#23 – The Innovation Speculation

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog. And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Chris Gammell: Hey Chris, happy holidays and all that jazz.

Dave Jones: Yeah, same to you Dave. Did the Flying Spaghetti Monster bring you any presents?

Chris Gammell: Yes indeed, I got the chair for the lab I was after so finally I can sit there. Although I haven't used it in its full glory yet, I haven't actually shot a blog out there yet. So, yeah, but it's a nice, it's like a bar stool, it's not like the old five-legged lab chair, but it's like a hydraulic bar stool kind of thing. It's one of those, you know, that you have at your home bar or whatever, but it is hydraulic and it's nice and it swings around and...

Dave Jones: You know, I got one, I got one and it wasn't right. I wasn't specific enough to my family I think.

Chris Gammell: Oh no, no. Yeah, it happened. Oh, tragic. So, what's going to happen? You're going to get a Santa refund there?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I think so. Or a Santa exchange? Santa's giving me cash, I think so.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, awesome.

Dave Jones: I'm sure that's happened to many other people out there. Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot, guys. I mean, it was nice. It was nice of them. I'm always appreciative of getting stuff, so... Of course. But I did get my nerdy magnification goggles and a Dremel. I got a Warrior Dremel I forgot to talk about.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Dremels are great. Yes, I've got my Dremel. I don't use it much, but it's one of those tools that...

Dave Jones: When you need it, you need it, right?

Chris Gammell: When you need it, you need it. You need that, you know, 40,000 RPM little, you know, grindy bit to, you know, cut a hole in a case or do something weird or... Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so... For sure. I'm glad I got that and that'll help me with a lot of stuff, I think, so...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Dremel's awesome. That's nice though.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah, chair, these bar stools are good, but you don't really have a high bench, do you? If I remember your photo, you've got more of a... Like a desk, kind of?

Dave Jones: It's a table, actually. It's like a 50s Formica table, which is nice for, like, burn marks, but the... It's just kind of makeshift, so whatever. It works.

Chris Gammell: Right. I sort of cleared my bench over the holidays. I... Uh-huh. Well, I cleared one of them. I've got now an anti-static mat that goes over the whole thing. So, yeah. And, like, I was lazy. I didn't actually move the instruments off the desk. I moved the soldering designs off, but everything else, I sort of... Just sort of lifted up... Shifted around. ...and slid the thing under, and yeah. I was just too lazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, dear. Have you been having static problems, or is this something you've been meaning to do?

Chris Gammell: No, no. It's just a work mat. It's just a... Oh, okay. You know, it's... Yeah. Okay. I got the thing, and it just... Yeah, it's just one of those blue protective work mats, and they're, you know, they're solder-proof, and they're all sorts of, you know... And they're an anti-static coating, and they're just designed so that you don't burn your wooden desk or... Oh, okay. Something like that.

Dave Jones: It's not the kind where you clip in with a static wrist guard?

Chris Gammell: It's not... It doesn't have a stud for that. No, you can put a stud in it, but it's actually got a conductive underneath it. It's, like, got a conductive foam underneath the whole thing, which I measured to be about 100K or something like that for, I don't know, a centimetre distance or something like that, and it's got a nice blue hardware-in top on it. It's great. Oh, cool. Yeah. So, yeah, but I was too lazy to move everything off, so I just sort of swept and lifted up quick shove under. Yep. Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: I'm lazy. Yeah. Well, we talked about that last week, didn't we?

Chris Gammell: Well, exactly. But, well, the thing is, I haven't got enough... That's when I realized I didn't have enough room in there to... Is that when you made that video? Yeah, that's when I made the video, yeah. If you haven't seen, I've got a video in my study here, which I'm sitting next to. You can see it in the video. I built some new cupboards, so that's great. And they're not finished yet. I've still got to put everything back. So, the rest of the house is scattered with... All my junk is scattered around the rest of the house, so... Yeah. I have to put it back in the cupboard or throw it out. I hate throwing stuff out.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: What am I going to do with an old lab chair?

Dave Jones: Auction it off online. I mean, maybe...

Chris Gammell: Auction it off online, right. Dave's done a hundred and...

Dave Jones: You can have an EEV blog contest, maybe. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Or break it into pieces.

Dave Jones: You can break it into pieces and ship it to people. I don't know what the hell they'd want with it, but you never know. You can find out.

Chris Gammell: Write in, please, if you've got an idea.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Do you want my old lab chair with the one?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe someone will turn it into a piece of art or something.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: I'd be happy if they just blew it up. No, it's a good chair. It's a really good chair, but... Yeah, busted leg. Tried to fix it many times. I didn't post the photo that I promised to post of the busted leg. Chair leg. No. Ah, well.

Dave Jones: Maybe there's one last chance. One last chance.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, before it gets turfed. It's still sitting out there, so...

Dave Jones: Well, speaking of videos of building stuff, how we get into the workbench of the week, because we had an impressive one to start out this week.

Chris Gammell: Yes, we do. Who was that? I can't remember. I haven't gone through the list, as usual.

Dave Jones: It's Adam C. I'm not going to try and pronounce his last name, because I will butcher that. But he runs OneCircuit.com, which is a vintage video game shop, basically. And he fixes up old ones, and he also helps to mod them, and I believe clone them. Yep. So, pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: He's reverse engineering some old gaming board or something like that. He wants to reverse engineer it completely. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And he had a great video. He was... So, he was going to build a bench for his workshop, a four-station bench, which is pretty huge. And he goes to go...

Chris Gammell: For a home lab. This is his home lab, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, I think it's quasi... I mean, I get the impression it's professional, too, so...

Chris Gammell: Well, he does actually... He says he does actually work from home, so... Right, so... Yeah.

Dave Jones: Professional, but in the home, right? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely taking up a lot of space in the home. So, that's... And it's... Yeah. And so, he built it from scratch in the video, and he goes through all the different things he's talking about, like considerations for where to put equipment, and, you know, making sure there's cabling room in the back. And he goes through the whole thing. It's a really, really great video. And he's upping the ante for Workbench of the Week, because this is the first video. I mean, we're only bound to see more. I mean, we love those 1960s photographs, right? I mean, that's so 1960s, right? But...

Chris Gammell: Well, 1800s, isn't it?

Dave Jones: Well, I guess, yeah, further back if you want. I mean, color. Kodachrome was 60s, right?

Dave Jones: Right. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Newfangled color stuff.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although, we did get a black and white picture we'll talk about a little bit later, too.

Chris Gammell: Yes, we did.

Dave Jones: But, yeah, definitely check out the video. We'll embed it in the Amp Hour webpage, and you can go click it there, or just click right through to YouTube. So, very impressive, Adam. We appreciate you sending it in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Thank you very much, Adam. It's awesome. It goes for about 10 minutes or something like that. Yeah. He takes us on a tour and shows it before when he's... And then after it's fully assembled and all the storage he's got as well, which is very impressive. Yes, very much so. Yeah. That lab would be sought after by anyone in any lab in any company, let alone your own home. Yeah. You know, in terms of space and storage and things like that, it's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And as a quick aside, you asked me before the show about holidays in the US. Yes. I actually spent...

Chris Gammell: I wanted to know that. What do you got... Because here, Christmas is the big holiday of the year. I mean, everyone stops work on Christmas Eve, so you get the 24th off. Most people take the 24th off generally and don't go back until sometime in the 5th of January or something like that.

Dave Jones: Right, right.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, we pretty much shut down. Well, most commercial businesses, so...

Dave Jones: I think that's a lot of industry too, at least in the US, but I'm working this week. I'm working three days out of the week and then I'll get off for New Year's. But this week, I'm actually... Today, it just worked out that I was moving cubes and I wanted to tell people about... Cubes. Yeah, sorry. I have a cube.

Chris Gammell: Sorry, I always just get visions of the Dilbert cube farm. Oh, yeah. It's hilarious. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Some of us have to have cubes still. Anyways, they told us we could pick how to set them up and... Awesome. And so, basically, you give engineers a day to try and optimize a constrained problem like a 10 by 10 foot cube and where to put stuff. And honestly, it turned into mayhem. Oh, yes. I can imagine. You're talking about Adam's bench reminded me of that. Oh, man. It was just like, oh, but what if we did this and that? Oh, it was just all over the place.

Chris Gammell: Oh, dearity. That reminds me. My company at the moment, we moved into a new building. It was quite some time ago. Oh, God. It was two years ago now or something, I believe. Anyway, it's a rented building. We don't actually own it. We lease it. We release the whole build. They build it specifically to our requirements and everything. We designed it and all that sort of stuff. But, yeah, technically, we don't own it. So, we're leasing that. And we're not allowed to put up anything on the walls in our cubicles. It's unbelievable. Like, I put up calendars and all sorts of things, stuck them to the wall. I came in one morning, there's a post-it note there from the cubicle Nazi who goes around inspecting all these things. Really? And I got a note saying, please remove... Well, they didn't say, please remove your calendars from the wall. They actually physically removed the calendars from the wall and chucked them on my desk and left a note saying, please don't put things on the walls. It marks the walls and please only use the designated... I guess it could have been worse.

Dave Jones: They could have just left a box of ash. They burned them on the spot.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Oh, the cubicle Nazis. Anyway, that's insane when you go to that sort of level. But our cubicles are very, very spacious. That's nice. Yeah. And we've got a big glass whiteboard, which is like two and a half meters long or something like that. Huge glass whiteboard behind us.

Dave Jones: I love whiteboards. If people don't have whiteboards in their labs or houses... Oh, you got to. You got to get one. Yep. I mean, you have that little one you use in your show, but that's probably just for convenience, right?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah, exactly. For... Yeah. And I don't have room out in the EEV blog lab for a whiteboard. So I do a lot of stuff on post-it notes and little notebooks and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. When you're... Yeah. Nothing beats a whiteboard. Mine's not actually a whiteboard. As I said, it's actually glass because that actually works better than a white... Well, as good as a whiteboard. Yeah. Any glass surface, you can just go up to your window. I know people in their company, they just walk up to the window or the glass window inside a meeting room or something like that. Yeah. And they write everything on the glass and then they just rub it off. And so... Yeah. Good as new. Glass works really well.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I like that too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So if you've got a glass cubicle, just start writing stuff all over the glass walls.

Dave Jones: And also, don't pick your nose because you're in a glass cubicle.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Oh, goodness. All right. And my... Oh, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Well, no, I just wanted to describe my work cubicle a bit more. I've got... Each person has four gigabit Ethernet cable ports in their cubicle. Don't ask me why, but there are four. So you can imagine the amount of Ethernet cable spread throughout this building. It's phenomenal. Yeah. That's a lot. And we've all got like 12 PowerPoints or something like that, which is a phenomenal amount for a regular cubicle. It's just a huge amount of PowerPoints.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So...

Dave Jones: That's very good.

Chris Gammell: It's awesome. Yeah. So very happy.

Dave Jones: So why did you make fun of me for saying cube? If you have a cube too. Oh, I just like making...

Chris Gammell: I just find cubicles totally amusing, even though I've got one. Okay.

Dave Jones: That's what I was wondering. I'm like, Dave's got this spacious office or something. No, no. You have a cube too. No, no.

Chris Gammell: I've never... I don't think I've ever had an office. Oh. An actual office.

Dave Jones: I wouldn't expect one as an engineer.

Chris Gammell: Right. Well, no. Unless you count the actual lab, I've had... I guess you could count an entire lab as your office. So I've had that, where I've had a desk in the corner of the lab, which is... And the lab is the whole room. You know, it's the whole huge room. I've had that. So I guess you could say I've had a huge lab slash office. Something like that. But yeah. Yeah. Not an actual, you know, manager's office or something like that. Right, right, right.

Dave Jones: You've got to move up for that. Yeah. That's the gift. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You've got to kiss some more ass to... And as you can probably imagine, I don't kiss ass. Never have, never will. So yeah, I will never aspire to the rank of manager, I don't think. It's not going to happen.

Dave Jones: Well, how about this next one? So we also have another workbench of the week from Lieven Blonker from Ghent in Belgium. So he... Oh man, he sent us a great email. Just tons of... Basically, he sent us an email. Him, he took a picture of him and his kid who were working at their workbench. I think he said his son, Steph, is seven years old. And so they're both in the... Or just Steph's in the photo. But great picture of the bench too. He's got a 201 electronics kit. Have you ever used those?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've done a whole blog on those. Oh, you have? I haven't seen that one. Yeah, I've waved mine around on the video. Yeah, absolutely. Very nice.

Dave Jones: I love those things. Yep. And Rigol Scope, he said. Analog multimeter. Very nice. Very nice.

Chris Gammell: Yep, I see that. And there's his boy in the photo there.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so it's great. And they even show a couple of their projects too. So very, very awesome. I think one was for a thermostat. Yep. If I am right. Yes.

Chris Gammell: And that looks like an old Tandy slash Micronta analog multimeter right up there. Well, the box for it right up there next to the scope. Yeah. It is. I just zoomed in. It's a Micronta. Yeah. 18. I think that might be identical to the one I've shown on my blog. So the Tandy 201 kit plus the Micronta multimeter. That was my first ever multimeter.

Speaker ?: Ha.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. So that really parallels my childhood. For sure. That's awesome. I can't believe we've still got the original box for that. Oh, wow. That's great.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm surprised like... Sorry, I'm reminiscing. Oh, yeah. Brings a tear to the eye.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I never had a 201. I've just... I got to play with friends. 201s. Right. But one of my friends brought in the book that he had recently about it. It's kind of crazy just like how they don't really explain a lot about it. You know, like they don't... They tell you what to do, but they don't exactly explain the theory behind it just because it's about getting it done and, you know, kind of...

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. No, it actually progresses through the book. First, the first like quarter of the book, they actually tell you to just put the wire here from A to B and that kind of stuff. And then they give you the diagram of how to wire it up. And they... Yeah. As you say, they don't explain it. But then further on, they actually start... Then they stop doing that and they give you a circuit diagram instead of a photo of where to put the wires. So then you've got to start... Yeah.

Dave Jones: This might have been the one that he... That my friend had. So that... Oh, right. I mean, that could be it. Yeah. I mean, there's tons of them out there if people haven't seen them. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I started out with the 50-in-1. It was... Yeah. That was the first one. The first one wasn't the 201. It was the Tandy 50-in-1. Was the... Ah. Or it might have even been the 30-in-1. But anyway, I had the 50-in-1. Then I graduated to the 150-in-1. And then I got the Monster, the 200-in-1. And I still have the 200-in-1. The others I sadly don't have anymore. So...

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Ah, well... Yeah. Spent many a year wiring those things up. Oh, yeah. Anyway, thank you very much for the Workbench of the Week photo.

Dave Jones: Yes. That's awesome. And two more. Two more. Oh, God. Yeah. I know. Next. People are doing great about this. So, next is Bob from AmbientSensors.com. Yep. And he took a picture. And I'm just going to shoot straight... He has some cool stuff on his bench. But the coolest thing... I follow him on Twitter, too. Right. And his Twitter username is W-A-7-I-U-T. I believe that's a call sign for... A call sign, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Sounds like a call sign.

Dave Jones: But if you look at his page, he has an HP 300A audio oscillator from back in the day. And it's signed by both Bill Hewitt and Dave Packard. The bastard. Did you see the picture of that?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I know. How did he get that? He used to work there. Oh, well... Yeah, I guess. So, he just walked into their office. Can you sign this, please? Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe when he's leaving or something. But that's awesome. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I can't see the signatures on it. I'm zooming in now.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And... It might be on the top. But he has a close-up shot of it, so... Oh, you know, I actually couldn't see the picture yesterday, so this is the first time I've seen it, too. Oh, there it is.

Chris Gammell: Yes, I see it. Yeah, there it is. Bill Hewitt. Yeah. William Packard.

Dave Jones: People have others sign weird... I mean, this isn't that weird, but some people sign weird things, you know?

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: And it's such an interesting human characteristic, too. You know? Like, why not a thumbprint? Why not? You know? Like, it's like... Hmm. You know? It's interesting how that... I'm sure there's books about it out there, but... You know, why not other stuff, but...

Chris Gammell: Well, see, I don't understand the whole signing thing. You know? Right. Like, you might see a book signing, and people have to sign a book or a CD or something like that, and they'll line up for hours to get the person's signature, and they just get the signature on the thing. Why not? It wouldn't be much cooler to actually get a photo with them. Yeah, well... I think that would be much better. I'd rather have... If I met someone who I, you know, famous, and, you know, I was a big fan of them, I'd want a photo with them, not their signature. That's pretty worthless to you.

Dave Jones: Well, that could be from back in the day when photos weren't, I mean, weren't as common. I mean, today, of course, right? Right. But back in the day, maybe there's just some way to remember that you met them, you know?

Chris Gammell: Interesting. But, yeah, considering everyone... Well, I think that's starting, because everyone has a camera on their phone now. Right. Right. Exactly. So, you know, but still, the signature thing still prevails. So, I just don't get it. I don't see the value of having that.

Dave Jones: Well, I'm sure this was signed a long time ago, too.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. But that is awesome, to get that signed by Bill and Dave. That's fantastic. Yeah. Oh. Oh, I do. Anyway, Andy's got his dog in the shot, too. Oh, yeah, that's true. Extra bonus points for the dog. Bonus points. And he was shot there. He's smiling.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: He's got his circuit board on the screen there, and excellent.

Dave Jones: Very nice pictures all around.

Chris Gammell: Thank you very much, Bob.

Dave Jones: And you said we had another one. One last one. One last one. So, this is from Kevin, right? Kevin, yes, Kevin Smith. And he showed us pictures of his compact lab, but I think he was inspired by you to clean up his lab a little bit. And he has a second set of pictures we'll post, too, of the cleaned up lab. And he's got a really cool display, like a hanging display. So, I like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like a flat screen, which is up on the top level of the shelf. And then he's got like a keyboard angled hanging down from that, which is really quite neat.

Dave Jones: Yeah, very good use of space.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So, man, so many great benches.

Chris Gammell: Fantastic. Thanks, guys, for sending all those in. We won't go into detail, analyzing each one as we usually do.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Must go on to other stuff. Other things. Onward and upward.

Chris Gammell: Awesome. I was going to talk about something, but I forget. Because I got carried away on Workbench of the Week. I should have written it down. I should, like, take notes as we're actually doing this. That's a good idea. Anyway, you wanted to talk about Leo Laporte.

Dave Jones: Not yet. I wanted to mention the thing about you.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Oh, right. The units of annoyance. Let's talk about me. I love talking about me.

Dave Jones: So, the little backstory for people here. Jerry Ellsworth was on Twitter the other day, and she was talking about units of annoyance. Here we go. I had asked her why her first video. Damn. Let me back up one more step. So, Adafruit sponsored Jerry to do electronics videos, A through Z. And the first one she was doing was Ampure, and she did these crazy little cutout photos of, you know, her acting out with Ampure. And I'm not sure why she decided to go that route.

Chris Gammell: It was just fun. I thought it was cool.

Dave Jones: It was very fun. So, I asked her why she didn't mention the amp hour. I mean, A, right? And so, she said she forgot, but she'll try and get Dave in for EEV blog. All right.

Chris Gammell: Excellent. Yeah. And E is for EEV blog. You know, like in a play school style. Yeah, exactly. Is it play school? Or is it Sesame Street where they do the letters? You know, A is for...

Dave Jones: Apple. Yeah. Right. I don't know if it's... I think she's just choosing one. I don't think it's... I guess it would be the same. I mean, it's not like the exact style of Sesame Street, but yeah. A is for Ampure. You know, E is for EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: Well, E is for electronics. E is for so many things, I guess. Right. E could stand for voltage, right?

Dave Jones: So, picking EEV blog, I'd be very impressed if she picked E is for EEV blog. I don't know if she'll pick that one, buddy, but... Right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Maybe she'll add a joke in at the end or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: She did mention that she was going to mention something about the units of annoyance, the Jones. The Jones. So, she was going... So, we were talking about this on Twitter, and so Mike Hurd of Uptown Maker picked up on it, and he actually wrote a post about it. And he actually drafted a proposal for SI units for bitching. And so, he goes through the entire calculation. It's very, very well thought out. And basically, it's awesome.

Chris Gammell: Well, let's go through the formula, shall we? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. So, John Jones equals the number of complaints about a topic times sum of levels of annoyance caused by said complaints weighed by exposure frequency to causative events in seconds between exposure times the number of people likely to be exposed to your ranting. So, I've got to actually think about that one.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, go to the example. That's good. Right. Okay. So, he was talking about Orcad because he was pissed with Orcad, and I think that's what this post is really about. I mean, aside from Dave, obviously. He said, with Orcad, there are five things which cause him pain every day. Okay. Three level two issues and one level six issue. Profanity audible, not comprehensible to workers and adjacent cubes. So, he ends up adding them all up. He said, oh, man, this is a horrible formula. Maybe it's a good formula. It's horrible to read on air.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's pretty simple. It's only got three terms, and they're all multiplied, but the terms themselves are complex.

Dave Jones: Yeah. A little arbitrary, but still. Yeah. But it's basically the frequency times the severity times how many people hear it. Right. So, he said, in his case, it's about five times 0.067 times four. Four people, I'm guessing. And that's 1.34 Jones.

Chris Gammell: Right, four people watch his vlog. And that's a Jones rating of 1.34. Is it a rating? No, it's a unit. How would you say it?

Dave Jones: I saw someone else say it's not a unit. It would be a quantity that is then used for other things or something like that. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes. Yes, you're right. I don't think it's a unit per se. Yeah. I think it's more of a rating. I like to think of it anyway.

Dave Jones: We're 25 minutes into the show. Hopefully, no one has two Joneses of annoyance right now.

Chris Gammell: I think so. We talked about it as workbench of the week and annoying things.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, but it's very good.

Chris Gammell: But I've built my entire blog on bitching about stuff. And for some reason, people like it. So, I keep doing it now.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's good. Yeah. Well, I do like to speak up and complain a lot. That's my natural... The squeakiest of the wheels. The squeakiest wheel. Yes. I am the squeakiest wheel. That'd be a great t-shirt. I could have like a wheel with I am the squeakiest wheel.

Dave Jones: That would be a great t-shirt. You're right. I bet we get some people to order that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All right.

Dave Jones: You can just design that, right? Throw it to the... Absolutely. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'll just draw it. I'll hand draw it. And I'll... Because it's better if you hand draw it. If you steal a photo off Google or something like that. Oh, no. Yeah. That's not nearly as cool as drawing your own one.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Chris Gammell: That's great. That's great. There you go. We have new unit slash rating. The Jones.

Dave Jones: Yes. And thanks to Mike and Jerry. That was a very fun discourse about that.

Chris Gammell: That's brilliant. All right. We're going to have to start using that in some way. Yeah. Oh, boy. Going to have fun with that.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I'm not about to stop anytime soon, by the way. Ranting and raving about stuff. Because I think people would probably stop watching. I think half the people just like to see me bitch about something. And they get quite upset if I don't bitch about something. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I get hate, mate. Why didn't you, you know, bitch about that aspect or that aspect? Oh, God. Sorry. I don't go far enough, obviously. Some people, you know, when I did the DigiKey blog and people think, oh, no, I've gone too far. I've bitched about something before I have all the facts.

Dave Jones: And then, God.

Chris Gammell: And people bitch. I don't complain. People bitch about me not bitching enough. Go figure.

Dave Jones: What do you want, people? I don't know. I have my own bit of bitching to do this week if you want to hear some of mine.

Speaker ?: Oh, go for it.

Dave Jones: Rant time. So, basically, have you seen the EDN Top 100? Do you read that stuff ever?

Chris Gammell: I get it occasionally and I have looked at it and, yeah.

Dave Jones: Go for it. Bitch away because I agree. Basically, it's... So, if people don't know this, it's a listing. And usually, you know, it's like the top products of the year. And there are these, you know, the things they're highlighting aren't bad things. They're actually very cool things. But then you go to their website and you see, oh, a hundred different things. There are different categories like test equipment and new analog chips, new digital chips, new micros. You know, just everything you'd expect to see from EDN. And then you click through and you're like, okay, I want to look at the latest micro. You know, and it's, you know, some kind of ARM processor with all these different peripherals. And then you go to the pages clicking through too and it reads like a press release. And, but, you know, it says it's being, it's been written by one of their staff writers. But it looks like it could have been written by, you know, the PR person from the company that it's for. And it's like, what kind of value is that to people if you're just going to be a bunch of corporate shills that, oh, well, this is a great new product because we needed to write about something.

Chris Gammell: You know, like... That's what they do. They just paraphrase marketing. Marketing, what's the word? Marketing releases. Craps. Marketing bullshit. Press releases. That's what they do is they paraphrase those. And I've seen it for, I've seen companies do it for my company's products. They paraphrase what we say. We feed them all this marketing stuff and they go off and spin it even further. And yeah, or they just flat out copy it, really. So it depends on how much work they want to do.

Dave Jones: And I think that's what it is. I think it's like they're on such deadlines. I mean, I don't want to defend them because it's ridiculous. You know, if you're publishing this stuff and then you're passing it off as your own and you're expecting people to buy it, it's like, come on, guys. Is there any truth to this? Has anyone actually tested this in a third-party manner? Or are we just taking them on their word that these specs are... It's ridiculous. So, I don't know. I read it and I look forward to it. You know, I want to read this stuff. I want to hear about cool products because it's pretty hard to hear about good products. I mean, you know, we have like forums. We have product reviews from like video blogs and regular blogs, right? Like I've written part reviews before. But have people actually tried this stuff? You know, like is EDN trying this stuff? Is e-Times trying this stuff?

Chris Gammell: That's not their business. Their business is just reporting stuff. Right. And that's... Well, there's nothing new here. Magazines like EDN and ones like that, they've been doing that forever, really. As long as I can remember. As long as I've been reading. That's what they've done. They've done... Especially these free magazines that you get, you know, these industry-specific free ones that... Which is quite novel here in Australia, but overseas, I guess, they're a dime a dozen. But yeah, that's all they do is they just rehash other people's stories. They don't even... There's a lot of them don't even write their own stuff at all. It's just all contributed stuff. Or they just get the marketing blurbs from somewhere and they spin that.

Dave Jones: Right. And we've talked about that on here before because they've started... I mean, like you said, they actually have like FAEs writing that stuff. And it's like, come on. But I know what the response is going to be already too. It's like, Chris, if you don't like it, don't read it.

Chris Gammell: Or contribute, which is one of my things. If I see... Oh, you mean write your own? I'm not contributing to them. When I see people bitching about my blog, the first thing I go is, well, you go write your own. You go do your own video. You know, people say, oh, you could have said that in five minutes instead of 15 or 20 minutes. Well, freaking go and do it yourself, you know? It's like, yeah. So, I'm a big fan of, yeah, unless you're actually producing content yourself, you should zip it. You know, don't complain about other people's content. But we are content producers. So, we are about to bitch about other people's content.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And the thing is... I don't like to complain about other people's content as such because any content production is good, in my opinion. You know, if you're producing content, then really I'm not going to slag you off that much.

Dave Jones: Ah, but what if you're just a funnel for other people's PRs? You know, press releases.

Chris Gammell: That's what most blogs are. That's what most... A blog by its, well, kind of its traditional definition... Well, no, there's many definitions. But a traditional blog can be nothing more than just picking other people's content and putting it on your blog. Oh, yeah, yeah. Things like hack gadgets maybe, I think, might be a good example of that. Like an aggregator.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're an aggregator. They don't do much of their own. They occasionally might do something, I think. But, yeah, most of it is just...

Dave Jones: Well, he, like, comments on it. But, yeah, a lot of it is... Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: They just pick up... Which is fine because then you get all your content in one place. You only have to look at the one blog, which is great. But they don't actually produce their own content. And that's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's great. Right.

Dave Jones: But that's different because he's not... He's pulling in other original content. He's not pulling in press releases. I keep saying PRs. He doesn't pull in press releases. Like, magazines are pulling in press releases because it's what they have available to them and it makes money. I mean, I think I'd be a little naive of us to think that there's no... Any kind of, you know, backroom handshaking going on that, oh, hey, you're going to push our press release this month? Of course we will. You know, like you're an advertiser.

Chris Gammell: Because that's what they do. That's what these magazines mostly do, really, is, you know, is push other people's content. And granted, there's a lot of people out there who want to read all that stuff. They will just, you know, browse through and go, oh, check out the new products. Because before the internet, this is how you found out about new products and stuff like that. You would read your electronics design magazine. You wouldn't read it for the articles. You'd read it for the ads. Yeah. Actually, I'm not kidding. Before the internet. You know, you would flick through it. Oh, look at the new chip from Maxim or... So shiny. ...national or something like that. It's just, yeah. It was great. And they take out full-page ads for these new chips that came out. And it was great. And that's how you got your information and kept up to date. But now with the internet, it's just, you know. Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: And we've talked about that last week. We talked about... Or two weeks ago with Twitter, right? I mean, that's kind of what has come down... Some people like that about Twitter that, you know, like Linear Tech or National or TI or someone is pushing actual just press releases. And maybe it's just cut out the middleman kind of thing. Maybe that's the problem with the magazine industry these days, you know.

Chris Gammell: I'd like to see their sales figures and their surveys and stuff like that to whether or not they're, you know, dropping in number of sales and readership and things like that. But of course, I've mentioned before that they love to fudge those numbers. So, yeah. Yeah. Yes, there'll be a lot of spin there. And this is annoying. EDN are one of the most annoying websites I've ever visited. You go there. You click on the damn link. They pop up with this full page ad, right? And then, you know, you either have to wait like 20 seconds for it to go through or you've got to click to shut it down. And then I'm just exiting from the page. I'm actually on EDN's Hot 100 page. And then I try to shut it down and then it pops up with the window, your feedback is important to us. Would you be willing to give a short one minute feedback? Yes or no? How about piss off? Where's the piss off button?

Dave Jones: Oh, God. I like that. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I'm annoyed. Sorry, I was shouting in the mic. I hope I didn't peek there. I don't want to distort. You might have. Oh, EDN. There's nothing more annoying than EDN website. Seriously.

Dave Jones: Those full page ads, they're just unacceptable. But it's going to be, again, you know, if you don't like it, we can just not go there anymore, which is, I mean, unfortunately, that's going to be the eventual thing for me. You know, I've already shut down all my paper magazines. I don't get those anymore. Right. I'm not reading their stuff regularly. I mean, that's... Yep. I forgot where I even got linked through to there, so...

Chris Gammell: I still like EDN in that they are a good aggregator of content. If you want the latest, you know, products that come out, even if they are these stupid marketing blurbs, then it's not a bad place to go for that. But then you've got to put up with all this advertising. So, oh, they're just an advertiser's dream, they are, in terms of number of impressions and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Jones's diminishing blog law kicks in there, so it's all bullshit. Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know, an interesting thing about the number of readers and stuff like that. So, that piece you mentioned about the Leo Laporte thing, they actually talk about in that... So, it's a New York Times article on Leo Laporte, and if people don't know who that is, he is a radio personality or podcast personality. He runs This Week in Tech or twit.tv. And basically, he... I forget what the channel was before it got shut down, but it was like a cable channel back in the 90s and then into the 2000s, and then it got shut down. And then he was kind of doing his thing and doing a show here and there, and I think he has a syndicated show.

Chris Gammell: What, was it actually shut down on purpose? Somebody actually tried to shut him up, or...?

Dave Jones: No, not him. So, he was a host on a show on a network. Wow. Oh, right. Okay. That doesn't sound very vague, Chris. I don't remember what the network was, though. Basically, that network got shut down because people weren't watching it and the bubble crashed and all that. It was a technology channel, though, and it was a cable channel. Interesting. And then, basically, in 05, he started a podcast called This Week in Tech, and that thing just kind of ended up exploding into what it is today. And if people don't know about it today, they have like 350,000 subscribers or listeners, like active listeners, and they're all techies and they have live chats. I mean, like the kind of setup they have is very enviable, and we'd love to be able to have that here if we could possibly get any kind of the... Like their quality when the people call in from Skype is kind of shaky, but they also have a huge studio out in California. So, that's how they can do it.

Chris Gammell: Their audience is only 350 times bigger than the amp hour. I call that shooting distance. That's fair. All right. I like that. I like that. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And they're growing, too. I mean, so that's what this article is about. And basically, they have such a targeted audience, though, because we were just talking about audience. They get like $40 for every 1,000 listeners. So... Huh? You know, in terms of advertising. So, the way advertising works is it's per 1,000 listeners or viewers or whatever. They get $40, where traditional media will get $15.

Chris Gammell: How did you find out those figures?

Dave Jones: It's in the article.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's in the article. Dave. Read the article, Dave. It's in the article, Dave.

Dave Jones: RTFA, Dave. All right. All right. But yeah, it's a great article. And, you know, like their shows, I mean, like they have a lot of different shows, too. And if you've never checked them out, they're very well produced, very good content. But yeah, they're getting a lot more attention now. And they're going to keep growing. Hopefully, we'll keep growing. I just thought it was interesting from the perspective of like, you know, people have been talking about targeted media for so long. You know, like, oh, radio's dead and podcasts are the future. And it's like, yeah, well, sort of. But we're kind of just starting to approach balancing points of radio and people in the car and just availability. Like, my phone can get this stuff. Oh, of course. They have their own app and everything, too.

Chris Gammell: Excellent. Well, so they're pulling in four or five million dollars a year just for that This Week in Tech show.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Unbelievable.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Great.

Dave Jones: And they're one of those shows that's more like, so we talk about electronics on this show. They talk more about the higher level, like Apple is doing this. And they actually have different shows that are just about Apple or just about Google. Yeah. So, very tech-centric but not necessarily down into the device level stuff or the electronics level. They get into that once in a while and some of their guests do, too. But, you know, it's still really interesting if you're like a handset junkie or you like Apple products, a lot of that stuff. You know, and that consumer level stuff, there's a lot of money in it, you know, a lot of interest in it.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's where the big advertising money comes in because those companies fall over themselves to advertise on shows like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, they pay the big dollars. Whereas a niche electronics show like this, you know, how much are HP, Agilent, going to pay us to advertise directly on the show? I'm going to hold it out. We do this to fun, folks. And now here's a word from our sponsor, Agilent.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, right. So, and actually, I've listened to, and they, like, Ford is a huge, huge advertiser on that show. And they get big money. Right.

Chris Gammell: Four, five million dollars a year.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, podcasting is, obviously, you know, our listeners. Thank you. Thank you for listening. We love you. Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: We're obviously in the right business. We just are not doing enough business yet. That's what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But we enjoy it. So, that's all that matters. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We don't get one cent of advertising revenue yet for the Amp Hour, if anyone's wondering. Nope. Pro bono. No. We're up. Yep. We're just building up an audience here. Yeah. And then we get, when we get to 300,000, then we're going to hammer it.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, speaking of not getting a cent, I wanted to give a shout out. I forgot to do it at the beginning of the show. So, John Oxer of Freetronics. I don't know. Hey, John. Oh, hey. He's a fellow Aussie. Yeah. And he listens to the show, too. So, thank you for listening.

Chris Gammell: And he's going to be, sorry, he's going to be in Carl's Australian Electronics doco, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: We'll get an update on that. Yeah. Yep. Basically, though, he's the one that put together shieldlist.org. And if people don't know about that, it's a list of all the available Arduino shields that are out there. Just all in one place. You know, what they can do, their pin layout. Really great resource. Not only that, though. He has been sending out a free Arduino board to anyone. I think it's to anyone who points them to a new shield. And he's just been giving these away. He just points into a shield. Wow. I believe so. It might be the people who actually produce the shields. But that doesn't make sense to me. Right. Because I think that they're making their own shields. They probably already have a bunch of Arduinos.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I would suspect so.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. He sends them his own version of the Arduino-esque layout. Obviously, it's not an official Arduino because that's a brand name. But his is the 2010. And I just think that's really awesome. I mean, he's really dedicated to the site. And, you know, he's given all these boards away for free. So, if you've never checked out Freetronics, go check it out. It's a great site. And he's got some cool products.

Chris Gammell: Excellent. Way to go, John.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And like Dave said, we're not sponsored. So, he didn't make me say that. No. Exactly. Right. Unless there's some kind of like weird Aussie, you know, like brotherhood that I don't know about.

Chris Gammell: No, no. Afraid there's not. Well, yeah. Yeah, us Aussies love each other.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because we're so overwhelmed by the, you know, everyone else in the industry. You know, there's so many Americans, so many Yanks out there that, oh, fellow Aussie. Great.

Dave Jones: I know, right? Yeah. It's like the contrarian. Not the contrarian. But, yeah, you got to band together. Stay strong.

Chris Gammell: And we'll even count you New Zealanders. Oh, wow. That is generous. Sorry, that was a bad New Zealand accent there. Is that how you say it? New Zealand.

Dave Jones: New Zealand? Huh.

Chris Gammell: And six is sooks. Sooks. Really? Yeah. Huh. So, everything in New Zealand sucks. You know, because it's sooks. Fishing chucks. Oh. Anyway, sorry. I've done that. Don't go start and enter landmass wars. Oh, dearity. Very bad impression. Anyway, we love New Zealanders.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, what else do you want to talk about here? We got a couple of choices and not too much time. Got about 20 minutes left. 18 minutes. Let's go. Yeah. So, how about talking about the future? You want to talk about the future? Oh, go for it. I love talking about the future. So, IBM, yesterday, I believe, they released an article. They unveiled their official Next 5 in 5, basically a list of innovations, they think, that are going to be really big, that are going to change the world in the next 5 years. And there's 5 of them. So, 5 in 5. Some of them, I'm not so sure about. I don't know if you get a chance to look at these at all.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I've seen them. I don't know. Number 1, you'll beam up your friends in 3D.

Dave Jones: Yeah, how long have they been saying that? I know.

Chris Gammell: In 5 years? Come on.

Dave Jones: Well, not even that, but who cares? What is the point? I don't get it. They've been talking about video phones for years.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but they're talking about 3D holograms here, and they're not far off. So, I think maybe 10 years is a more realistic time frame. They're probably right in terms of experimental technology, but not a consumer device. You're talking about Microsoft Connect and stuff like that, that gets your 3D gesture interface. But yeah, 3D holographic projection just right there in front of you. Why? Why?

Dave Jones: I mean, you're not running away from the stormtroopers or anything, right?

Chris Gammell: No, no. But why? I think it would be a big deal because you'd be able to see your object in 3D right in front of you, your case, your new electronics gizmo product right in front of you before you hit the button on your 3D printer to actually make it. So, you'll be able to see it there right in front, and you'll be able to spin it around, rotate it.

Dave Jones: Okay. So, you're talking more about from a user interface.

Chris Gammell: From a user product design, yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: Because they're talking about like communicating with people like, you know, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope kind of, you know. Yeah, right. You know, that's what they're talking about here. Yeah. So, you know, they, I don't know. Okay. I'll give you, because we've talked about that on here before about like looking at CAD designs and 3D kind of stuff. Yeah. That kind of stuff is awesome. You're right about that. Seeing that in 3D, it's like, or like in Iron Man, when he does the exploded view, like exploded views are great, but you know, hard to maneuver, right? That kind of hologram would be spectacular.

Chris Gammell: It would be. But it's technically very difficult. And I've seen these ones where you see a hologram right in front of you, but it's typically got to sit inside a box. So, I think we're a long way away from the R2-D2, you know, with the projected thing and boom, there it is in front of you. You know, it's. Yeah. Just out of thin air. You know, I, that's incredibly difficult to do. I don't even know if it's physically possible to do that. And you've got to have some device or some cube, which the, you know, 3D image appears inside. So, I, yeah, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But to use it to talk to your friends, I, why do you need 3D for that? I mean, people are barely getting into video conferencing now, you know, video phones and all that sort of stuff. We're barely coming to concept with that and getting, getting to grips with that. They want to throw 3D in there. I would rather see video than 3D. If I'm talking to someone, I'd rather see a full color video of them, a 2D version, than some 3D, you know, I presume it's not going to be color and it's not going to be, you know, rendered nicely and all that sort of stuff. And I don't know.

Dave Jones: I don't want to see that. I don't, I don't want to see you while I'm talking to you, Dave. Come on, Ryan. I mean, but I mean, like, honestly, I don't want that either. I don't, I don't, I want to be able to do stuff if I'm talking, like, like, what if you're talking to someone on the phone? They're like, are you listening? You're not looking at me.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. I know.

Dave Jones: You know, like, I know there's a lot of human emotion that gets, that gets transferred through the, like, facial expressions and stuff. But what if you're mad at someone? I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you, you don't hit the 3D or the video button. You go, regular phone call, please. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pissed. Please. Just audio.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, other ones on here are batteries will breathe air. And I've read about this before. Basically, like, using metal oxides to generate energy. I believe, not oxides themselves, but basically have actual chemical reactions between air and metal in order to create energy. I'm not sure the actual chemical reaction, though.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm not sure. I am. Yeah. I'm not big in the chemistry side of things there. But yeah, they, I don't know. There's, you can get them. I think you can actually buy them now that do various things. But the power output is very small. You know, so.

Dave Jones: Saying battery and technology in general, yeah, that, that, that needs to keep going because lead acids run out of room. Lithium ions run out of room. They're still not horrible options, but. And, you know.

Chris Gammell: No, all of the, all of these polymers are coming along great guns. So. Yeah. You know, all sorts of various battery technologies. So, yeah. Right. It doesn't take a, you know, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that, yeah, batteries will be, you know, much better in the future. And you can get these tiny fuel cells where you put a little tiny, you know, a little micro machine fuel cell motor. You put a tiny drop of fuel in there. And it's a little micro machine and it generates, you know, because there's a lot of energy stored inside oil or something like that. So, you can put a little drop of, you know, oil in there and it, and a little, little machine goes away and generates power, you know. Yeah. So, they're new types of batteries. Yeah. Even when I was working on that sort of stuff five, six years ago, we were contemplating using something like that. And I think you could actually buy them at the time, these little, these little cells for, you know, fuel cells. And we were going to use those, but they were, I don't know, they didn't meet the requirements somehow. But, yeah, there's many battery technologies out there, not just traditional, you know, ones, but all sorts of things.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. It's just a matter of what takes hold, what gets like the critical mass enough to get the cost down, like the economies of scale and everything.

Chris Gammell: Well, and then there'll be different types for different applications as well. Right, right. There won't be one universal battery that will solve all the world's problems, I don't think. There'll be many different types, just as there are now.

Dave Jones: Right. Anytime someone's telling you there's one thing that'll solve all the world's problems, they're probably lying to you. You're probably reading a press release.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. The marketing blurb instead of, yeah, the real world. Because, you know, if you think that one of these cells will power a cordless drill that requires hundreds of amps of surge current, you know, you're probably kidding yourself. Yeah. Whereas it might be great for powering your mobile phone or, you know, or powering a watch or something like that. But, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's many different requirements. As I said, like a good extreme is a power drill and a watch. You know, if you look at how much power just a little, you know, just a tiny little LCD watch needs, right? Yeah. It's trivial. It's tiny. Or your next step up, you know, might be your mobile phone or something like that requires more. And then you've got these appliances like drills that require hundreds of amps of surge current. Yeah. You know? Massive. And the battery has to have a low enough ESR to cater for that. So, yeah. No one shoe to fit them all there, I'm afraid. No. What's next in the list?

Dave Jones: Sensors. You know, another big... They didn't say it like that. They said you don't need to be a scientist to save the world. Okay. Yeah. But what you're really talking about is the Internet of Things and the sensor networks.

Chris Gammell: Oh, God. No. Not Internet of Things. Oh, yes. It's back. Oh, no. Internet of Things.

Dave Jones: You know what I think about when I think about that? I think about a refrigerator with a web app on it. I think, God, why does anybody... That's been beaten to death. I won't even talk about it. But, you know, that's what my mind jumps to when I think of sensors. Obviously, there's a lot wider reaching implications. You know, human sensors for monitoring health conditions. That's a big deal, right? You know, environmental sensors. Just micropower sensors. All that kind of stuff that's... They're maybe not calling it the Internet of Things because that is stupid. But in terms of embedded systems and embedded sensors, I agree with that. That's a good one. I mean, that is... We're already seeing that.

Chris Gammell: Why don't you want an Internet appliance on your fridge? I think that'd be great. It'd be handy.

Dave Jones: Because I have an Internet appliance in my... I have an Internet appliance in my pocket. I have one in my bedroom. I have one in my living room. I am set. Thank you very much. And also the one in my pocket goes everywhere. No, you can never have enough.

Chris Gammell: No, you can never have enough. No, I think these Internet appliances... You know, everything. Because now for $50, right, you can buy one of these Internet chumbie style, you know, things with an LCD touchscreen and a Wi-Fi interface. So you'll have... And, you know, so it's almost... So if you can buy that retail for $50, imagine how much the cost is. You know, what is it, $10, $15 or something like that in volume to build a touchscreen Internet interface into something. Yeah. And it's only going to get cheaper.

Dave Jones: So... I don't discard the fact that it'll happen. I'm just saying I don't want it because when it breaks, I don't want to try and fix it, you know. And if it... You know, they're going to tie it into like, oh, well, now your fridge doesn't work because it can't talk to the Internet.

Chris Gammell: Right. Screw you guys.

Dave Jones: I just want to eat an apple out of my fridge. Come on.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, you wake up. Well, you can just ignore it. The fridge will still work and your Internet appliance will stop working long before your touchscreen. It'll stop working long before your fridge will die. I'm sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah, maybe. Maybe it will. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Anyway.

Dave Jones: Number four was your commute will be personalized. This one's... I don't know. I think, you know, personalized driving or computerized driving is important. I'd love to read a book on the way to work, but I think we've got a long way to go. Yeah, it's called public transport. What's that?

Chris Gammell: It's called public transport.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right? Not the U.S., buddy. I live in the Burbs.

Chris Gammell: I know. You got to... I learned that the hard way.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You said you have a huge drive.

Chris Gammell: First time I turned up to the U.S. and I realized that, yeah, what? You want to take a bus somewhere? Huh? Rent a car. So you turn up to the airport and there's a huge, massive car park just dedicated to rental cars. That's a huge industry. You're just expected to drive somewhere. You know? It's just remarkable. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's kind of silly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it is.

Dave Jones: But that'd be good for car crashes, blah, blah, blah. I think there'd be a ton of... At least in the U.S., I can guarantee there'd be a ton of pushback from a bunch of, you know, oh, don't take away my car. It's my freedom.

Chris Gammell: Well, I... Yeah. I like to spin that one around, actually. I reckon the commute will die out. That's more likely. Because people won't have to go to work.

Dave Jones: Especially with your 3D hologram. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. With your 3D hologram, you can be in the meeting. You know? Right. You know, you can fall asleep. Your 3D hologram falling asleep in the meeting. Yeah. You know? Bingo. Play a wank word bingo in the meeting. Oh, goodness sake.

Dave Jones: That'd be great if... And then, like, you program in someone that's actually paying attention while you're off, you know, shooting hoops outside or something.

Chris Gammell: You can have a recorded version of you just going, yep. Yeah. I agree. I like your idea. That's great.

Dave Jones: Oh. Oh. What about the TPS report?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Exactly. Oh, throwing in very Dilbert-like lines into there. Yeah. Oh, that'd be awesome. It'd be awesome if you could select one of the Dilbert characters to appear as you in the meeting. Wally. You know? You can have Wally with his coffee mug and turns up to the meeting. Awesome.

Dave Jones: Oh, that's my ideal future. That'd be great. Scott Adams needs to get on that licensing agreement stat. Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. I reckon IBM have probably missed the point on that one. I think the point is telecommuting, not commuting. Yeah. Anyway. Last one. Number five. Or, maybe, as a gas drill.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Data centers will basically dump waste heat into energy production instead of just dumping into the atmosphere. So, that's a smaller one, I think.

Chris Gammell: It's tiny, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But they've been doing research. I mean, I don't want to discount this stuff because they've been doing research on this stuff. So, IBM, no hard feelings here. I think the thing that I don't like about this list is it, I mean, it's very tech-centric, but it completely leaves out the biological side of things. So, I think that's still the biggest growth in terms of everything, like biological sensors, you know, computer neural interface stuff. I think that's where the huge, big things are that people don't see yet.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it depends on what stuff you're talking about. I mean, each list has to have a focus, I guess. And, you know, there's so many wide. How do you pick a top five for the future? It's just crazy. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think the real thing is, if I'm not allowed to bitch, I have to go make my own top five list. Right. Like we talked about before, right?

Chris Gammell: Absolutely. Just do it. Don't bitch about other people's content. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. Oh, dear. But I liked it. I thought it was a cool list, so.

Chris Gammell: Sorry to tell you, there's no mention of your maker chip machine on there.

Dave Jones: You shut your mouth, Dave. That's going to happen.

Chris Gammell: That's going to happen. Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just not in five years. Right.

Chris Gammell: Five years.

Dave Jones: Oh, he's called it. Yeah. Okay. I said not in five. I said not in five. Oh, see, now I peaked on this. Sorry if that just, yeah, distorted there. Dave makes me angry with that stuff.

Chris Gammell: Because you're lost, dude. You got owned on that. You've lost severely. Just admit it. Come on. Yeah. Maybe someday.

Dave Jones: Actually, another one that I wanted to mention real quick, too. This isn't on the list, but I saw it the other day, and it's kind of very future techie. Basically, they did, a couple weeks ago, they had an article in Electronics Weekly about the atomic level storage. And basically, they've been spinning protons and neutrons. They don't actually spin the electrons. They spin the nucleus atoms. And they did it. And I just wanted to mention, though, because they did it for like 140 milliseconds or something like that. It was a very, no, nanoseconds, I believe. Very short amount of time, but this is a very big thing. And the way they did it, though, they took, they needed to do it at terahertz frequencies. They needed an 8.5 Tesla magnetic field. They had to get it down near zero degrees Kelvin. And even after all that, there was still like only a couple hundred nanoseconds or something like that. So I'll post a link to that, but they're getting there, but from more of a scientific than a practical standpoint.

Chris Gammell: Sounds just like the chip making machine. Ka-ching! There we go. Hey! Ouch!

Dave Jones: Flash, I think Flash started this way, though, too. Not talking about the chip machine, but the atomic level storage. You know, Flash started like that, too, where they were just getting used to it, and they had to figure out different mechanisms. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, Flash kind of came out of nowhere, I think. It was kind of like they really didn't expect it to be. Like, I think there were lots of other, like, other more mature, viable options out there, and all of a sudden, they didn't sort of get into production, but Flash did. And all of a sudden, wham! You know, Flash came out of nowhere and overtook the market. Because they actually had physical chips available you could buy in the end. And I think that's what one app.

Dave Jones: I'm reading about that, actually, right now. So, John Oxer, and I saw a couple other people talk about it, too. It's called The Innovator's Dilemma. And that's actually a book I'm reading right now. They talk about that and how none of the hard drive makers got into Flash because they just didn't see it coming. It was a disruptive technology. So, a very cool book so far if people are out there interested in that kind of thing. It's about, like, the entire process of, you know, how do you see stuff coming? Like, this future list we just talked about. People, you know, Dave or I or this IBM people, they guess right now. Or even, like, the Ray Kurzweils of the world, right? We're guessing. But there's no way to know. I mean, who's going to know, right?

Chris Gammell: Nobody gets it right, okay? If they did, they would write a book and here's the holy grail. You know, it's, no.

Dave Jones: And whoever did guess right, they get to say at the end, oh, ha, ha, ha, I told you. But it's like, yeah, but you could have said anything. You could say tomorrow there's flying unicorns, you know?

Chris Gammell: Exactly. And you're just one of a million people who said something. Your one just happened to be luck. You just happened to luck out and get it right, you know? Yeah. And as if poor old Moore, right? Poor old Gordon Moore, Moore's Law, right? He was probably lucky, okay? Well, he was very smart, too. Well, he was very smart, of course. But, you know, I think... Well, they did revise it. They revised it. Well, of course. Even if you ask him, I think you'll say, yeah, I was very lucky. I can't believe it lasted for as long as it did.

Dave Jones: Right. Or it's still going. One last thing. That actually works out really well because the last thing I wanted to mention about this, so with the atomic level storage. So basically, they're saying a single atom can store a bit, right? Yep. And so there is this research I heard about a while back. It was a guy that used to teach at my alma mater. And he did a calculation based on Moore's Law. It has a lifetime of 600 years. Beyond that, basically, every atom in the near light universe will be consumed by data. So the way that works, this is a weird calculation, but basically the way it works is every atom is storing a 0 or a 1, right? Yeah. Every atom within the amount of distance it takes to beam data back past the speed of light's event horizon. Yeah. All of that mass can only store so much data, and we're going to run out of it in 600 years.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I think it's bullshit, really.

Dave Jones: No, it's true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but that calculation can't be right. There's something that they're not factoring in. Clearly.

Dave Jones: You're right. There's something that they're not factoring in, but basically that's based on the exponential growth we see today, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, but exponential growth never sustains itself. I mean, it's just... Right, exactly.

Dave Jones: So that's probably the thing that's really going to limit it, but if we did, 600 years from now, we would run out of things to store data in. Isn't that amazing?

Chris Gammell: I think that's such a cool figure. I think that's so cool. Yeah, it's cool science fiction-y kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm more of a practical guy.

Dave Jones: Right, well, as a disclaimer, this guy also wrote the... What is it? The Science of Star Trek, I believe it was. Right, okay, there you go. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: They're still trying to match the human mind. You know, there was an article in this month's IEEE mag about technology to mimic the human mind and all that sort of stuff. Right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they've been saying that one for 50 years, haven't they? Oh, they'll keep saying it. Don't worry about that. They'll keep revising the targets because, you know, back 40, 50 years ago, they said, oh, if a computer could play chess, that is the definition of it's as smart as the human mind. Intelligence, yeah. And the intelligence. And if it can pass the Turing test and all sorts of things. Oh, yeah. It just keeps going. And they keep revising. And then they go, no, we're actually still much smarter, you know, than we think. Right, right. What can you do?

Dave Jones: Well, we could write another law about it. Well, yeah. Instead of Moore's law, we can call it the Amp Hour Law.

Chris Gammell: No, it needs a catchier name than that. No, yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Dave Jones: The Gamma Law. It's not catchy enough.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, I think our Amp Hour's up.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. By a bit.

Chris Gammell: By no pun intended.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: All right. Thanks for joining us, everyone.

Dave Jones: Yes, we will talk to you next week. In the new year. Will it?

Chris Gammell: Yes, it'll be the new year.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. Happy New Year.

Chris Gammell: 2011. Holy crap.

Dave Jones: Oh, man, we made it. One more year left, right?

Chris Gammell: Ah, and then we've only got until, what is it, 2012, until the world blows up. So, you know, we better get that advertising revenue in now.

Dave Jones: Well, we've still got a chance. Tell your friends, make everybody listen in the new year. Make it a New Year's resolution to tell your friend about the Amp Hour.

Chris Gammell: Thanks, guys. See ya. Bye. Bye.

Dave Jones: Bye.

Speaker ?: Bye. Bye. Bye.