#75 – An Interview with Ben Krasnow - Sprauncy Saccadic Spintherism

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Ben Krasnow: And I'm Ben Krasnow of BKras333 channel.

Chris Gammell: Hey, Ben, how are you doing? What's the other one? MagConceptDesign something, something, something?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, my soon-to-be-previous business website is magconcept.com.

Dave Jones: As in mag for magnetics?

Ben Krasnow: Right.

Dave Jones: Right, hence why you've done a few magnetic-type things in your videos and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: I think the general public might know you as that guy that does crazy things to himself on YouTube videos with electronics.

Ben Krasnow: Right, that would be the BKras333. It's really too bad that you can't change YouTube channel names. I'd really like to change my channel name. But once you pick one, which I picked years and years ago, I'm now stuck with.

Chris Gammell: Yep. You could start all over, I guess. You could redo all your experiments and everything, but that might...

Dave Jones: Re-upload your videos and re-get your subscriber base. No, it's terrible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That ruins you.

Chris Gammell: Well, Ben, welcome, and happy holidays. Thanks very much.

Ben Krasnow: Happy holidays to you, too.

Chris Gammell: Thanks a lot. I'm glad you could make it on short notice and at a weird time of the year. I mean, there's a lot of people that probably won't listen to the amp hour, but maybe they'll listen after the holidays, and we're glad Ben could make it on. Sure.

Dave Jones: It's a weird time, all right? I completely forgot about today. I'm supposed to be out there. My mate's out there building our quadcopter now, our canyoncopter. I had scheduled that, so I'm taking an hour's break and, yeah, recording the show.

Chris Gammell: That'll do it. Dave had too much eggnog. Wait, have you done a video on that quadcopter yet?

Dave Jones: No, we've recorded. We've just left the video going in the background as we build it and stuff like that, but we will eventually release and build videos and stuff like that. Oh, cool. Yep. At the moment, it's just a standard kit. It's a standard quadcopter kit, but we plan on modifying it. That's where the real interesting stuff will come into it. Yeah. We have to put flotation on it so it can land on water and sand and, you know, at weird angles and bounce off walls in the canyon and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Big old rubberized ball, basically.

Dave Jones: Pretty much, yeah. We have to brainstorm ideas for actually making things waterproof and it can splash down on water. So, yep. That's cool. The last thing you want to do is hike, you know, 10 kilometers into a canyon. Sorry, what's that? You know, six miles or something. Yeah. Into a canyon and then find that you're, oops, you know, you just drowned the thing and, well, you walk back out with your tail between your legs and go home.

Ben Krasnow: So, it sounds like your quadcopter is only going down the canyon. Hopefully, you'll be able to fly back up, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: No? Dave, you there? Uh-oh.

Dave Jones: Oh, mumbles mumbling.

Chris Gammell: Oh, mumbles mumbling. That's fine. So, it is able to fly back out of the canyon, though, Dave, too? That was Ben's question. All right. And onward from quadcopters. We might have lost Dave there for a second. No, I'm back. Okay.

Dave Jones: You guys vanished. I was happily talking to myself and recording myself. Right. Okay. All right. Oh, the perils of, well, the joys of the internet.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes. Well, let's get on to Ben's projects because that is why we had him on. We had Ben on because, Ben, you were a crazy person. I just got to say that from the outset. I mean, you were a crazy person.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, I get that a lot. It's kind of surprising to me because I've always been kind of a not a crazy person. But I guess people have different ideas of what crazy is.

Chris Gammell: So, can you quantify that statement? You've been not a crazy person. I mean, what's your background? Where are you coming from? And how do you feel you're not crazy? And then how did you transfer into crazy?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Oh, you know, I have kind of a standard nerdy background all through high school. I did typical nerdy type things, which is considered pretty far from crazy. I guess I just look at risk a little bit differently from other people. So, I don't really think the things that I do are particularly risky, although they are unusual. Okay.

Dave Jones: Like trying to stimulate your brain.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. So, that one actually ties into what I did for a living. I work with brain researchers. That was my previous business.

Dave Jones: Right.

Ben Krasnow: Where I built MRI compatible computer peripherals. So, things like keyboards and mice that would go inside MRI machines.

Dave Jones: So, you are a professional and you do know what you're doing.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Well, I don't know if I'd go that far. But, you know, I have a few ideas there.

Chris Gammell: You know which wires not to cut? Is that the idea? Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: You don't really want to, you know, direct brain stimulation would probably be out of the realm of what I'd feel comfortable with. But TMS has been used for quite a while. And single pulse TMS is shown to be pretty safe. There's really no reports of any lasting.

Dave Jones: So, for those who don't know, what is TMS?

Ben Krasnow: TMS is transcranial magnetic stimulation. Obviously. So, if you have a very rapidly collapsing magnetic field outside your skull, since your brain is mildly conductive, it actually causes a current to flow inside the brain. So, you can create electrical stimulation through the skull.

Dave Jones: So, it is the collapsing magnetic field. Right. When it actually collapses. That's the part that actually induces a signal in the brain.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. So, you basically got one half of a transformer. And you have something about 5,000 amps per second rise time or fall time on it. Actually, it's rise time. And so, the change in magnetic field causes that just to induce a current right locally inside the brain.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Ben Krasnow: See, that's the thing.

Dave Jones: That sounds like a mass, you know, that's a massive amount of energy, right? You know, 5,000 amps per second kind of collapsing magnetic. So, that sounds dangerous.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Well, I mean, definitely the most dangerous part is just the voltages involved. Obviously, to get 5,000 amps per second, you need a fairly high voltage to force all that current through. So, that's the worst part of it. Although, as far as actually like damaging brains through, you know, stimulating too much or whatever, that hasn't really been borne out by any of the actual testing that's been going on with actual professional research.

Chris Gammell: Huh. Right. So, where did the impetus come from to actually stimulate your own brain? I mean, on camera, on YouTube. I mean, I remember seeing this before I knew who you were. I think this is one of the first videos I had seen of yours. And I was just like, what the hell is this guy thinking? I mean, because you were – I mean, if people haven't seen the video, Ben's holding this – the half transformer basically, right? It's a coiled wrapped bar or something like that. Is that right?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. It's actually – it's an air coil. It's just some heavy wire wound up into a coil.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Okay. So, that's actually forcing a magnetic field through your brain because you're holding it up to your skull and you found your motor center. And then you can hear the snap because it's – you're cutting off the current, right? Right. Assumably with a relay and that then drops the field and then the – and then the current flows in your brain and then you show your hand twitching. Right. And that's the part where I said, what the hell is this guy doing? Yeah, it definitely looks weird.

Dave Jones: How far from your brain does it need to be? What's that? Because it obviously drops with the square of the distance. How – does it have to be right on your skull?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Does it have to be as close as –

Ben Krasnow: It does. And so, for – I mean, TMS is used in current brain research. It's currently a widely used technique. And so, everyone is trying to develop coils that focus the DBDT to the smallest area possible so that you can use it sort of like a needle. Whereas mine was just one single coil and that has a fairly large target area.

Dave Jones: Right. So, you're blasting the entire brain, huh? So, did you know that your hand was going to twitch? Was that the area of the brain you were trying to stimulate or was it just random and you could have – I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Because what happens if you pick the wrong spot and you just like shit your pants on the spot? I mean, like – Right. Do you have like be real film where you're like, oh, God.

Ben Krasnow: You know, it's a good thing. But, you know, fortunately through the process of evolution, brains have developed extremely robust control systems. And so, it's actually sort of impossible to trigger a response like, you know, pants crapping by just a single pulse TMS. Right. Okay. The researchers have been playing around with it for so long. That would have happened by now. Yeah, right.

Dave Jones: Well, that's the brown note, isn't it? What is it? Eight hertz? Eight hertz?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. We've talked about that on here before.

Dave Jones: Yeah, we've done a whole episode on the brown note.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. And similarly, you can't like shut down your stomach or like, you know – I mean, I wouldn't put it near your heart. But you can't cause, you know, heart problems from stimulating a brain and that sort of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. All that non-conscious stuff that's going on, right?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Yeah. So, the primary motor cortex is what controls skeletal muscles and that you can actually sort of, you know, randomly or stimulate manually with the coil like that.

Chris Gammell: So, I don't think you've answered my question though. Like, the why. Yeah. Why do you feel the need to do this to yourself? Is it just – is your brain just every day you wake up and your brain screaming, science! Yeah. Is that kind of it or is it like – I mean, your other videos kind of lean towards that too. I mean, I could see it but – Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: I like bringing people's, you know, horizons a little further out, right? So, it's good to remind people that, you know, science doesn't have to happen in a lab somewhere. It can happen in your own garage. And really, this isn't science because I'm not really answering questions that haven't been asked yet. I mean, this is all stuff that's already been found. You haven't answered my question of why would you do that?

Dave Jones: So, it's more of practical experimentation, right?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I mean, just showing people that, you know, it's fun to play around with this stuff and you can really do it with just one person in a garage. You don't need a research lab to support any of this type of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So, that was another of my – I don't know if I had this on the list but that is one of my questions. Do you have anything else there when you're filming this stuff or when you're doing these experiments just from a safety factor? Because that seems like a common theme in a lot of the comments of your YouTube videos. You know, like, oh, that's so unsafe, yada, yada, yada. And I get that you understand risk and I encourage it. But do you ever have anyone else there around? I mean, like, is that kind of a thing or how does that work out?

Ben Krasnow: No, no. I think pretty much every video I've made has been pretty much alone. You know, convincing people to get involved with this kind of stuff is, believe it or not, not as easy as you might think. So, tell them, hey, come on over. We'll just do a little brain twitching, you know? What do you think? Yeah. So, yeah, there's that. And, you know, I typically just like working alone anyway. But the really risky stuff, I mean, the real risk that I'm exposed to is standard stuff. It's just high voltage and, you know, falling off a ladder and things like that. The weird low pressure doesn't contribute much risk, I don't think.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, and that's the thing. If you understand it, you understand it. You know, like, sometimes there might not be a...

Dave Jones: Well, in a commercial big company environment where, you know, they do safety audits and stuff like that, I wouldn't be able to work alone in my own lab unless I had like a dead man switch or something like that that I had to push every hour. And if I don't push it, then somebody comes running, you know? Really? That goes seriously. That's, yeah. Yeah. But some companies are that paranoid about, say, you are simply not allowed to work on your own in your... Like, at home in your own office. So, yeah, it's crazy.

Chris Gammell: That's interesting from a, you know, a large scale point of view. I mean, if you look at it from, like, a lot of government regulations, I'm not sure what Australia is like, but at least like OSHA, you know, in the U.S. and a lot of industrial safety things. I think, to be perfectly blunt, Ben is not their target audience, you know? They're not looking for someone who understands the science like Ben understands it. They're looking for people who don't understand the science, to put it lightly, of the, you know, like regulations and safeguards in order to, you know, do so, right? So...

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm a real seasoned expert on TMS, but it is something that I've done for work, you know, a number of times and have seen it done on other people and have seen commercial TMS machines. And so, I wouldn't say I'm totally green with it. And a lot of the comments about, you know, the safety were sort of like, oh, you know, this is crazy. Why would you build a machine like that? Not realizing that these machines have been commercially available for 20 years or more, 30 years probably by now.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I thought we've talked about that on the show before because I had seen an article a long time ago about using it for clinical depression and stuff like that. Like, TMS is actually in use these days. I think it was Hugh Herr was talking about that in terms of like, oh, the future is here kind of thing.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. That's actually a big deal. So, TMS, you know, single pulse TMS, just one blast on the transformer hasn't shown to have any lasting effects. But if you use a repetitive pulse at, say, 30 hertz and give people like one second doses of 30 hertz, you actually can cause lasting changes maybe. I mean, this is still in the research phase. It's not really clinical yet.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's really cool. I mean, like.

Ben Krasnow: It's scary. And so, I would actually not do 30 hertz pulse trains on myself. I'm not too interested in lasting changes here.

Chris Gammell: Right. Unless the invention center of your brain goes crazy and then it's like an exponential effect then, right? Maybe we'll have to give that a shot.

Dave Jones: But you're into all sorts of.

Chris Gammell: Then you'll have to develop a maniacal laugh. Yeah, like that, dude. That's good.

Dave Jones: You're into all sorts of stuff, Ben. You're into. You built your own scanning electron microscope. You're into fluid lenses. You're into. You've got the eye retinal.

Chris Gammell: Well, you started with scanning electron microscope. Let's talk about that because I think. Yeah, yeah. That's. I think you beat Dave out in that tech contest, didn't you?

Ben Krasnow: No, I didn't. I don't think I won any contest for the electron microscope.

Chris Gammell: You entered that in the tech contest, didn't you? No.

Dave Jones: Which tech contest? Oh, as in the tech, techtronics contest.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, techtronics, there's like a scope contest. Didn't you enter in that?

Ben Krasnow: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. I did use a tech scope actually for the analog output display. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I used a really cheap like Philips, like, you know, surplus store cheapy oscilloscope. And then after I saw the tech contest, I hooked it up to my tech analog scope. And it actually didn't work as well as the Philips for a few reasons. Oops.

Dave Jones: But of course, that contest was rigged because it was just who had the most people vote for them. Oh, my God. I mean, so the first. Or who could write a script that would.

Ben Krasnow: You saw who won the first round, right? Yeah. That was so disgusting. I mean, that was really ridiculous. And so then they said, oh, okay, I guess we're going to have a judge section.

Dave Jones: It wasn't about how good the project was. That didn't matter, you know? I could.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Chuck a scope on the ground and that'd be my video, you know? Well, if it blew up, it would have been good. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. But this is a huge build, right? This is massive. Like, not only the electron microscope as well, but the rack of all the control stuff as well.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Tell us about how long did it take you to do all this?

Ben Krasnow: You know, I should have been keeping better track. I think it probably came out to somewhere around 100 hours cumulative.

Dave Jones: Is that all?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. It actually wasn't quite as bad as you might think. I mean, a lot of the components, like I bought a lot of power supplies, pre-made power supplies, high voltage, so that I didn't, you know, have to make them.

Dave Jones: Right.

Ben Krasnow: Just because that wasn't really the part of the project that I wanted to explore. It was really doing the electron column that was original. But, yeah, it was a really fun project. It's definitely the most complex thing I've ever designed or built.

Chris Gammell: Did you design your own vacuum system as well, or is that just a commercial pull as well? I remember seeing the bell jar, but I didn't remember about the vacuum, like what was drawing the vacuum itself.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, I put the whole vacuum system together. I had about a three-inch air-cooled diffusion pump that I had off eBay from a while back and put that together with a rotary vane pump and some other gauges that I got off eBay.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. So are you a pretty regular eBay scavenger? Or is that kind of your – are you always kind of on the lookout for these components? Or is it more of a – you were actually looking to design a specific electron microscope, and that's why you were searching out these main pumps and everything?

Ben Krasnow: I had a little bit of a leg up. I had the vacuum chamber already mostly built in my shop because I was doing aluminum vapor deposition earlier for other stuff, mirror making. As you do, yeah. Of course. Right. So, you know, starting with – I already had the bell jar and everything, which also came from eBay. So that helped out quite a bit.

Chris Gammell: And so the finished product then, so, I mean, like Dave said, there was a lot of controls for the vacuum and for the beam control and everything and the power supplies, like you said. But, I mean, are you still using this regularly? Was it just a can I do it kind of thing, or was it a I need to use this for XYZ?

Ben Krasnow: No, no. Unfortunately, even though the scope is fun to play with, it really – I don't think you could really use it for any sort of real research just because it has so many image aberration problems.

Chris Gammell: Like what? Can you expand on that?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. You know, there's so much noise in the scanning electronics and everything that the image kind of wavers around. And so when you get up into the high magnifications, there's really no image left.

Dave Jones: Right.

Ben Krasnow: So it has a lot of problems. So most of my projects, in fact, nearly all of the ones that I post on YouTube are just to see if it can be done and then the thing gets taken apart. But in the case of the electron microscope, I'm writing a book with the no-starch press. And so I have – That's great. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's the press. That's like Mitch Altman and – Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, exactly. Our boy Jeff. Yep, yep. Yeah, they told me they were working on a book on microcontrollers or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: So we were talking about doing a book about the electron microscope, and then we decided to kind of expand it out a bit to some other projects. Oh, that's great. That means I have to keep the scope running long enough so that I can get some more images off of it to get it to put the book together.

Chris Gammell: Well, just take all your pictures now. If you take it now, you'll probably be okay, right? Yeah, I hope it's all.

Ben Krasnow: So now I have a reason to actually not take it apart yet. Otherwise, it probably already would have been disassembled.

Chris Gammell: So do you have it like within caution tape in your lab because you're like, oh, you know, I really need a scope. Oh, I can't do that. I really need a high voltage. Oh, no, don't do it, man.

Ben Krasnow: It's really terrible. But to make the TMS thing, I already unhooked one of the high voltage suppliers to get some high voltage.

Chris Gammell: See, that's how it starts. That's how it starts. Next thing you know, you're going to be like, how do they build this again?

Ben Krasnow: I know, it's terrible.

Dave Jones: So you're into like, I'm looking through your list of videos here and a close look at supercritical carbon. And there's all sorts of weird and wonderful, you know, how to make silica aerogel at home and carbonated fruit. All sorts of weird and wonderful. What, you know, do you just go, do you just like search for ideas for this kind of stuff? Or do you, or does just one thing lead to another? You're doing research on your scanning electron microscope and that, you know, and you find a little area of some other thing. And, oh, that'd be interesting to work on.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. You know, it's sort of, it seems like one project does kind of parlay into the next one. But sometimes I'll get ideas of just chatting to friends about half-baked ideas. And then I, you know, go home and fully bake them, you know, it's really, I like half-baked ideas that you kind of work out. Like the contact lens thing was another one of these things where on the internet, every so often this same story shows up with the LED in a contact lens. And so I was talking about it with friends thinking, oh, come on, you know, it's really not that hard. And it's just...

Chris Gammell: So can you explain the problem a little bit more too if people haven't seen, I mean, obviously we'll post the video, but in case people haven't seen the video before listening.

Ben Krasnow: Sure. So there was a research group, I think at University of Washington that got a contact lens and put an LED inside it with some electronics and then put that contact lens into a rabbit's eye and then powered the contact lens remotely through inductive coupling.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Ben Krasnow: So, and they have some, I don't think they ever had a video of it, but they had some photos of it up on the site. And...

Dave Jones: So what is the point of having a single LED in there?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, it's...

Dave Jones: In a contact lens? What's the end result?

Ben Krasnow: Right. It's a bit more of a proof of concepts just showing what might be possible. So obviously the best thing would be to have an entire display in the contact lens. That way you could have either virtual reality or augmented reality with the display literally in your eye.

Dave Jones: Isn't it easy just to wear a pair of glasses? And then you can, you know, take them off because, oh, you'd have to take out the contact lens when you didn't want it anyway. So isn't a pair of glasses just easier? You can buy them on eBay now.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's certain benefits to having the optical system close to your eye. Depending what kind of focusing system you have, you can have the display and the contact in focus at the same time that you're looking out into the world. Whereas with glasses, you have a constant problem because you have to pick a focus, a focal length for the glasses to operate.

Dave Jones: Ah, right.

Ben Krasnow: And there's a couple other benefits too. Obviously, you don't have to wear glasses if you have the contacts in. No one could know if you're even using the display if you have the contacts.

Chris Gammell: Super secret James Bond stuff right there, right?

Ben Krasnow: But yeah, obviously, glasses are a good solution to it too that'll probably happen before contacts. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So no one has gotten past a single LED yet. They've just done single LED proof of concept. Nobody's done a matrix yet?

Ben Krasnow: That's a really good question. I don't know. If they have, it's really cutting edge. So, of course, my next video. Spoiler alert. Right, right. RGB this time, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, nice.

Dave Jones: Oh, wow. Yep. Just a single RGB.

Chris Gammell: I thought you were going to say you were going to pull the contact apart and use the wire inside the contact lens in order to do a different project. You know, totally unrelated. Could be.

Ben Krasnow: Could be. You never know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So do you have to have three separate coupling coils for that or have you got one coupling coil and demultiplexing circuitry or something?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. You know, you could do it a few different ways. I'm pretty sure the University of Washington group had a chip that actually was sort of like a powered RFID tag.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: But I think an easier way to do it would be to have a single coil with different capacitors. And so if it resonates at different frequencies, you could send power through different frequencies, just multi-channel it. Of course, then you're talking about, you know, three capacitors plus the coil plus LEDs. So it's getting a little bit heavy for an athlete. I've got to bring up here.

Dave Jones: We might as well have digital demultiplexing.

Chris Gammell: I think I've got to bring up this is actually, Dave, you cannot argue with me on this one. This is actually a good use of printable electronics because it's got RFID. It's got polymers, right? Of course. And this would actually be a realistic use of a printable electronic circuit. I don't know if, Ben, you know about the ongoing argument here on the Amp Hour.

Dave Jones: But I've never argued against printable electronics.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You're the one who keeps morphing the subject right from, you know, silicon. It started out as, you know, build your own silicon at home. And then it was, oh, once you realize that was a shit idea, then you've moved on to this printable electronics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on. Anyhoo. Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: I think that would be a realistic way of eventually doing it, though, because then, you know, you can actually have resolution there, you know. But, yeah, that's great proof of concept. I remember in the video you said it wasn't really wearable. Is this next generation actually going to be a little bit more wearable with the, instead of using tweezers to seal the contacts around it? Or how is that working?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, that was terrible. I mean, that was sort of a last-ditch effort just to get the video done in time. I mean, I just, like you say, this is sort of a little throwaway project that I was thinking of doing just to show people that there wasn't a whole lot of unusual stuff going on. It's literally just a coil with an LED. Yeah. So I pinched it together just to hold the thing together, you know, for 60 seconds so that I could put it in my eye to get some video of it. Yeah. But in reality, we'd need some specialized glues or something because I couldn't get the contacts to stick together well enough just by pressing them.

Chris Gammell: More like a press that was actually just around the edge, right, so that you could get that seal all the way around instead of like a pinch seal.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, that would be good. Or even just a glue that would actually adhere to the plastic of the lenses. I'm not really sure what they are. They aren't silicone, though.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they're some kind of weird plastic, right? I don't know.

Dave Jones: I think this project actually is very similar to sort of, you know, making your own chip at home kind of thing. It's easy to do one LED or one transistor, right? But then when you want to make it, but then that leap to actually having something usable is, you know, orders of magnitude greater complexity. Oh, yeah. Many orders of magnitude greater complexity.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sigh.

Ben Krasnow: It definitely, and I had comments on the video like, you know, oh, that's useless. One LED. What can you do with that? And so, obviously, they missed the point of the video, which was just to show that, you know, at the basic level, there's nothing weird going on. But, yeah, refining it into a full two-dimensional display would take, you know, a factory of machinery.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's still pretty cool, though. I like it. So, with this project, I mean, this wasn't for a commercial venture, but you mentioned that your mag design is moving into a new phase. I mean, are you looking to do this kind of stuff full-time, or what's your deal with that? Oh, tinkering, you mean? Yeah, tinkering full-time. I mean, are you looking at YouTube?

Ben Krasnow: Actually, so, yeah, so for the last seven or eight years, I've been running my MRI-compatible devices business, which has been sort of a one-person business. And just recently…

Dave Jones: Is that a part-time thing, or is that your full-time job?

Ben Krasnow: No, that's been my full-time job for pretty much the last seven or eight years, just about.

Dave Jones: All right.

Ben Krasnow: And it's worked really well. I've been living in the Bay Area here, and it's worked out well. But just in the last few months, I've started to work for Valve Corporation in Seattle.

Chris Gammell: That's pretty cool.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, yeah. It's been a lot of fun. And so, I mean, you know, it's unfortunately all top-secret stuff up there, so I can't get into too much detail. But it is hardware. And after seven or eight years of doing the MRI-compatible stuff, I was interested in trying something new. So it's actually worked out really well for me.

Chris Gammell: That's great. That's awesome. So, all right. So let's move from mag to tinkering to the kitchen. What is with this arganated beer? Because this is another project I saw, and I was like, what is going on with this? What was the… I mean, it was just like, you're like drinking Guinness one night. You're like, oh, I got to try some other noble gas or something, right?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, you know, this happens a lot. And so I…

Chris Gammell: Why not helium-nated beer, you know, so you could have like a higher-pitched voice?

Ben Krasnow: I know, yeah. This is exactly the kind of half-baked ideas that spawn these projects, you know, so… Involving beer? Is that what you mean? Yeah, well, it doesn't hurt, you know. Yeah, right? So I've been brewing beer at home for kind of a while as another side hobby, even though I haven't really done any videos about that. So I'm pretty familiar with the typical brew process and the typical carbonation process. And using argan… So yeah, Guinness is, I think, half nitrogen, half CO2, or even 75% nitrogen, depending who you ask. Right. And the reason for that is because it does change the beer's character. The nitrogen is not as soluble in the water as CO2 is. Yeah. So that when you pour the beer, more of the nitrogen comes out and it froths up and you get that nice Guinness head on there.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, and that's what they show in all the commercials too, those silly little bubbles.

Ben Krasnow: Yep. And they, you know, have the widget in the bottles to get the same effect on that stuff. And so… Yeah. So I figured, well, I've got a TIG welding set with a nice argon bottle there. I may as well try argon. Yep. Which isn't… Oh, man. You know, it honestly didn't really do a whole lot because argon is very similar to nitrogen in terms of solubility. Right. And so it has almost the same effect. But, well, the original half-baked idea that got this going was xenon-aided beer. Really? Is… Which is another noble gas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Heavier. And it has anesthetic properties even at atmospheric pressure. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Xenon is actually like a super high-tech anesthetic because it's not hydrocarbon-based. And it works, you know, very well.

Chris Gammell: So it absorbs into like stomach lining though or intestinal lining or how does that actually cause anesthesia?

Ben Krasnow: Oh, you need to put it into someone's breathing supply. The only downside is that xenon is so expensive you actually have to recover it. So they do have xenon anesthesia machines, but it actually has to pull the xenon back out of the exhaled airstream. Yeah. Wow. So I thought, wow, xenon-aided beer, I mean, this would be great. You could just, you know, get a little anesthetic property from the alcohol and the xenon maybe.

Chris Gammell: You know, Ben, I don't know if you've heard about this. I hear you live in the Bay Area. I mean, there's a lot of other things you can add to beer or, you know, do alongside beer that can cause pain reduction. Right. I'm just saying on a side note there.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, but that's, you know, come on. We've got to be high tech about this here. High tech.

Chris Gammell: High tech. High tech. Okay. All right. That's. So, but would xenon actually be with that? I mean, you're way outside my realm here. You're getting the chemistry realm here. So, I mean, would that be soluble and liquid or how does that work?

Ben Krasnow: I'd have to check again. I think it's probably comparable to argon. So not too much. Okay. But again, the major downside is it's just so expensive. And I want to play with flash tubes too, making my own xenon flash tubes. So I was kind of getting ready to order a tank of this stuff. But it's, there's kind of a big leap. Like if you accidentally cracked the valve open, you just lost a few hundred dollars.

Dave Jones: Wow.

Speaker ?: Wow.

Dave Jones: So how much of the time do you spend researching this stuff? And how much time would you spend actually practically working on stuff?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, I read on the internet an awful lot. But, um, all right.

Dave Jones: I can imagine it's mostly research, actually learning about these things before. Because I can imagine, you know, a lot of experimentation. Like if you just experimented without trying to research this stuff, you would waste a hell of a lot of time.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the internet is just so, such a great place for, for finding stuff out. And actually the Google patents has proven to be one of the best sources of information.

Chris Gammell: Interesting.

Ben Krasnow: So for the, I've been trying to.

Chris Gammell: What kind of stuff you found out there that you, that like, what's, what's your favorite one or how it even applies to some of the videos you've done?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. So I've been, so just today, actually, I was working on a super critical CO2 decavenation of coffee.

Dave Jones: As you do. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: And so I, I had a, um, uh, a video a while back where I tried to do this and it didn't work. Like I had a high pressure vessel and I got some dry ice in there with some coffee beans and pumped up the pressure and all that. And I didn't get any caffeine out of it. So I tried the same thing again last night with a much better chamber and I had more control over it. And I've got this like caffeinated sludge or what I hope is caffeinated sludge sitting in a beaker right now. And the process to figure out how to do all this.

Chris Gammell: See, now that's a YouTube video is you drinking that sludge and seeing what happens. You just do like a time lapse and see how, you know, your eyes widen and you start shaking.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. See, now you know how to get YouTube viewers. It sounds like you've got a pretty good idea of how to get more subscribers.

Chris Gammell: I've learned from Dave. I've learned from Dave. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: There you go. But yeah, I learned the whole process from Google patents. I mean, the entire coffee decaffeination process is spelled out in super high detail in all the patents.

Dave Jones: Huh. That's crazy. They're usually very difficult to read though. That's true. Because patents are written in a way that you're not supposed to understand. By lawyers. That's their job. Is that what you mean? By lawyers. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: I know. It's too bad that they don't have a summary that's like the layman summary at the top or something. But yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: That'd be a hell of a website. Like the patent translation website. You know, like go from, you know, Google patent one to Ben's video. I guess that would, I mean, I guess that's kind of what you're doing, right? I mean, how to go from caffeine extraction patent to caffeine extraction sludge. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

Dave Jones: There was a big news item the other day about Apple. Somebody, you know, there's all these geeks out there searching, you know, Apple patents and stuff like that. And one of them just popped up that they've been working on fuel cells. The, you know, the hydrogen based fuel cells for their iPhone and stuff like that. So that's a big news item. Now, Apple are going to revolutionize the battery industry and all that sort of stuff. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, they just do that. They just do that to prevent though, too. That's the problem. I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. You know, you got to find stuff that's already done. Right, Ben? I mean, like stuff that you've already heard about or seen.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I mean, like you say, a lot of my videos, people think that it's novel or something, but really it's just me showing that it can be done in a one person shop, that you don't need a research lab to support it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, that's a good takeaway from a lot of your videos, I think, is that, you know, you're trying stuff and it's definitely possible. So that's good. Yeah. Let's hear some more about your shop, though, because, I mean, I think Dave's starting up his shop and so there's a lot of shop talk around lately. And, I mean, I'd love to hear more about what's in your shop and, Dave, what's going on in your shop and just what you have in it and what you plan to, you know, everybody's got a wish list. We talked about wish lists and for Christmas and stuff, but, yeah, let's hear about your shop.

Ben Krasnow: Sure. Yeah. So I moved to the Bay Area in 2005 and rented a house that had a small two-car garage, which was my shop at the time, and that was about 250 square feet or something like that. So it was pretty cramped. I had a CNC milling machine in there, which took up about a quarter of the whole space. And the rest of it was so packed that to use the shop, I'd have to roll the door open and then wheel some equipment out so that I could get into the shop, which prevented working in the rain because the equipment would get rained on. So luckily, it doesn't rain very much. Anyway, so a few years ago, I bought a bigger shop in the Bay Area here. It's really just another garage, but it's pretty big. It's about 850 square feet and have the same CNC machine, but now it only takes up, you know, a tenth or a fifth of the shop or whatever. And so I've been adding other machines to it. It's mostly a mechanical looking shop. Like if you went in there, it would not look like electronics since most of the machines in there are metal and woodworking machines. So I've got, you know, a planer and a jointer and the CNC machine, probably about five different sanders, a shaper, a table saw, two lathes, the TIG welding machine. I think that's pretty much it for the large machine. And then a few benches for the electronics.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Because I remember seeing in your supercritical CO2 stuff, you actually created your own chamber from acrylic and metal, right?

Ben Krasnow: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So my actual degree is in mechanical engineering, even though that hasn't proven to be all that useful in any job I've had so far.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. That's right. I think in the tinkering field, you've got to be good at both.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, they don't have a degree in tinkering, unfortunately.

Chris Gammell: You know, have you ever heard of Travis Goodspeed? You know who that is? He does some like art and stuff. And I met him one time and he actually, he goes to University of Pennsylvania where they can name their own degrees. Oh, what? Yeah. His degree is in reverse engineering. So maybe if people want to go to University of Pennsylvania, they could go get a tinkering degree, but they'd probably have to, you know, make their own. That's awesome. Yeah. I know. I would definitely want to put that together.

Dave Jones: So the name of it would be based on your project or thesis or what? What's the...

Chris Gammell: No, you just name your own, but basically then you create a curriculum around what you're

Dave Jones: doing. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Naturally, it would have to be approved by...

Chris Gammell: Of course. Yeah. But I think if you give them enough money, you know. That's like any school, right?

Dave Jones: A wankery or something, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think, no, Travis does some good stuff. He does a lot of... He turned one of those like pink handheld I am me. Like it's like this instant messaging toy for, you know, it's branded for girls because it's all pink and girly and whatever. And he turned it into a spectrum analyzer. Really? It was awesome. Yeah. Fantastic. He showed it to me. It was like a, you know, a 900 megahertz spectrum kind of stuff. So you could get a pretty decent band around that. It was awesome. So... It is awesome. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: That's the kind of stuff they should be doing in college classes. Actually, my sort of long, long-term goal for my career is to have some effect on higher education because I think it's pretty much broken fully at this point. Oh, yeah. And having a degree where you actually reverse engineer a toy and make it into a spectrum analyzer would just be supremely useful. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just touching on that, how do you think it's broken?

Ben Krasnow: Well, I mean, I... Like I said...

Dave Jones: Not being based in the US. I've heard horror stories, but can you...

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I mean, I went to two universities. I did two years at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and then finished up my degree at UC Santa Barbara. And I liked UCSB okay. It was a good place to study. But the type of things that are taught in class are just not all that applicable to the real world. And so there's this huge divide between theory and practice. And it's just so far apart. It's almost bimodal at this point where the theory is just not even close to being appliable.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. It's mainly for research labs and high-level simulations and all that other stuff that you'll never get down into it, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And if you want to go back and teach it, that's about all it's good for, right?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: So it's a bit self-perpetuating in that respect. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: And it's also self-perpetuating in that if you want to become a professor and actually teach practical application, you have to get your PhD first, which weeds out anyone who's with a practical mindset. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That sort of instantly rules you out, doesn't it? Rules you up to life.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I might have to do it eventually just so I can get back in there. But it would be a tough, long road for me, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, interestingly, I don't know if you guys have seen the news articles recently, but Stanford and MIT, Stanford did that artificial intelligence class last semester. And they're actually doing a bunch more now. They're doing machine learning and game theory and a bunch of others. And that's just for fun, right? That's just for people to learn. And that's the best part of it, right? It's like people are actually learning versus, oh, just doing it for a degree. That's not that people that get degrees aren't learning. But MIT now is actually doing a program where people can get like a certificate. It's not necessarily good for a degree, but it's a free, some of the free online classes, they're taking it to the next level where it's like, you know, if people complete it, there's actually some kind of recognition of that. And so maybe that's moving towards some kind of future where, you know, you're tinkering in your shop like Ben is. And then you take some online classes and hopefully, you know, it's free-ish or low cost and you can move towards a degree in some way, you know?

Ben Krasnow: I think a lot of proactive employers are actually realizing this. And so, I mean, hopefully, places like hackerspaces will be able to certify people or whatever in some way. Or even you could just say you've spent enough time at a hackerspace to be, you know, known there. And an employer would see that and realize that that's way more useful than just having someone fresh out of college who hasn't had any hands-on experience. Certified nerd.

Chris Gammell: I like it. I like it. Certified hacker. Yeah, right. There you go. Certified hacker.

Dave Jones: If I was interviewing someone and they put, you know, I'm a member of a, you know, I'm a senior member of a hackerspace and I'm there, you know, five times a week, they would bang, you know? Yeah, exactly. Instantly get the job, I think, over somebody who doesn't, pretty much. I mean, that'd be a huge, huge deciding factor for me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Definitely. Ben, are you part of any hackerspaces out in the Bay Area? No. Now that I just gave that, now that I just said how great it was. A fan but not a participant? Is that the area?

Ben Krasnow: You know, I really should. The nearest one is Noisebridge, of course, in San Francisco. And I've only met Mitch Altman a couple times. And when I did the scanning electron microscope, a few guys from Noisebridge came by my booth at Maker Faire. They have a semi-functional scanning electron microscope at Noisebridge. Oh, cool. So I was going to go up there and kind of play with it a bit and compare notes, but it hasn't happened yet. Even though I'm physically fairly close to San Francisco, there's still a big, you know, it still takes a while to decide to drive up there and then drive up there, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's a big time thing, isn't it? It's, but, you know, I'd love to hang out at a hackerspace. Even if it was next door, I probably, well, if it was next door, but, you know, even if it was five minutes drive away, I probably wouldn't be able to spend that much time there because it's just a, you know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We've talked about this before, too. I mean, Jeff ran into the same problem. I talked about the same problem. You know, if you have a lab at home, you know, you have stuff you're working on, then there's less incentive, but obviously the community aspect is still a good thing. That's what you really want to get at, but the real driving factor is the access to equipment. So it doesn't seem like that's a big problem for you, Ben, with your shop.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, my sort of lifelong goal here is to have a really nice shop in my backyard, and so I've pretty much gotten that one just about done.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. It seems very impressive, I have to say.

Dave Jones: So the shop is actually in your backyard, is it?

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Is that the...

Chris Gammell: Okay, so yeah, you said a new garage. You must have moved in order to get that bigger garage or something.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, so when I was looking for a house, I kept telling the real estate agent, well, it's really more about the garage. The house could be almost anything, and she was kind of annoyed by that.

Dave Jones: I take it you don't have a wife, then. No. No. Well, that answers the question, how we can spend all this time on this stuff, because that's the only way you can do it, folks. So there you go.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, I can see that being a bit of a factor, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a big deal, you know. It's like, yeah, it literally is a big deal when you have a, not so much a partner, you know, a wife, but, you know, and a family, but just having a partner and, you know, and having, you know, social activities and other commitments outside of, you know, and chores and things to do outside of your hobby.

Chris Gammell: Oh, now you're just saying Ben doesn't have any responsibilities. I'm sure he's got tons of stuff.

Dave Jones: Well, it's, you know, I can remember what it was like when I had no partner, you know. It was like, if I didn't wash up today, it didn't matter, you know. Oh, like that. Yeah, that's interesting. That kind of thing, yeah. You know, I didn't have to drop everything I was working on, ruin my train of thought and go and do the chore that she wants me to do, you know. So, you know, that can suck away a lot of the time.

Chris Gammell: Dave's saying he's jealous. That's what I'm hearing. That's why he moved out into his new shop. He's getting away from the wife. That's what it is. Oh, so you're off site now, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. I've got the separate office. The video's up. I'm building my, I just put the video up the other day. Yeah, it looks great, man. I bought a new office. And it's about a five minute, about a three minute drive away, about an 18 minute walk or something. So, it's within walking distance, which is good. And, yep. And it's basically the nearest thing I could get to my house, pretty much. So, that was the deciding factor, you know. How close is it to my house? It's within walking distance. I'll buy it. Thank you very much, you know. Yeah, that's great.

Chris Gammell: Dave, you were looking for more things to put into your space. I mean, you've got a pretty good size too there. I think maybe you should take a note from it.

Dave Jones: I've got plenty of rack space. So, if the likes of Agilent or Tektronix or BK Precision or X-Tech or anyone else wants to.

Chris Gammell: You were putting out the floor space that you had there. I think you should take a page out of Ben's book and start putting in some mechanical.

Dave Jones: I've got to fill up the rack space first. Oh, yeah. Before I start on the floor space.

Chris Gammell: Nah.

Dave Jones: And then I'll get a pick and place machine. So, if there's any pick and place manufacturers out there who want some publicity, I can help you out there in exchange for a nice shiny pick and place machine. Hey, it's worth a try, right? Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: See, there you go. You're definitely an electronics first guy. And I think I might even be...

Dave Jones: I'm an electronics first. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: I'm definitely more of a mechanics person myself when it comes down to it. And electronics might be more of a secondary thing for me.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's totally... Yeah. My shop, you know, I've got a set of screwdrivers. And that's pretty much my entire mechanical thing in my new lab, you know. Yeah. That's pretty much it. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of mechanical, Ben, I remember you did a 3D printing video. You did your own with like a hot glue gun and an XY controller, right? Yeah. A hot glue gun.

Dave Jones: Well, it was even... A hot snot gun, as we call it here in Australia. Hot snot, mate.

Ben Krasnow: Hot snot. You know, there wasn't... In fact, the XY controller was a set of hands, just a human hands holding it. Oh, really? Okay, yeah. I built that specifically for a grade school lecture, if you want to call it a lecture. I basically brought that thing to a grade school to show them how a 3D printer works.

Chris Gammell: Okay. That's awesome.

Dave Jones: Well, that's a great concept at a macro scale, you know. Yeah. You know, here, here's the huge glue gun. You can see the big droplets of glue coming out, you know, that kind of thing. So, as a concept demonstrator, that's a good idea.

Ben Krasnow: Sorry, you guys dropped out there for a minute.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Well, Dave was just... He likes the concept that I do, too. I think that from an explaining perspective, that's a great idea. But my question was going to be, I mean, you said you probably weren't going to have a 3D printer in your shop, and I was just wondering about your outlook for 3D printing. And I think, Dave, I thought I saw you mention you might have gotten a MakerBot. Is that right? Am I dropped out, too? No, no, I can hear you. Okay. Well, maybe Dave dropped out, too. Yeah. But, yeah, what's your take on the future of 3D printing? I've been dropping out the whole show.

Dave Jones: I haven't heard half this show, guys.

Chris Gammell: Where's that? Why not, basically?

Ben Krasnow: Well, no, it's not that I'm negative on it. It's just that I think I would prefer to have other tools first. Like, for example, a laser cutter would be a bit more useful to me than a 3D printer. Of course, having both is always better.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. Okay.

Dave Jones: I'm massively excited about the prospect of getting my MakerBot.

Chris Gammell: I was asking that. So you are getting one? Is that right? I am getting one. They're sending me one. Yep. That is awesome. I'm excited for you, too, man. That's great.

Dave Jones: And the first thing I thought, holy shit, I can print my own case for my calculator watch now, you know?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, I was just going to say, for electronics, I mean, obviously, the major application is doing custom enclosures, which are difficult to do, even with a nice CNC milling machine. So 3D printing is especially good for shells and project enclosures.

Dave Jones: Although I've said this before, I'm a huge fan of using off-the-shelf enclosures and designing your product around that. It just means everyone can get it. And they are quite low cost. You know, if it only costs a dollar or two for a commercial box, then, you know.

Ben Krasnow: That's true. I was thinking of things that happen.

Dave Jones: They're going to be better than anything you can make on your MakerBot, quite frankly.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I was thinking of products that would require...

Dave Jones: Because they're fully injection molded and everything else, you know, and they're tough and they're, you know.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, like specialized shapes. Like if you wanted to make something that was wearable. Oh, yeah. Specialized.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wearable and things like that. Totally different. Yeah. Ballgame.

Chris Gammell: Huh.

Dave Jones: So how soon are you getting that, Dave?

Chris Gammell: Is that next couple weeks?

Dave Jones: Well, they send in it as soon as possible. I think they're out of stock at the moment. I think that's one of the problems. But anyway, yeah, I haven't heard. But it'll eventually turn up.

Chris Gammell: That's great.

Dave Jones: It'll be fantastic. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's great. Yeah, cool. So, Ben, what about future projects? What's coming up since you're... I mean, you said the caffeine thing is another thing. I mean, are you got other things? Are you going to do more thermite? I saw your thermite video. Thermite? Yeah.

Dave Jones: As in the explosive thermite?

Ben Krasnow: You didn't see that video, Dave? He cooked with thermite. Oh, yeah. Cooked a shish kebab. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Okay. We've just been flagged by the FBI's auto surge detection algorithms. Goodbye, world. They'll be at your door in the FBI.

Chris Gammell: 10 minutes.

Ben Krasnow: Shut the sound. See you later. Someone did actually want me to replicate the Mythbusters thermite experiment where they put it on ice and actually did have an explosion. I mean, thermite doesn't explode by itself if everything is going, you know, normally. Right. But supposedly...

Chris Gammell: You need that magnesium stimulus or whatever. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: You can put a magnesium fuse on it to get it started. But apparently, if you put it on a block of ice, you can actually get an explosion. And this is one that I probably won't try because you need to do it on a scale large enough to cause like a lot of steam formation. One theory is that the steam causes it to actually explode. Right.

Dave Jones: So, your entire garage could go up. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, I have limits too. You can call your real estate agent back up and be like, I need another big garage.

Dave Jones: Let's go bigger. Yeah. I can see the headline, crazy YouTube inventor.

Chris Gammell: Right. So, yeah. Even I have limits.

Dave Jones: Blow into bits in garage explosions.

Chris Gammell: See, there we go, people. Ben knows safety. He knows not to replicate steam explosions. Right. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: But yeah. So, the caffeine extraction will be one of the future videos. I've got another technique for drying aerogel. So, instead of using supercritical CO2, I'm going to try using supercritical methanol, which is – this one I'll definitely get flak for too because it is pretty dangerous. It's high temperature, high pressure methanol. And I'm definitely going to try that one. I'll probably get some comments on that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, who cares? So, what about – I mean, more chemistry stuff? That seems like – chemistry seems like a very interesting, like, niche topic. You know, like, I don't know. How did you get into the chemistry side of it in general? Was it just the D.A.R.E. stuff like you talked about? Or do you actually have a chemistry bent to your experimentation?

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. I don't – that's just kind of the phase I'm in right now, I guess. I don't know. I got started with the CO2 stuff. What was the start of the CO2 stuff? I don't know. I guess it was just the super critical CO2 to start and then kind of got interested in high pressure systems and stuff like that. There actually is a really good chemistry community on YouTube. Guys like NerdRage and all those guys that post chemistry-related videos. Pretty popular stuff.

Chris Gammell: Okay. I'll have to check that out. I've never seen any of those.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah. There's a lot of guys that post amateur chemistry videos. And most of them – you know, it's unfortunate that everyone associates chemistry with bomb making nowadays or meth making or whatever. It's either bombs or meth.

Ben Krasnow: And so, there's a lot of stigma associated with doing chemistry at home. People think you're up to something evil always.

Chris Gammell: Doubly so if you blow up your shot. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's nice.

Dave Jones: Well, we're – us electronics guys, we're branded as bomb makers now. You know, if you try and take any improvised – quote marks – improvised electronic device through an airport, you are screwed.

Chris Gammell: That's true. Yeah. Or you ship it to the Jacksonville mayor's office, right, Dave? We talked about that up here before.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Yes. Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, let's –

Dave Jones: You crazy Americans. I don't know.

Ben Krasnow: No, it's bad. I agree. Paranoid Americans. Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, it's – I think everyone basically hates airport security. And it's just – actually, I read recently that someone was actually touting the value of security theater. So, even tricking people into thinking that flying is safer than it is is worthwhile because it helps lube the economy along. Right. Nice.

Dave Jones: Well, that's probably true. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's in some way, shape or form, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, we're kind of starting to run down on time. But I'd like to hear a little bit more about your education bend of things, you know. So, perfect world. What's your perfect world education model? I mean, how would you do it? And what would it involve for a student and for a teacher?

Ben Krasnow: I would probably keep the university education – or sort of compress a typical four-year BS degree down to about one year of class. Okay. And then the remaining two, three, or whatever years would be essentially a work study or an internship or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Ben Krasnow: Unpaid or paid or whatever. But, I mean, basically, you could compress the four years of theory down into one, I think, pretty easily. And that would basically cover it well enough for most engineering degrees.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Huh. That's interesting because there's actually a model in Germany. And there's a link on here about that. But, basically, you know, it's the apprenticeship model. And there is some – you know, they work with companies to help develop curriculum and stuff like that. But a lot of it is targeted towards getting people into a workplace so they can actually learn on the job. And then there's some buy-in from employers and stuff too. So, I don't know. Is that kind of what you're talking about or more even just hands-on in a lab at a school? Is that more of the idea?

Ben Krasnow: I think it could work either way. I mean, the trick is that you would actually be working on projects that are real. I mean, doing the school stuff is just so far removed. It just – it has no – I mean, I had one professor try to explain it to me is that the stuff we were doing in class is a mental exercise. And then it just got your brain strong enough so that when you left school you could use your strengthened brain on actual problems, which is ridiculous. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Dave Jones: Not everyone wants to do that, no, though. Not everyone wants to work on practical stuff. Yeah. Some people just – or some people just want their – once you get your engineering degree, there's a lot of stuff you can work on that doesn't require you to – that's important stuff that doesn't require you to actually build anything or do anything like that, actually design anything.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, that's a good point. And I think we should probably separate people based on what they want to do. Yeah, totally. I mean, currently, if you call yourself a technician, at least in the U.S., that means that you're not an engineer and that you're just going to be following someone else's design or something.

Chris Gammell: It also means you're probably better than most engineers at soldering and circuit repair and everything else. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Ben Krasnow: But again, there's a stigma and there's also a salary difference. If you call yourself a technician or you go to a trade school, you're not going to be competing for the same engineering jobs that people with a B.S. have typically.

Chris Gammell: That's a good point. Yep, yeah.

Ben Krasnow: Which is too bad. I mean, that makes no sense at all. I mean, it's – yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I'd like to give a personal shout out to all the technicians that helped me over the years. That's right. Yeah. I mean, that's how I learned a lot of stuff.

Ben Krasnow: I mean, I consider myself a technician just because mostly what I've been doing for the MRI business and basically Valve, too, is that it's all just hands-on work. It's not high-level engineering.

Chris Gammell: So less system kind of concept but more trying stuff out. Yeah, I mean – I don't know. There's a lot of fun in that, too. Oh, yeah.

Ben Krasnow: Certainly for me, I enjoy it way more. Definitely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. And maybe that's – I don't know. Maybe that's the future of hardware, too. Because, you know, you look at high-level systems, right, and how even FPGAs are constructed and just systems constructed with FPGAs or programmable systems, that kind of thing. You know, there is more of a trend towards reusable hardware and hardware not being as much of an issue, right, abstracting that all out. So at that point, then the quote-unquote architects would be, you know, the high-level software people and the hardware people would be more of the getting it done kind of thing. But obviously, there's a lot of realities in there that, you know, don't really match that. But that might be –

Dave Jones: There's so many permutations and combinations. It's not funny. I mean, it's –

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: I mean, I could see a world where software is a little bit more involved or would involve more engineering than I guess the hardware would in some ways. Because I guess it's just where you draw the line between engineering and technicians' work. You know, is assembling like a reference schematic or something, is that considered technicians' work now? I don't know. So, I don't know.

Dave Jones: There are no boundaries. Everything blurs. I mean, it's – you know. I've worked on so many things over the years that can be classified as, you know, all sorts of things. I can be a statistician. I can be a production engineer. I can be a system designer. I can be a, you know, a ceramics engineer. I could be a, you know, anything. I could be a technician. I could be a production worker, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've worked on everything. Well, no. I probably haven't even scratched the surface yet. I've worked on probably 10 different disciplines or job titles I could call myself or something like that. 10 different areas of engineering. Right, yeah. I'm sure I haven't even scratched the surface. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and I felt the same. I mean, I think that's the most fun when you get to bounce around. But then there's also the – I think education systems kind of favor the truly focused and, you know, like super specialized – that's what PhD systems are towards, right? You know, if you have a PhD, then you're working on one very small part of one very specific research sector. So it kind of fits that model, but – Yeah, it gets – yeah, definitely. It's less fun.

Dave Jones: And the interesting thing with that is that then you will get hired based on the fact that they think you can do that sort of thing and you can apply it to something else. Whereas in a lot of cases, you can't. Yeah, that's that argument for mental exercise or whatever. Because you just don't have the – you don't have the aptitude for that. Yeah, you've just spent three years working on one little – one – you know, one – your PhD, whether it's a practical or a theoretical one. It doesn't mean you can apply those things to some other project.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, it also makes a big difference to how well you can work with other people and, you know, not pointing any fingers or anything, but sometimes –

Dave Jones: No, engineers don't work well with others. That's just – the good engineers don't. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, who were you going to point a finger at? Were you going to point a finger at –

Ben Krasnow: Oh, like you say, I wasn't pointing – not to point any fingers or anything, but, you know – Nah, that means you are pointing fingers.

Dave Jones: Oh, I'll raise my own fear. I don't play well with the other kiddies, you know.

Ben Krasnow: No, I wasn't going to single out engineers in general. I was going to imply that typically the, you know, the higher level specialized people that focus on one topic narrowly are a little more difficult to work with just because they've been focused on their topic so much that they can't relate to any other part of the project. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. See, I consider myself a complete generalist in that respect. I think I can pretty much contribute to almost any area of any particular project. You know, I can come in and go, well, you know, yeah, I can work – I've got ideas for that even though I've never worked on it before. Dave has opinions on everything.

Ben Krasnow: I do. I think it's good. So do I. Oh, people should have opinions on everything. And having a little bit of background on all topics is much more useful than having, you know, super high depth on one topic or at least in my opinion.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: It depends on what you're working on. I've required things where you need somebody who's worked 20 years on that one thing, you know. Right. It's so vital that, you know, they've got so much, you know, knowledge in that area that you just can't do without it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So as always, there's a need for all types. But in general, yeah, I think your more creative engineers are less social than your, you know, possibly your run-of-the-mill engineer, I would hazard a guess.

Ben Krasnow: Could be.

Chris Gammell: Well, I guess we should go hide in our caves and think about that. I can't talk to you guys anymore because I'm going to prove I'm a decent engineer. That's right.

Dave Jones: Anyway, our amp power's up.

Chris Gammell: It is. It is.

Dave Jones: Our capacity is depleted. Thank you very much, Ben, for joining us.

Chris Gammell: Oh, thanks very much for having me on. It totally flew by.

Ben Krasnow: Yeah, it did.

Dave Jones: Which of your awesome videos would you like us to link into the show notes? Because we have to put at least one video link in there. Oh, we'll put a couple.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, what's your favorite?

Ben Krasnow: Oh, well, I guess either the contact lens or the electron microscope. Of course, if you're interested, you could put my cake-making videos up there, which are actually, on any given week, are the most popular things on my channel.

Dave Jones: Right, cake-making, yeah.

Ben Krasnow: That's awesome. Okay.

Dave Jones: Just like my most popular video is a Kindle review, you know, go figure.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Good old general population. Yeah, I know. Yeah, you can't beat it.

Dave Jones: I am resisting the temptation to do more general videos. Oh, that's good. Like that would appeal to the mass market. Yeah, I support that.

Chris Gammell: I support that, too.

Dave Jones: But considering that this is my full-time living, you know, it is a big temptation.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, we could find Ben on Google+, right? Ben, you're on Google+, we'll link people into there. Yep. You're bcraz333 on YouTube. Unfortunately, yes. Yes.

Dave Jones: That's B-K-R-A-Z-333. Right. Yep. Which is an unfortunate name which you wish you could change. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And you can find me and Dave at the usual places. I'm at Chris underscore Gamble, Dave's EEV blog on Twitter.

Dave Jones: I am luckily at EEV blog. Yeah. I chose that name when I started and stuck with it and it seems to have worked. I don't have to change it. Yeah.

Ben Krasnow: I'm lucky. It's better than mine, you know.

Dave Jones: Pure luck. I didn't have any foresight in that area and lucked out.

Chris Gammell: Yep. All right. Well, thanks again, Ben. And we'll hope to talk to you soon and we'll look forward to seeing more of your videos because hopefully you survived them.

Ben Krasnow: Oh, definitely. Definitely. I think I shoot for about one a week now these days. That's awesome. Awesome.

Dave Jones: Excellent. And sorry if I appear distant today, I haven't heard half this show. The Mumble server has just been its worst ever. Oh, that's too bad. It's absolutely shocking today. Oh, okay. So I have to actually play this back and listen to it because I literally missed half of it. Oh, wow. So if things don't make sense, that's why.

Ben Krasnow: Oh, no worries. All right. Actually, I didn't even notice.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. There you go.

Chris Gammell: I was smiling the whole time. Dave was talking. I'm so little.

Dave Jones: This might be our best episode ever. Yep.

Chris Gammell: We'll see you next week. See you, guys.

Dave Jones: We can actually hear your bandwidth getting started.

Ben Krasnow: We can actually hear your bandwidth getting siphoned off right now. We can't hear your bandwidth in here.

Speaker ?: We can hear your bandwidth in here. We can hear your bandwidth in here. We can hear your bandwidth in here.