience. It was terrible. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But it's pretty easy once you get it, once you get the, I mean, it's basically just the rules of like, in my, in this case, it was just like, you have a, you know, you import with like a vector file with like different line widths and colors and that determines if it's a cut all the way through or if it's a score or if it's a raster. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah. So, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, it's not just magic. You've got to tell it what to do, you know?

Chris Gammell: Well, I get that piece, but it's just like, it's just the, okay, so I tell it what to do, but it just doesn't accept what I'm telling it. You know what I mean?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Got it. Anywho. Yeah. I'm learning. Right. Cool. The hardest still, I still think the hardest thing is figuring out what to, what to cut, you know? Like, I don't have any, like, I'm just making trinkets, you know? Like, that's, that's like what you start with. You start with trinkets, but until you have, you don't really learn until you have the project, right? That's, that's the thing we say on here all the time, right? We, we always talk about that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to go to the effort to design something just for the sake of learning how to use the instrument. Some people might, but I don't have motivation to do that. Right. Right. You know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And so I'm actually, so I actually was approached by a local space and they were asking if I wanted to do like a layout thing. And I kind of like, I was asking, you know, like, obviously I do my high cat stuff and, and I like doing that, but I was like, well, what are the people at your space doing right now? And they're like, well, we don't really do much electronics. I'm like, then that's, that's the wrong choice. You don't want to do layout when you don't know electronics. So what I suggested, which I'm actually pretty excited about is doing like a, like a, like a bazaar or like a smorgasbord of, of skills. And so it's just like, I propose to them just like doing a social event where, you know, people are drinking beers, hanging out, walking around. And instead of like walking around and like, there's a glass blower there, there's someone just doing 3d design. So you go to a social event and someone's just doing 3d and like, because so much of, so much of the problem.

Dave Jones: But then you've got visitors and you've got doers.

Chris Gammell: Sure, sure, sure. But they're two different types of people, right? I totally agree with that.

Dave Jones: People who are just hanging around trying to learn something. And then you've got the experts.

Chris Gammell: No, no, the point, the point is not to actually learn anything that that's, and that is the

Dave Jones: key point is that it's not about actually learning anything at that event. Yeah. Right, right.

Chris Gammell: No, the idea is you're just there to, a lot of people don't even know what they, what they need to do, right? So I imagine like this space is actually meant for artists, right? And a lot of artists know a lot of techniques. A lot of them are very technically minded. But, you know, one of the things that they're really good at doing is like conceptualizing this idea, but then they don't know how to bring it to life. And it's like, so like, I think about like a lot of the people that work with Mike Harrison, right? Mike helps them bring these ideas they have to life, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, artists, right. Right.

Chris Gammell: And it's like, unless you know what the technique is, right? Once you have the technique in mind, you can start to kind of stretch that idea and come up with new things you might be able to do with it. And that's the whole idea. Like, how do you sample all that stuff that's out there? And that's what I think is the hard part. And so that's what I'm excited about is, is kind of like showcasing all these, these ideas of like, oh, well, yeah, if you want to make a circuit, like some people don't even know if you want to make a PCB, you need to learn layout. Okay. Now you have the connection, right? And, and, and then the rest, if you don't get anything out of it, it's just a social event. Great. And I also like the idea of nerds on display. You know, I don't know why that tickles my brain, but, you know, and over here, the 2017 version of a Chris Gammell doing a layout in KiCad while drinking beer. They also could come to my apartment to see that, but.

Dave Jones: I can, I can just picture them like, like, like driving around in like a, like a safari, like a, a Jeep at Jurassic Park or something.

Speaker ?: Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: Here we see in the wild, a nerd in his native habitat. That's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I'm excited about that. Yeah. We'll see if that.

Dave Jones: So that's going to happen, is it? Or that's just something you proposed to.

Chris Gammell: If it doesn't happen at the one space, I'm going to do it at another space. So I need some good names. I was thinking nerd smorgasbord or nerds on display or something like that. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Yeah. I'm sure we can come up. Oh, yeah. Something's on the tip of my tongue here. Right, right, right, right. Just, yep. All right. Speaking of which, we were talking about this before the show, and I really wanted to do my own, like, TED ripoff conference. I thought that'd be a good idea.

Chris Gammell: Right. And what did you want to call it?

Dave Jones: Dave. Dave. Just because of me, a total piss-out.

Chris Gammell: At first, Dave was telling me this. I'm like, I don't get it, man. Like, why are you calling it that? Because TED is, like, technology education design, right? Something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yep. But TED, TED is a name, right? Right. And, well, it is here in Australia. Ted. Yeah. It's short for Theodore. I've got a cousin, Ted.

Chris Gammell: Right, right. Yep. It's a name here, too.

Dave Jones: And, yeah. Anyway, yeah, that's all I think of, right? Ted is, like, it's a name to me. Or it's Ted, like a bear, like Teddy Bear, you know? Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Or, like, the movie with, what's his name? Yeah, right. It's with Mark Wahlberg. It's a family guy, guy. Seth MacFarlane.

Dave Jones: Family guy, guy?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Seth MacFarlane.

Dave Jones: And Mark Wahlberg. That's right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Mark Wahlberg as well? Yep, yep.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Once, back when he was working casual, you know, this was a couple of years back. And, you know, he said, you know, we're talking about movies and stuff like that. And I did. Did you know that Mark Wahlberg is not famous for being a movie star? And his mind was blown. He's famous for being, like, a rapper.

Chris Gammell: A rapper, yeah. No, no, sorry. Hip-hop.

Dave Jones: Hip-hop. Hip-hop thing.

Chris Gammell: Let's just call him a quasi-musician. Hip-hop thing.

Dave Jones: Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. That's right. He was like, he did not believe me. He went bullshit. Right, right. He pulled my leg.

Chris Gammell: So, he went and Googled it. Come on, come on, come on. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Mind-blowing. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Feel the vibrations. How the hell did we get onto that?

Chris Gammell: Because of Ted, the movie. They're really bad. Right. Yeah. That wasn't that bad. That's great.

Dave Jones: It's hilarious. Yeah. If you like your crude humor. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Enough of that.

Chris Gammell: So, anyway. Should I do that? Yeah. I think you should. I think that's a great idea. Right. I'm not going to help organize it, but I'll consider flying down there for it. How about that, buddy?

Dave Jones: So, do you think anyone would turn up? You know? If it was like, I'm thinking like booking like the new international conference center, the new Sydney International Conference Center, the new funky building they just built. You know, like try to fill that.

Chris Gammell: I think it's, you can't just play off the-

Dave Jones: Am I shooting a bit high?

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: Am I shooting a bit high?

Chris Gammell: No. I just think that it's like, you can't just base it on the idea that it's like mocking the original thing. You'd have to actually make it a real event. Right. Right. You got to-

Dave Jones: No, no, no, no. Of course. It'd be real, but like it'd be sort of like a bit of a piss take.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You would be like the Hydrox to the Oreos, right? What? That's like a fake type of Oreo. Hydrox. Oh, is that right? Yeah. It's like an off-brand Oreo.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Got it. You know, now that I'm back in the land of cookies, Dick. Right.

Dave Jones: Do you think there's a market for more- Because TED Talks are not technical. They're almost like showmanship.

Chris Gammell: They are. Yeah. And they actually have a way to present guide, right? They have guidelines on how you should be presenting.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think so. I think that, I think people don't like tech. I mean, I post technical talk. I posted one here. I posted Joe talking about S&T lines, right? Yeah. And like people just don't really have the patience to watch someone talk for 45 minutes. You know? It's deeply tough. Yeah. Some people do, right? Some people love it. But like the broad, you know, if it's not like people who are very targeted-

Dave Jones: Yeah. They don't care. Joe Average is not going to turn up, whereas Joe Average will talk up to a TED Talk. TED Talks are like often very feel good. Ignite talk.

Chris Gammell: They affirm things that people already have beliefs about. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's right. Or they're like short explainers or teaser content. Like honestly- Exactly. I have discovered a lot of interesting kind of, I mean, they're pop science or pop psychology and all that stuff. Yeah. But they're popular science kind of thing. Yeah. Right. But at the same time, I mean, it introduces you to new- it's kind of like a sampling, right? So like one of the ones I really like is Brene Brown. And she's just like this sassy Texas lady who does like research on sociology and stuff like that. I love her. This is why- Yeah.

Dave Jones: This is why I love going to the Ignite Talks, right? Right. It's five minutes. So if something's boring, you only have to sit through it for five minutes. Exactly. Right. Right? But you know, most of them are pretty interesting. You know, I used to go there and it's just a bunch of random stuff.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. And that's good for like broadening your horizon and stuff like that. And it's like- Right. And then there's going to be a select group that if you want to, like I said, 45 minute in-depth talk, yeah, not many people-

Dave Jones: Well, maybe I can do a technical Ignite type thing.

Chris Gammell: That would be great. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, like limited to like five or 10 minutes. Like you've got like a strict, like what is it? 10s like 15 to 18 minutes or something, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Usually. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Which is, I find it's a little bit long if I'm not, you know. Like often they won't get to the point, you know. Like, or I've got to fast forward. Oh, like I want to hear the-

Chris Gammell: Well, I tell people all the time and I think I told you about this. I think I posted- Yeah, I told you about this, one of my favorite Chrome plugins. Then again- I love this thing and I watch you on 1.5 speed.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, video speed controller. Oh my God. I watch that for everything. Every like-

Dave Jones: You do realize it's built into YouTube, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but this one goes up to as fast as you want to go. So it goes up to, I mean, yes, in YouTube it does. But then if you watch like, so like all my stuff's on Vimeo. So people were asking about that. I was like, I don't know how to do it. And then I found this thing. It's called video speed control. It's on Chrome. I'll link it in. But like, and then you could slow it down too. And you can, I don't know. It's just, it's great. Cause it's any like Facebook video too, anything on the internet. So that's why it's great. Right. I love it. Yeah. I talk about it a lot. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Cause you've got a short attention span.

Chris Gammell: No, I, yeah, I guess I do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Everyone does.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I listened to podcasts on 1.5 as well. I highly recommend it actually. Like, I mean, you and I are talking at normal speed right now, but it's.

Dave Jones: So if we talked at a faster speed, this would really screw people up. And you know, they're really going, what the hell's going on?

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Right. Or we can talk at a small game.

Chris Gammell: I know what you're saying, Dave. I don't know. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway, how much time we got left?

Chris Gammell: We're over, but I didn't want to mention. Oh, over. Well, probably stuff we should have mentioned here, but maybe stuff for next time even. So MIPS, Imagination Technology is selling MIPS. So this is all like Silicon stuff. Sci-5, which is one of the.

Dave Jones: Who? Who are they selling it to? That's the big question.

Chris Gammell: They're looking for buyers. Who's buying it? They don't know.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. So they're shopping out. So they're publicly shopping in out of it.

Chris Gammell: That's right. And one of our commenters.

Dave Jones: Probably Microchip would be the, because they use the MIPS architecture in the PIC32s.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm guessing, yeah, something like that could be. And then someone here, someone on our subreddit, Publius Puntifex, said, my company is considering an offer because networking still uses the hell out of MIPS. And ARM V8 hasn't replaced it yet.

Dave Jones: Really? Yeah. As in networking, like hubs and things or something? Yeah, I think so.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, like custom router chips and stuff like that. That's what I assume. Oh, really? That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. And then the other one was, I think we talked about the failed Kickstarter campaign. So there was the High Five. No, sorry. There were both five-based, but they were both that open. Remember we talked about that open chip architecture and how they were raising money to try and.

Dave Jones: Yep, that's right. So there was another one.

Chris Gammell: Yep, they've got another. I don't think we mentioned, but it was around the same time. It's called Sci-Fi. And they actually did. They had actually released some stuff already, but they just raised a bunch of money and they are kind of moving forward. And so they raised like-

Dave Jones: 5.8 million bunches.

Chris Gammell: Strike that, reverse that, 8.5.

Dave Jones: Sorry, 8.5. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. And yeah, so that's interesting. And I think that, you know, like I'm very cautiously optimistic about this stuff. I think that it's unfortunately the one that I backed didn't go, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, the company's founders invented RISC-V. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Both of these are. So that's why this is Sci-5, right? So S-I-5, F-I-V-E, 5. Got it. Yep. RISC-V. Right. Anyways, but I forget the other one was called, but it was all, that was also based on that same architecture, the RISC-V open source thing. Got it. And then there was one other one. What was the other one? Oh, the, there's a Wired article about an AII chip as well. So there's another Silicon thing. So we'll link all these in. You can go read them. We'll maybe talk about them next time. But I guess that's kind of-

Dave Jones: And they've got an Arduino compatible development board.

Chris Gammell: Yes, Sci-5 does. Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yep. So.

Dave Jones: As you do.

Speaker ?: Mm-hmm.

Chris Gammell: Oh, and I'll be at Maker Faire. This probably, well, yeah. Oh. Yeah. By the time the next episode comes out, I'll-

Dave Jones: Which? Which Maker Faire?

Chris Gammell: So this is Bay Area Maker Faire. I'll be talking on Sunday at 4.30, the last slot of the day. Oh, that's right.

Dave Jones: The last slot. And I have offered a reward if somebody gets a photo of Chris Gammell talking to an empty- To an empty room. That's right. To an empty room.

Chris Gammell: And Kenneth said he would. Yeah. He's very good about that stuff. Yep.

Chris Gammell: That'll be hilarious. Yeah. Yes. Very funny. They rescheduled me. So, that's fine. Whatever. Oh, they did. Okay. So, you got the last slot in. Someone had a very nice thought.

Dave Jones: So, you bumped some poor bastard to the end slot.

Chris Gammell: I got bumped.

Dave Jones: Somebody else's. Somebody's got to have the- I was bumped. Oh, okay. I thought you said you were bumped back.

Chris Gammell: No. No, of course not. Okay. Why do they care about me? It's fine. It's fine. Right. It's fine. Okay. I go there for the people. Anyways. And then, if people don't know, though, there's a Hackaday party on Saturday night that is very fun. So, if you're at Maker Faire or around Maker Faire in Silicon Valley, look that up. Actually, I'll put a link in the notes. But that's at downtown San Mateo. And the big one is Bring a Hack, which is on Sunday. And this is the big Bring a Hack party. It's always so much fun. It's at BJ's Pizza in Foster City. And that's sponsored by Osh Park. And so, definitely worth-

Dave Jones: Oh, it's sponsored now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It has been for the past two years.

Dave Jones: Oh, has it not? I think so.

Chris Gammell: I think it was always kind of like ad hoc, buy your own pizza, buy your own beer and stuff. And now it's like, yeah, like laying in the crowd. They sponsor it. So, but definitely Bring a Hack. I got to get my Hack working here. We'll see how it goes. Great. Yep. And I'll be doing a meetup on that Thursday, the 18th as well. So, you know, the usual thing. Of course. Yep. You're just always hanging out. I'm always hanging out. And actually, one of our former guests will be speaking. So, Avidan will be giving a talk. So, I'm excited about that. Excellent. Cool. Yeah. All right. That's it. Yeah. Everything else, just go read the, go read the, the Reddit, subreddit. So.

Dave Jones: Next, next show, we might try and stick to like stuff on the list more.

Chris Gammell: We had a lot. We got through a lot.

Dave Jones: I have like.

Chris Gammell: A few. 30 items on my list here, buddy. So. Okay. All right, man. Catch you next time. See you next time. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Bye. Thank you.