#83 – Aggravating Agersia Agiotage

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour Podcast, recorded February 19th, 2012. Episode 83, Aggravating Aggersia Agiotage.

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

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

Dave Jones: Hey, Chris.

Chris Gammell: Hey, Dave.

Dave Jones: We screwed up again?

Chris Gammell: Oh, on multiple fronts. We should announce, Bunny Huang is not here right now. He's nowhere to be seen. Yeah, I got that completely wrong last week.

Dave Jones: Well, you were hungover from, A, drinking live on the show, and, B, you're only off the plane for a couple of hours.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's probably a bigger thing. But, yeah, Bunny's next week. Hopefully. Well, you know, we got to check his schedule still. But, like, he's scheduled, but we got to make sure. We have to verify. That's the main thing.

Dave Jones: And it's Monday, right?

Chris Gammell: It is Monday. Yeah, it'll be your Monday.

Dave Jones: My Monday, not Tuesday. I got up this morning. Not a care in the world. It was going to be MakerBot Monday. It was going to be the MakerBot Bill again. MakerBot Monday. MakerBot Monday. Yeah, it sounds like a song. Manic Monday. Manic MakerBot Monday. Just another MakerBot Monday. That could be the name of the show, Manic MakerBot Monday.

Chris Gammell: There you go. Boom. All right. All right, we're doing better already.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, I had just completely forgot that we had decided to shift the show to Monday, my time. And because it was Tuesday the last two weeks because we had Jeff on because you were away. So we slipped back to Tuesday and I just got into the Tuesday mode again.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think we'd only done the Monday once, hadn't we, or something?

Chris Gammell: Something like that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't affect our listeners. They listen when they want to. The magic of podcasting.

Dave Jones: So I didn't feel so bad because you screwed the pooch too. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: It's always wonderful. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Just like in a company, when everyone's at fault, no one's at fault, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You just all kind of laugh about it, go out for beers after work, and everything's good.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Then you all get fired. You know, the $20 million project's down the toilet, but who cares because no one's at fault, right? I love it.

Chris Gammell: You know who's at fault there? Management for not planning better.

Dave Jones: Exactly. That's the ticket.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That one always works, right?

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. They're going to blame themselves. Sure.

Chris Gammell: Sure. Yeah. Speaking of poor planning, how's your MakerBud build going?

Dave Jones: If you've seen the five hours worth of live casting. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I started watching that when you had it live last week.

Speaker ?: Yeah, you started watching it.

Chris Gammell: And man, that was boring.

Dave Jones: Boring as bad shit, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty boring. Building a MakerBud is not...

Chris Gammell: You should do a TV show about building a MakerBud. It'd be like... Did you ever see the movie The Truman Show with Jim Carrey? Yeah, yeah. It's great. Where it's just like his life? Yeah, that's so boring.

Speaker ?: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Inside the dome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But at least he's unaware of it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Well, no, his life is exciting. It's just exciting to everyone else because everyone else is in on the joke. You know, maybe everyone else is in on the joke laughing at us because we're trying to build this bloody thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. MakerBud's actually watching you guys build it and they're like, wait till they find out we didn't include that screw.

Dave Jones: Screw right at the end. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Just that one little tiny screw. Oh, man.

Dave Jones: We thought that had happened on a couple of occasions because we couldn't find the damn things. We spent like half an hour looking for one screw.

Chris Gammell: That's tough.

Dave Jones: Literally. It's just, oh, and I don't know.

Chris Gammell: So you're still pretty negative on the whole kit thing, huh?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. It is very time consuming. And I'm sure it's very satisfying at the end when you actually see it actually print out a little 3D bunny rabbit or something. But, gee, you know. Yeah. It's tough. We got the second. We got two sub assemblies built. I'm not sure how many are to go. But these are just like we did the Y sub assembly, the Z. And I don't know. I think we're up to the X. Or maybe we did the X. But, yeah. So hopefully we can actually start assembling the big frame thing today. So that's the. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's always the key. You know, you always feel like that's the most accomplished thing. But usually that's the.

Chris Gammell: It's just a.

Chris Gammell: It's psychological, right? That's not the hard part.

Dave Jones: No. We've just got the build platform, the heated build platform, which was supposed to take 40 minutes. And then, you know, it actually took two hours. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have to do any soldering or anything? Not yet. Will you? There will be some soldering today. Yes. There's one board in there, which is a kit of parts. I'm not sure why. Because all the other boards are assembled and tested and, you know, stepper motor. Oh, that's right. Because it's through hole. Yeah. I think I did this on.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Unboxing. Because, yeah, anything SMD, they didn't. But there's this one through hole board that came as just a bag of bits.

Chris Gammell: Well, at least you know how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And you can practice your speed. Did you hear about the Spark Funds doing their little speed soldering contest?

Dave Jones: No, I didn't. Oh, yeah. I haven't heard about that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's like at some bar. They're having like a speed soldering contest. So, if people don't know about that, I'll pump a link in there. Right. Yeah. It's a cool idea. I like it. Okay. You know.

Dave Jones: Is it SMD or through hole?

Chris Gammell: I think both. I think they're going to, I think they're doing kits and.

Dave Jones: Okay. Yeah. Are you allowed to use mechanical advantage tools like a big proper ball tilt PCB stand?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, more than the Panavise. You know, really fancy one that actually. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: They should have like different divisions. Right. I'm telling you, man. New Olympic sport right here.

Dave Jones: Right. The old farts like me who don't use these fancy Panavise scenes. We just put the board flat on the bench. Right. And flip it over.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I would. I, that's how I do it too. You know, torque the leads a little bit. So, they, uh, so the parts stay in there.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And then they just flip it over.

Chris Gammell: They should have like a no flux, uh, no flux division. Right.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yeah. And there's an SMD toaster reflow oven, you know, uh, version. Yeah. Well, you have to be modern, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. You could have a, uh, yeah, you could have a lot of different, a lot of different versions. I'm not sure. I don't know if I'd participate because I, I'm pretty slow, but I bet there's some, uh, some technicians out there that are just killer, you know?

Dave Jones: But is, is this like a, like a live thing where people get together, like in a hackerspace somewhere or can you submit a video?

Chris Gammell: No, it's at a bar. This is like a live event out in Colorado.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So if people live in Colorado, they can, uh, they can, they can go out there. And, and one of my, one of my, uh, former coworkers lives out there now and he, uh, he was challenging me to go out there, but I, I can't, I can't do it time-wise, but you know, I guess people could have their own.

Dave Jones: How far is Colorado from you? That's a fair hike.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh yeah. It's like a three hour flight.

Dave Jones: So yeah. Well, you got to hop on a plane just to go to Colorado, just to participate. Just to solder. Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah. Sorry. Right. Yeah. No, give it a miss. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Speaking of which, you're flying out tomorrow, aren't you? Yeah. I'm going out tomorrow. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Can you tell us about that? Cause this is a work thing. It is a work thing. Maybe you can tell us in general.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I think so. It's just a, uh, it's this manufacturer of a power component that I, I work on and, uh, they're just like, well, we're done. We're not making this anymore and we're closing up shop. You know, power supply line power, like line power.

Dave Jones: Okay. Like, so main switching power. It's a custom switching supply for you. Is it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Something like that. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And so, uh, yeah, they're like, well, we're going away. And, uh, and you know, I'm sure people. They're actually shutting down. Yeah. They're just closing the business. I'm not sure. I don't know any of the, I didn't feel like it was a, uh, proper, you know, to ask why, you know, there could be personal things. How, how, how big is the company? I don't know.

Dave Jones: Uh, obviously it isn't a public company. You're right. It's a private company. No, it's small, but it's small.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, but yeah, it's going away. And, uh, so I have to do a knowledge transfer, which I'm sure some of our listeners have had to do before. Oh yeah. Maybe you have even. You have?

Dave Jones: I've been all the way to Germany to do a technology transfer. I've been. Really? Yeah. I've been 30 hours on a plane to. Holy crap. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: How did it work? I mean, did it, did it work? Am I wasting my time here?

Dave Jones: Well, it kind of worked. Yeah. In the end, it was ultimately a waste of time really. Cause the company didn't do anything with it. We may as well do. Cause the company wasn't shutting down. We just decided that we, we would buy the rights to like the company had designed this data recorder, um, seismic data recorder product. And, um, we'd been buying it from them and we decided, well, we're, you know, a huge multi-billion dollar corporation. We shouldn't be doing that. We need to own the rights to this. We want to modify it. And we've got big plans to, so we'll buy the rights to it and non-exclusive rights. And we can then modify it ourselves. And, and, and three years later, we were still making it exactly the same as what we did when we bought it from them.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So no changes at all. Why?

Chris Gammell: And there's something to be said for, you know, keeping that out there, like having someone else make it for you. You know, it's always more expensive. Yeah. It's easier. When you don't have to swap out components or deal with all those little things, sometimes it's, it is worth the money, you know?

Dave Jones: I know. Well, I went to the trouble to, you know, when we got back, everyone was keen, right? The first job for me when I got back was to, um, transfer all of the PCB design, schematic and PCB from some German package, some package they were using into our, uh, you know, Altium. Yeah. Package. Yeah. So I went to all the effort to redo the whole design. It was, you know, five boards or something, six boards.

Chris Gammell: And that is really yours.

Dave Jones: And, and then, but then they said, all right, just to make sure let's do it exactly identical to start with, you know, let's make no changes. Oh yeah. Yeah. Not bite off more than we can chew. And then three years later, we're still manufacturing that same identical unit.

Chris Gammell: That's always tough too. When you're like trying to do like the exact same thing, because there is that paralysis. It's like, oh, well don't, don't change that. I mean, you can't change a spec. There's always different levels of what you can change. Yep. You know, the highest level being like, don't change the packaging. Right. But eventually like, I don't know. I just think it's, it's cheaper just to keep buying it from people.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I know. So.

Chris Gammell: But I don't have that option.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Well, they are going out of business. So that's a different thing entirely.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So basically I'm just the, I'm the, I'm the messenger. I'm the guy that's shuttling data between that company and a new manufacturer. And we're still going to do third party. And yeah. So I got to, I'm going to be out in Arizona.

Dave Jones: Right. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. For how long? Uh, two days.

Dave Jones: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: How far is Arizona from Cleveland?

Chris Gammell: Oh, um, probably about seven hours of travel time with like layovers and everything. Oh, okay. I'm really, I'm really mad. Uh, there used to be continental used to be like a hub in Cleveland and they're, they just merged with United. So they, uh, yeah, they, they're no longer. Right. It's hard to get flights. It's not bankrupt. It's just hard to get flights. And you know, like it, that's a significant. Like I, I always tell people I'm willing to pay more for faster flights. I don't travel that much, but it's.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: I can't believe like it's the FedEx model. Right. Everyone said FedEx would not work. Right. What the hell does anyone want to have a package delivered in 24 hours for? Yeah. That business will fail. They, they had a hard time getting funding for that because nobody believed in it. And, you know. Yeah. And sure enough. How huge a FedEx, right? They own more planes than continental.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's just. Just the logistics in general are crazy.

Dave Jones: You know. Yeah. People will pay more for good stuff. Good stuff fast. Yeah. Fast. You know. Yeah. Yeah. It's good service. Yeah. Exactly. I mean. Yeah. It's true. It's true. I know. So I can't see why you can't survive on a, you know, having, having a business model like that. Even, even as an airline.

Chris Gammell: Hmm.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Strange. Maybe people take it for granted that there's always been so many flights by so many different carriers that, oh, we don't need to pay a premium for a good one. Oh, yeah. We'll get the, you know, the penny pinches at the company will get the, you know, the cheapest possible flight they can. And, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm.

Speaker ?: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, well, it's the same thing for, I mean, circuit boards too. I mean, you'll pay.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You pay a premium to get it in 24 hours. Yeah. Yeah. Huge.

Chris Gammell: That's the worst when you pay it and then you're like, oh, I guess I could have waited.

Dave Jones: I could have waited. Yeah. We were, we were expensive. Or, oh, I did this too fast.

Chris Gammell: I messed it up.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And we would, sometimes we would pay, you know, two, $3,000 to get a board turned in 24 hours because the boss wanted it to play with on the weekend, you know? So, oh, man. Yeah. And I was just pissed down the drain, you know?

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's the worst one. It's just, it's just there. It's just fast because it feels like you need to be fast.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And you really don't because, yeah. It's been there, done that. Yeah. No. And I guess the other thing about the, the annoying thing about these technology transfer things I found is that I went over there, you know, transferring technology too. There's a lot of technology inside this product, like how the algorithms work. There was lots of fancy, you know, this was a leading edge kind of product. Yeah, it's the magic. It's a handcrafted magic smoke kind of product, you know? And I spent a couple of weeks there learning all about it and everything from the guy who designed it. And yeah, I went back. I was tasked to write a report about it all and which ones are important we need to learn about. And I had to transfer the technology to everyone else because that's the idea, right? Transfer the technology from one company to another and had to train people.

Chris Gammell: And get the photocopy effect where it's never quite as good, right?

Dave Jones: And nobody cared. I said, we've got to do this. It's urgent. You know, I had a whole list of priorities. This is important to do this and learn this and tweak this. And nobody gave a shit, you know? And no, it was just make the same thing and we won't care learning about it. What do we want to do that for?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it's just disheartening, you know? It is.

Chris Gammell: Anytime you have a, you know, a purposeless project or, you know, like it's... We didn't know it was going to be purposeless, right? But it was, in the end, it ended up being, right? Yeah. That always hurts.

Dave Jones: I know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So hopefully not.

Dave Jones: I didn't care, really. I got a free trip to Germany, right? I hadn't been to Germany before. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've never been out there. No? Maybe someday.

Dave Jones: Yep. It's good.

Chris Gammell: I've never been to Phoenix either, so we'll see. And it's a nice time of year to go down there, so it's nice and toasty down there. It'll be like going back to Hawaii, you know, if Hawaii was a desert. Right.

Dave Jones: Okay. Oh, brilliant. Yeah. All right. Well, we've got some news. Shoutouts. Oh, news first? No, no. We always do shoutouts first.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. After 15 minutes of ranting. Yeah, right. Yeah. There's a couple people that link to us, and so we always like that. We'll mention that real quick. One was my friend, actually, Mike Demler. He used to write for EDN, and now he's writing for Open Systems Media, which is a...

Dave Jones: I've heard the name, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. And he does, or Open Systems does like real niche kind of stuff, like military electronics and stuff like that, like the magazines about that. So, anyways, he's got a new analog magazine, so he linked to us. Well, I think there's, I don't know if it's a magazine yet, but there's at least a newsletter here. Right. An analog newsletter. And so, he linked to our last show, so we like that a lot. And hopefully some of his readers. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Mike. And there's another kind of fledgling, real fledgling site. Oh, I changed this the last time I looked. It's called EE Forest, and one of the first posts was talking about the amp hour. So, we really like that.

Dave Jones: But I can't see the forest for the trees. Sorry. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, that's Alex, and thanks to Alex for linking to us, and I was like that, too. So, quick shout-outs. Nothing fancy there.

Dave Jones: Thank you very much, guys.

Chris Gammell: Maybe one last one, too. That book we mentioned, what was it called? It was the...

Dave Jones: Oh, Leslie Greens.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, we actually...

Dave Jones: Analog Secrets with a Z or something. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: S-E-E-K-R-E-T. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, we crashed his site, and he ended up having to move the book over. But if people really like the book, we really encourage donating to him. So, he has a donation set up. Yes. Please do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because that took many years of his life to do that book.

Chris Gammell: And it was published, and it got basically...

Dave Jones: Well, you can actually buy the hard copy book. So, the other way is to buy the hard copy book from him. If you don't actually want to donate, you can get a real copy of it, and he'll... Because he's already... You know, he's got all of his copies printed.

Speaker ?: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: He does, like, self-publishing. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. So, definitely support him. That's great. It's a good book. I've browsed through it. So, I like it. Right. Speaking of education, you saw this post. This is one you added, right?

Dave Jones: Yes. Well, there's... That's the top one, right? Yeah. The top one. Yes. You can now get an online certificate course from no less than MIT.

Chris Gammell: Free. MIT?

Dave Jones: Who's that? MIT. I don't know. I've never heard of them. Some. Yeah. Dodgy Mob out in... I don't know. Where are they based?

Chris Gammell: I believe it's Montana. Montana Institute. No, I'm just kidding.

Dave Jones: They're in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. And, yes, MIT are offering... Actually, they will give you... You can get a certificate from MIT. You can apply online. You do the course online. It's an electronics course.

Chris Gammell: It's the intro course, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's the intro course. And I'm not sure how long it takes or anything like that. But, certainly, check it out. A lot of people on the forum have already signed up for it. And, yeah. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it seems bouncing around a couple different sites. And it looks great. I mean, this is kind of following the Stanford model, too. I mean, Stanford's... I mean, MIT and Stanford have both been doing a lot of open education kind of things like that. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Their videos, we talked about them before. Their videos are online. And you can practically do the entire MIT EE course online with their videos. Right. It's awesome. Yeah. It's just that you don't get anything at the end of it. Whereas this, they will actually test you. It's not like you do it and they give you the certificate. You've got to sit the test, apparently. So, I'm not sure how that works. But, yep. Sure, they've figured it out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love it. I hope this trend keeps continuing. I mean, it's like the...

Dave Jones: I'm not sure how it works. Is it like a live casting thing where you actually sit in with a live lecture with one of their professors? Professors, how does it... Or is it just watch these online videos and sit the test? Is that...

Chris Gammell: Usually, when I've seen these things, it's been actual videos, but...

Dave Jones: Right. So, the videos are pre-done.

Chris Gammell: I haven't signed up for this. I've taken my intro course. I'm done. Thanks a lot. Right. Oh, boy. Let's see. You can... Man, you can just sign right up here. It's great. So, they've got a whole...

Dave Jones: I can't believe the amount of stuff they put into that intro course.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Have you looked at... I mean, talking about scaring away people who just came straight from high school and picked engineering and go, oh, yeah. Oh, it's... Yeah, it's a weed-out class, for sure. And then you have to do all this basic theory stuff, and it scares the shit out of you. Why can't you just, you know, build something cool in your first intro class or something?

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, and I've written about that before, too, because there's a lot of kids coming out of high school that aren't, you know, necessarily electronics, but they want to be in electronics. Yeah. And that's how I was. So, yeah, start with a tinkering class.

Dave Jones: And they jump straight into physics, right? And they jump... You jump straight into, you know, all the physics of it and everything else. And it's like, oh, my... Is this what engineering's about? Oh, no. Right. It's tough.

Chris Gammell: It's tough. Especially when, like, we keep saying, oh, well, there's not enough engineers. It's like, well, huh? Yeah. I mean, look at this class, right? Well, that's one of the reasons. Yeah. Maybe you could ease it. I know. And there's a lot of debate about that kind of thing, too. Yeah, there is. I know. But I've actually... I mean, I've been out to MIT. I've talked to people about this class before, and it's a big weed-out class. This is how they separate the wheat from the chaff. Okay. And if that's at MIT, you know that's some pretty darn good wheat. Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And they wouldn't hold back. They wouldn't dumb it down. No, no. They would, you know, they'll be doing, you know, Maxwell from first principles, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I've talked to a... I tried hiring a guy out of there, and he actually did his grad work there, and he was telling me about, like, when he was TAing classes like this. TAing? And it's tough... Oh, sorry. Being a teacher's assistant. Ah, right. Of course. It's just tough because, you know, you have these kids that are so smart, like, perfect students in high school and everything. Yeah. And they're passing this class, but then they walk up to you, and they're just like, you know, they're just space cadets because to get to some of these classes, you have to be a superior student, but not necessarily a superior, like, electronics person. Yeah. And so then... It's got nothing to do with electronics, really. Right.

Dave Jones: It's got nothing to do with practical engineering. It's really... It's theoretical physics and theoretical engineering. There's a huge gap between those two.

Chris Gammell: And this is very important in its own right. I mean, it is. I mean, I took... Oh, of course. We both took courses like this. It was... But, yeah, you're right. When it comes to day-to-day stuff, you're not going to be... No. You need to have rules of thumb more than anything. It's like I said.

Dave Jones: I haven't used an integral in anger in 20 years in the business, right? You said? In anger, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's always an anger, right? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. What the hell is this doing here? DX, what? What? I know. Yeah. But if you go back and teach it or you go into the physical side where you're actually doing research and stuff, yeah, it's important. You've really got to nail that stuff. But otherwise, it's just garbage in, garbage out, really.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. There was this interesting book. I mean, I've talked before about Dan Pink on here, and I'm a real big fan of Dan Pink's stuff. He wrote Drive and a bunch of other innovation type books. Yeah. But he has this new e-book out. And I was reading it the other day. And it was talking about turning... The one way to innovate is to kind of turn things on its head. And he was given this example of a teacher that did that where the guy... Basically, the kids came into class and he didn't do anything the first day. And then they went home and they watched the lectures. And then the next day, they came into class and they were still doing problem sets, but they did the problem sets in class. And then the kids went home and the homework was actually to watch the lectures. And then the next day, they come back in and they all work together on stuff. And just how that's like a really interesting model. And this is kind of feeding into that too. I mean, it's like the newest version of this, the online version, is that watch it on your own and hopefully work together with people. But the older model, like the weed out class at MIT itself, is definitely the sit in class, get lectured at, and then go home and crank on homework, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, isn't Dan Pink's model to turn everything upside down, do it differently?

Chris Gammell: Is that the way?

Dave Jones: Because you sent me one and that was the gist of it, right? Is to do the opposite of what you think you should do.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah. That was... I think I did send that to you, didn't I?

Dave Jones: Yes, yes, you did. Yeah. Read this. It'll change your life, Dave. You know? Yeah, okay.

Chris Gammell: So I just do everything backwards? Yeah.

Dave Jones: And yeah, that was the idea of this Dan Pink.

Chris Gammell: That was one of the many ideas, but yeah. Right, yeah.

Dave Jones: Do everything upside down. Do the opposite to what you would normally do. And the opposite, in this case, would be not to do all the theoretical shit. It'd be to build a MakerBot or something, you know? Yeah, or design a circuit board straight on the first day. Yeah, you know? Yep.

Chris Gammell: I like it. Blow something up, you know? Yeah, blow something up. That's what I like. Make an LED light up. You can start with that, right?

Dave Jones: Tear down something, you know? Do something different rather than... But maybe not at MIT.

Chris Gammell: You know, they have their traditions. Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. They're cranking out some good people still. Right. Until they stopped doing that, I think we'll probably have to take our back seat and just sit here, Dave. Yeah, man.

Dave Jones: Yeah, okay.

Chris Gammell: Just yap on about it.

Dave Jones: Fair enough. Have we covered off that bingo square?

Chris Gammell: I think so, yes.

Dave Jones: Excellent. We've got another bingo square, marketing.

Chris Gammell: Yes, marketing and possible shonkiness with it, right?

Dave Jones: I think it's shonky and a lot of other people do. I know it will appear that it's standard industry practice. Doesn't make it right, though. So what it is, is it's from the forum. Simon on the forum. He's Simon. And he discovered this, I think. And element 14 are buying up the KeyCad keywords on Google, which is standard business practice, right? Buy up your competitor's keywords so that somebody, when they search for your, you know, when they search for KeyCad, your ad pops up. Fair enough. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's, I totally agree with it up to that point.

Dave Jones: I totally, you know, that's.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you probably would do the same thing if you advertised it.

Dave Jones: Maybe, right? Okay. But that's standard in the industry, right? Everyone does that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And, but that's not where they stopped. Not only are they buying up the KeyCad keyword, their title is, looking for KeyCad, question mark. And then they give you a fake URL that's element 14 or Farnell's, you know, slash KeyCad or something, right? So it makes it look like if you click on that, you're going through and they're going to have info on KeyCad for you. Right? But no. The URL is fake. There's nothing there. You click it. You get a taken through directly through to, surprise, surprise, Eagle, right? Which element 14 own.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Go buy a license of Eagle. Right. Yeah. Which we are, yeah. We like Eagle, but not necessarily the paying for it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So the problem I and many others have is that they're sucking you into thinking that there's something about KeyCad on there.

Chris Gammell: And the shady part is if you type that in directly, and Simon talked about that. I had done this and then I saw that Simon talked about this on the forum too. If you type it in directly, it's not a real link, which means that they hid the link underneath.

Dave Jones: They hid the link underneath. If there's some convoluted, yeah. It's a link directly to Eagle. Right.

Chris Gammell: Because if you typed in farnell.com slash KeyCad or KeyCad or however you say it, then if it still took you to that Eagle page, okay. Yeah. I'm still okay with that actually too. You know, why not try Eagle? You know, try it free and then pay for it.

Dave Jones: It'd be nice if, you know, here's a breakdown of the benefits of Eagle versus KeyCad table or something. Yeah, I'd be okay with that too. That I could probably deal with that, right? That's fine. But nah, not when you, you know, because people are searching for KeyCad because they want to download it, try it out. They've heard about it. It's open source, right? They're trying to find it. First hitting Google. So what are they going to do? They Google it. First hit. Takes you through to get no information. Well, first advertising hit. It dilutes the effectiveness of Google. You search for something and you expect, the reason Google got so popular is because it was so good at putting the stuff you wanted first.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but that was an advertising thing too. It does have that slightly different off-color, you know, search box. It is getting a little less obvious.

Dave Jones: But they've got the graphic there with the link and the text. That's the deceiving part. And they haven't just done it for KeyCad. They have done it for Orcad and every other competitor. Oh, I didn't see that. So, yeah, it's just, nah, it's not on. It's not on.

Chris Gammell: It's a little shady.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, like I told people. Please explain, Element 40. Yes, I would like an explanation as well.

Dave Jones: Because everyone's pissed off and you're not going to win any friends by doing this. Seriously, the dickhead marketing person who didn't think about this is, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right, and it could be one person and it could be, you know.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: We're not saying it's a whole company.

Dave Jones: No, they're just following their standard deceptive marketing practices, right? And they probably got a freaking promotion for it because they met their KPI for this month because they got X link-throughs, you know. Yeah. Bastards.

Chris Gammell: Well, I would say stick with KeyCad. Absolutely. Look for the real link. I don't know. I always look at the URL myself anyways. I guess that's why it's deceptive here. Yeah, I always look.

Dave Jones: Everyone looks at the URL of what they're visiting and there it is embedded in the graphic.

Chris Gammell: Like girlsgirlsgirls.org or something like that. Yeah, .org. .xxx or whatever the new domain is. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, okay, I probably don't think that one is. Yep. That's not going to be a CAD program.

Dave Jones: So somebody's actually gone to the effort to make that graphic to embed that fake URL in the ad. So they've deliberately done that and they're deliberately targeting a small-time, you know, open-source tool. You know, it's just, no, it's not on. It's bad enough when you do it to your competitors and you've got a deceptive URL to do it to the little guy, to kick the little guy in the nuts. Come on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Not happy.

Chris Gammell: Well, I've been using KiCad lately. Did I tell you about that?

Dave Jones: No. How's it going? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So this radio project I've been working on, I ended up deciding between going for speed and going for having a project. I went for having a project. I was thinking about going for speed and just doing like a, you know, Arduino and a wave shield and simple. Right. Yeah, of course. You know, just trying it out. But I was like, no, you know what? I need to learn more about microcontrollers. So I'm actually, I'm mid-layout right now. Sweet. Yeah. And KiCad is actually not bad. I mean, like, I know a lot of, I talked, I had started making videos about it and then I kind of got off track. Yeah. But yeah, I found this great tutorial. It's like just a printed one and it takes you straight through. And, you know, I've been making footprints and, or not making footprints, making schematic symbols and got my micro in there. Ended up using a ATX Mega, which is the same one used on that.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: It's used on the Gabotronics. What's that little, you know what I'm talking about? That, what's that called? I think I know. I can't read. Something like that. It's the one that plugs into the proto board. Right. And then also that, that CEE I'm working on the C is. Yep. That also is. So, yeah. It's great. I'm mid-project. I like it.

Dave Jones: I'm going to have to give it a go. I need to find time to learn all these packages because I want to move away from Altium. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: You're kind of going through the same thing, right?

Dave Jones: Yep. Yeah. I need to pick a new package. And sucked in Element 14, I don't think it's going to be Eagle.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because I don't like your deceptive marketing practices and I don't like how you're stupid.

Chris Gammell: That's weird because before what you were saying, it seemed like you loved them. It's so weird that you're just changing your mind right now.

Dave Jones: No, I've been bitching on about their price breakdowns, the limitations in their sizes forever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: A few other people on the thread we're talking about here on the forum have bitched about that too. And it's just ridiculous.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, actually, there's another comparison out there already. Erin, Robot Girl, people know Robot Girl on Twitter. She actually did this. She already started a comparison and she did some time lapses and stuff between Eagle and KiCad and GEDA. G-E-D-A. Is it GEDA? You say GEDA, right?

Dave Jones: It's actually GEDA, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's GEDA. Okay, yeah. Yeah, because you talked DJ before, DJ Delore. Yes, I have. Yeah, you had that video. Yeah, so great comparison though. She's just kind of going through and seeing how she does it. It's a pretty nice little board, you know, like a SOSC8 and some through holes and looks great. LM317 looks like. So very nice. I like it.

Dave Jones: That's what I want to do. I want to do a big shootout. I've said it before, but it's a huge amount of work. Yeah, yeah. Doing that kind of stuff. Like a shootout between. Board captures. Yeah. And then, you know, then you've got to have a table comparing them. You've got to have, you know, make sure it's fair. You know, fair between packages and trying to do it objectively.

Chris Gammell: You know what the best case scenario would be? It would be like somehow like do a board and then wipe your hard drive and wipe your memory and then do it again in a different package. Yeah, exactly. And then it would be fair, right?

Dave Jones: That's the plan is to have a standard board and then create all the components from scratch in each one and lay it out from scratch in each one and then edit it in each one and revise it in each one. And, you know, and then ultimately have a big table of how, you know, ultimately I'd have to personally rate things, you know, like how hard was it to create a footprint? You know, I'd have to give it a scale of one to ten or something like that. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: You need like a rubric.

Dave Jones: Right, yep. And, yeah, I, yeah. It's just a huge amount of work.

Chris Gammell: It is, it is. So kudos to Erin for doing this. And actually she links through to Wayne and Lane who, they do open source hardware kits as well. And they've got another tutorial. So lots of tutorials to check out if people are interested in KiCad. And I, I've been pushing this a lot lately too. I mean like, I think I just want people to do it alongside me. So I don't feel, you know, like, you know, no one wants to do that. Right. You know, you don't want to be like, oh, well I had this whole board I developed and now no one can see it. And that's what I, I mean, I did like that about Eagle that they switched over to XML. The, the hope is that, you know, it would be, become like a standard format. Yeah, exactly. But I think you got to kind of go to a open source thing or else, you know, if there's any kind of business advantage in it, then there's always going to be an angle. Right. So.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I, yeah, I know. So my, my preference at the moment would be to use, uh, use, uh, KiCad, certainly. Um, I don't think Jeter's an option. Jeter is quite, from everything I've heard, everyone says it's quirky. You know, it's, it's really not nearly as polished. It doesn't use the whole IDE interface. It's very script driven and all that sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it's kind of like, you know. Penguin geeky. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's really penguin geeky kind of thing. And whereas, um, yeah, where it's not nearly, you know, it doesn't have the visual, the same as good of visual user interfaces, KiCad apparently.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's tough too. You know, tying those things together. Cause I remember that when I started programming, I'm like, okay, when do I make graphics? Uh, and like, that's actually a really long way down the line actually. Uh, you know, when I was.

Dave Jones: As in on an LCD.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, you know, like you're, I was like just programming like C++ or something like that. Oh, yep. And like actually tying, you know, you're all doing text-based and command line stuff. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Right. That's how you start. And output is all text-based. And you think about how long it takes to actually get to the graphical side of things, where you're actually tying a graphic even just to a, you know, like a click action, that kind of thing. Like in a, a visual basic, you know, like visual basic is a little bit easier, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I mean, you, you have to use a library, you know, you've got to use a pre-done, some sort of pre-done library to do this, this sort of stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's like if you, if you've got a micro control, embedded micro control, you've got a little embedded LCD, you know, a dot matrix LCD to, to do that from scratch.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's true. You got to do like letter, you have to like do like BMPs of letters and everything.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You got to do font rendering and everything. Yeah. It's a pain in the ass, right? Yeah. And it's, it takes a long time to get hello world on a dot matrix LCD, unless you use a pre-done, you know, library. Right. Of stuff. So yeah.

Chris Gammell: Which you might have to pay for.

Dave Jones: Which you may, yeah. Yeah. Or you may have to tweak. I always find that the libraries out there for driving LCDs, they're not what I want. They weren't implemented in the way I wanted.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Or easy, you know, they're just in some convoluted weird system of C that I've never, freaking seen before. Cause they're, you know, they're, uh, software penguin gurus, right? And they're doing things in C that I've never seen before, you know? Oh yeah. And really convoluted stuff. And they're, and it's all designed to be C plus plus and object oriented. No, I don't want that. I just want some, one subroutine that just says right to LCD, you know? And that's it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And they're never like that. And, uh, yeah, I have to, I have to rewrite them or, or I just give up in the end and write it from scratch sometimes. Um, because they're, they're not what I like.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not everybody complains about your coding and then.

Dave Jones: And it complains about my coding. Yeah, exactly. Why, why didn't you use the library? Well, I couldn't figure out how to use it. It was too convoluted. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not a computer software bloody, you know, um, uh, expert and coding in object oriented and all that sort of stuff. And I, nah, I just can't figure it out. So I, I don't want to learn that. I, I see no huge advantage for me to do that. So I just code the way I've always coded.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah. And I'm going to be, uh, that's, I mean, that's why I'm doing my project too, is just to kind of, my coding is very kind of weak. So, uh, yeah, I'm, uh, getting into that.

Dave Jones: Even though I'm actually pretty good at coding. I'm just not good at all the complicated, uh, you know, all that object oriented, high level, you know, real huge system design.

Chris Gammell: Well, all the low level people are all, they're all hardware people anyways. Right. I mean, if you're doing low level, you need to know hardware.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I've done some massive programs in my time, you know, I've done, you know, the 50,000 line, uh, programs. Yeah. I've done huge packages in my time. I've written, you know, entire packages from scratch and you know, so yeah, it's not like I can't code. It's just that I don't code like a computer software major, you know? Yeah. Um, and, and there is, I think there seems to be a big difference there.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause they're, they're doing some, you know, because they were taught all these weird software techniques that are in all the software design textbooks. And, you know, I was never, you know, I taught some of that because I took some software classes, right? You know, um, you know, so I know all about linked lists and all those basic concepts and all that sort of stuff. But, uh, yeah, as I'm sure there's lots of, there's all these other much more complicated, uh, methods and, uh, ways to do software out there that I'm not, uh, that I really haven't, um, learned before. So yeah. Hence, I don't use them.

Chris Gammell: One thing I've always been really, very jealous about with software people is that it feels like you can work anywhere. I mean, I know it's not realistic, but it feels like it, you know, it feels like you could freelance and just do whatever you want. I've always liked that about like, uh, um, like hardware description languages like VHDL and Verilog, because it feels like that's about the closest I'll ever get. But even, even that you still need to talk to hardware at some point. I mean, you could write code all day long, but until you go flip some bits on, you know, transistors and just, yeah, you're, you're not really doing it.

Dave Jones: I know people in the VHDL domain who just live in the soft domain. They, all they're doing is writing test benches and, and doing algorithms and, you know, that wouldn't be me. That's what I'm saying.

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, yeah, yeah. Okay. I don't know. Cause there's this, uh, there's this article that was in the Harvard business review. Um, or actually it's just a blog, I guess, but, um, it was asking about like crowdsourcing labor and just like the future of employment. I've been saying for a while that like, I think even hardware, even hardware wise, I think that, you know, over time you're going to see more and more people going away from corporations, um, and, you know, going to freelance kind of situations, you know, being an expert in a certain area. And then a lot of people contact that person. So if Dave, if you're an expert with, you know, LEDs, right, go to Dave and he'll design you an LED board because he designed 14 other LED boards in the past year, you know? Um, and, uh, you know, this, this, this is talking about crowdsourcing labor and if it's going to trump permanent employment as well. And, uh, I think it will. I mean, I think, I don't know what you think about it, but.

Dave Jones: Well, then it, yeah, I, it already has, you can already do that. You can already, um, uh, with all these online specific, uh, job things, you can actually bid on a job online. I need somebody who's an expert at doing this. And of course, and it's been taken over by the, um, by the, uh, you know, all the Indians and everyone else. Oh, like consulting companies out there. They will outbid you every time. Yeah. Yeah. They will outbid you every time. You know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But that's not the kind of thing I really, I think about it more of a relationship based, Hey, I need this kind of person. You know, I would never, I would never go on those sites personally. I would, I would, cause I couldn't compete.

Dave Jones: Well, if you were a business, why wouldn't you? If you're looking for somebody who can do the job for the least possible cost, that's what business is, right? Well, maybe, but I know the real cost behind that. You want somebody who can do the job for it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, that's, of course you, you want somebody you can trust too, right?

Chris Gammell: Right. That's the real cost.

Dave Jones: Yeah. If you're going out there for the first time and well, I don't know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I guess if you, if you need like a Java generic Java program, right? Right. Then yeah. Tata Consulting can, can hook you up. Right. Tata Consulting. Well, that's, that's like a really big design house out in India. Okay. Yeah. No, it's just real. It's a, it's, that's a very legitimate, very large.

Dave Jones: Well, they're a car. The, the Tata's a car.

Chris Gammell: Oh, Tata Motors. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I think I'm getting the right name, right? Maybe I'm wrong. Right. Okay. But yeah, they're, they're very legitimate. Right. Consulting firm out, out of, out of India. So, yeah. There you go. But yeah, I think, I think that this is a, I think this is a reality there with one, with one asterisk on it. I think that the big, the big deal, at least in the U S and Australia has already got this figured out and damn near every other country in the world. But you know, healthcare in the U S, you know, if you have to buy your own healthcare here, you're screwed. So, um, if they figure that out though, I think that you see this even more. So, um, I don't know if I, if I could do healthcare, if I got easy access to healthcare, see ya. Analog life LLC, you know, like that's. Well, it's not hard.

Dave Jones: You just pay for it, right? Well, yeah, but that's the U S system, isn't it? That is the hard part. Yeah. Right. Is it that expensive? Oh, it's very, yeah, it's very expensive. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: How expensive are we talking about?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We're talking like probably 700 bucks a month for minimal coverage.

Dave Jones: Oh, oh, ouch. It's, you can get 700 bucks a year here for private health insurance. Yeah. That's the kind of basic private health cover.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it is, it is a touchy issue around here. I get it. I mean, like it is in the U S it's a very touchy issue and it's, I don't want to get into it much, but I think that if it ever gets figured out, however it gets figured out and I don't have to work for a company in order to, you know, get healthcare. Cause that is a big benefit. Yep. If that ever gets worked out, I mean, I think you're going to see a lot more people moving into the consulting space because then it, then it's more of a, you know, one person. Okay.

Dave Jones: So you think that's a huge thing holding, I can picture that being huge thing, holding people back from doing their own consulting gig.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I wonder in other, like in Australia, even, I mean, do you see, do you see more people working freelance than working corporations or are there other benefits that I'm missing out on? Even just ease of work or, you know, like self-advertising is another big thing, right? I mean, if you don't, if you can't get that work, then there's no guarantee. If there's no guarantee of the work, then yeah, that's, that's something big.

Dave Jones: Um, it, it used to be more advantageous to be a, to be a contractor here. Like I was a contractor 15 years ago or something and it was pretty advantageous, but then they changed the tax laws and now it's not so good to be a, as in where you work through an agency or something like that. Ah, okay. Yeah. So yeah. Um, that's not very advantageous, but as far as working on your own now, it's, it's the same as what is, what it's always been really. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. And there's, I mean, there's other benefits too, other than like the availability of work. There's also the social situation, but you know, even see the, I've read about this thing the other day. It was about, um, shared workspaces are popping up a lot of places because, you know, so many software people are, we're working out of coffee shops, but now instead of having a coffee shop where a lot of people go to work, they have a workspace where people pay to go. And then they happen to have coffee there. Right. Okay. You know, it's just rolled in and that's kind of a, cause people don't want to just sit in their house either. They want to be able to get out and talk to people and be human. Uh, yes. Even software people, uh, and hardware people.

Dave Jones: That could suck away a lot of your time though. And, and your focus. That's true. You've, you've got to be careful there.

Chris Gammell: That that's very true. But at the same time, I mean, if you go crazy in your house, you know, or if you sit on Reddit all day, right. You know, like that, that's a tough thing. I mean, I've talked to people who, you know, it's just, you have distractions anywhere. So it's about where you perform best. And I mean, you get, you get distracted by the forum, right?

Dave Jones: Having another, yeah, exactly. And the internet in general.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. That's my killer too. Exactly. So it's wherever you work best. And some people work best in shared workspaces. Some other people work in, you know, hackerspaces. Hackerspaces kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. They encourage that kind of work too. And I think that's smart, but wherever you work best, that's, that's important.

Dave Jones: Shared workspace. That's interesting. See, I, I don't think I could do it. Like I couldn't share my lab with somebody else.

Chris Gammell: Hardware is a different, a hard, you know, yeah. And if, and if you've got to like, you know, lug your stuff along even, you know, because you don't want to leave your DMM somewhere, you know, if you got to bring a suitcase with you everywhere that, that starts to get weary some as well. But if you were, if you had a workspace for when you were editing videos, right, maybe that would be work well for you. I don't know if you ever go to coffee. You don't drink coffee. So.

Dave Jones: No, that's right. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not a social creature. Engineers aren't social creatures. General. You're just a freak.

Chris Gammell: I'm not talking about, I, I'm a freak.

Dave Jones: Well, you're a bit more social than the average.

Chris Gammell: I know I am a freak. You're right. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't, I don't know if it would work for me though, either. I don't know if it would. So if people out there listening, have ever seen these, or if you work in a hacker space, or if you, you just even go to a coffee shop that I would be very interested to hear, you know, consultants out there or do whatever, whatever people are doing out there. IT professionals. That's a lot of our audience, right? Yeah. Um, so yeah, whatever, whatever works, I'd, I'd love to know about it.

Dave Jones: Hmm. Speaking of which, the Sydney hacker space has moved. Has it really? Where to? Yes. It's actually closer to me now. So I'm going to have to go there and visit. Yeah, definitely. I might even become a member.

Chris Gammell: Well, hey.

Dave Jones: Hey.

Chris Gammell: That is, as Jeff, Jeff just said, he, uh, he stepped out of the Austin hacker space, didn't he?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I know. He just, yes, he just left. He didn't, decided not to renew his membership. And, uh, yep. I'm sure if I joined, I'd, you know, I'd hardly ever go there because, well, you know, I'm not a very social creature. You know, I just.

Chris Gammell: I think, I think you are. Come on, man.

Dave Jones: I'm not. No? How do you think I talk to myself in a camera for?

Chris Gammell: That's true. You are a little crazy.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. No, I am definitely not a social creature.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and that's, and that's the, uh, the stereotype, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, boy. Um, can we talk about startups?

Chris Gammell: Sure, let's do it.

Dave Jones: Kind of sort of on the same. Yeah, I mean, a lot of startups start out of these. This one's been on here for a while. Age Matters, apparently. You put this one on here.

Chris Gammell: I did, yeah, yeah. Tell us about it. Well, basically, the idea is that, uh, they did a study across entrepreneurs, and this is from Technology Review, which is another MIT, uh, thing, right? Oh, right, yes, yes. Go MIT.

Dave Jones: Published by MIT, I see.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. Um, basically, though, um, it seems like a lot of the, the funding, you know, in Silicon Valley and everywhere else, they always want to go for these hot new startups and everything, but they did this study on it, and it says, research revealed that the average and median age of the founders of successful technology companies with real revenue is, 39. Wow. Which is crazy, right? I know. Because, you know, I've seen the social network, I've watched all of the- Oh, right, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's just the press. Which is all real, right? It's focused, you know, or like even Apple and Microsoft and everything else. There's a lot of big names that, that, uh, that-

Dave Jones: Yeah, get all the, get all the attention, and you think that's the, that's the norm.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Is that, is that they're all, you know, they all dropped out of uni, and they're all 21, and they're all, you know.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yep. Yeah, and, uh, basically the idea is that, you know, as startups get more complex, so you think about like nanotech, or- Yeah. Or we, wait, what do we have on here? We have, uh, graphene we have on, that's one of the items on here. You know, like, you don't just go, you don't just leave, you know, high school and go work on graphene, because probably you don't understand what graphene is yet, or don't even, haven't even heard of it.

Dave Jones: Usually it's somebody who's done something as part of their PhD or something like that, and then they've worked in the industry, and then they've had the skills and the contacts to start it. So that, yeah, I guess it's not- It's interesting. It gives me hope. It gives me hope. I got time. You're screwed. Sorry, man. Even I've still got time. No, I've still got time now. You do, yeah.

Chris Gammell: The average age is 39, right? Right, exactly. There you go. We found twice as many successful founders over 50 as under 25, and twice as many over 60 as under 20, which means that it skews higher. It means that the median is much higher. Right, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. There you go. Boom. I've got a bright future ahead of me, Dave. You do?

Dave Jones: Well, you can call my blog a startup, kind of, in a way. Sort of, yeah. In a way, well, I'm making a full-time, you know, it's not like I've- You haven't employed anyone yet. It's going to turn into a billion-dollar business, right?

Chris Gammell: I should doubt that, yeah.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But do startups have to turn into that? Startups don't have to turn into huge corporations. They can turn into two guys in a shed.

Chris Gammell: Right, exactly. Right? And I think that's the real focus of it.

Dave Jones: And you can be successful earning a million bucks a year. Why?

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah, and that's like the middle. If you look at, like, the distribution, it's like a power law distribution where, you know, the ones that they study are the right- You know, they were started by young people, right? The Apples and the Facebooks and everything else. And that is a big chunk. But then if you look at the aggregate, all the ones that really fill out the middle, that really give you that beefy, you know, Pareto 80%, right? That, I just mixed metaphors or mixed- Yeah, yeah. I just mixed statistical theories there. But, you know, that beefy middle percent, whatever. That is these established engineers, startups, you know, business people. And they're starting companies. And they crank out revenue. They do. I mean, that's the rest of it. So, yeah. It gives a lot of hope. I like it. It's good. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And a startup doesn't mean that you have to get venture capital funded and turn into a billion-dollar business or flop, as the case may be. You know, half of them flop, of course. Right. And more than half.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Jeez. How many startups with venture capital fail? You know, it's a lot.

Chris Gammell: Right. And a lot of that betting, too. The betting. A lot of that analysis they do is, you know, okay, well, I'm going to fund 50 startups, startups, small startups, and maybe one will hit it big, right?

Dave Jones: That's the plan. It's a slot machine model, right? Because when you win, you win big, right? Right. Yeah. And you fail a lot. But if you get that Apple or that Facebook or something, then you're huge, you know? The return on your investment is massive.

Chris Gammell: Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, this is a great article. I highly recommend reading it. It's great. Interesting follow-up to that, though, is talking about the Silicon Valley side of things. There was an interesting kind of... Eh, it's not interesting. That's the wrong word. It's... It's noteworthy, is it? It's noteworthy. That's a better word. Yeah. It's sleazy, really. There's just... All right. Back and forth. And they're talking about these Silicon Valley, like, wonks, basically. You know, they write about startups. Yeah, like policy wonks or startup wonks.

Dave Jones: What's a wonk?

Chris Gammell: Someone who analyzes stuff. A wonk.

Dave Jones: That's a term I've not heard before.

Chris Gammell: I always hear it as policy wonk. Maybe I'm... Oh, okay. Yeah. Maybe I'm right about... Wrong about that. A studious or hardworking person. There we go.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Well, there you go. Wonk. Wonk.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. A person who takes an excessive interest in minor details.

Dave Jones: Oh, no. According to WordWeb, my dictionary has popped it up. It's a... Usage is in... It is in North America, of course. Oh. And it's an insignificant student who is ridiculed as being affected by boringly... Boringly studious. What? Is... Huh? Yeah, I see your dictionary stinks. It's an insignificant student who is ridiculed as being affected or boringly studious. Wow. Ugh.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, someone who's interested in the minutiae. But basically, there's these people out there in Silicon Valley... I know we're attentive. Yeah. And they, you know, they study startups and everything. And there's this whole culture around talking about startups, right? And, you know, being like gadget blogs and everything else like that. And the idea is, like, they're just... They don't... There's all these tech journalists now. And there's less of making stuff, right? There's so much focus on it because there's money in it now. And there's this one guy at... I don't even know what the hell it is. But basically, the guy invests in companies and then he writes about it. And this is like an established model. It'd be like if, Dave, if you went to, like, a scope company and said, Oh, I want to invest in you. And then you go and do a worthwhile review of their scope once it comes out. And be like, Oh, look. My investment's doing so great. You're great. Now other people should invest in my fund. And it's just like, what the hell? That is sleazy as hell. And apparently, it's not illegal either. I mean, like...

Dave Jones: They're right.

Chris Gammell: So, apparently, that's how Silicon Valley works, though. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, that's... It's actually kind of smart.

Chris Gammell: I guess so.

Dave Jones: In a sleazy way, you know? It's very sleazy. If you can get away with it and don't care, then...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. If you got brass buttons, right?

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that's what it would take. I mean, I guess there's nothing wrong with it in terms of like... Because it's not public companies, you're not restricted, right? Of course, yeah. So, it's not insider information or anything. And technically, it's outsider information. But yeah, if you're investing in startups and then saying how great they are and you have a big audience, I guess, yeah, you can do that.

Dave Jones: Right. Well...

Chris Gammell: And you keep pumping this garbage, though.

Dave Jones: That's the key, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, you have to have a big audience that keeps lapping up your garbage, I guess, right? I mean, like... Right, yeah. You'd think after a while, if you keep picking losers... That would catch on. Right. You'd think so. But maybe... I think another problem is it's more of a culture of personality. You know? It'd be like... Oh, well, I... I don't know. Maybe that's like for us. I don't listen to Chris because he knows what he's talking about. Which is possible. You know? I've heard that from people. Yeah. You know? But... Yeah. And, you know, if I kept saying the wrong things over and over again, then, yeah, I'd hope people would stop listening to us, but... Right. Yeah. If not, you know, I would... And I started talking about how great these startups I've invested in are. Yeah. I'd be a pretty sleazy person then, so... You're just jealous, again, because you're not rich and successful. They're making so much money off it. Yeah, I know. But they're not making anything. You know? It's the same kind of thing. It's like... Yeah, yeah. They're scummy people and they're just not making anything, you know? It's scummy. God, you fool. That was another thing. You know what? This pissed me off. This is a rant. This pissed me off so much. You know, I was reading this blog the other day and it was talking about investing in scotch. I just started drinking scotch. I never really liked it. You know, I don't drink much of it. Right. My wife got me a bottle for Christmas. I tried it. I liked it. And there was this bottle about... Or this thing about investing in futures, you know? Or investing the future in buying a bottle of scotch and selling it for a lot more later. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. And I wrote on there. I was just like, stop it. No. I want to drink this stuff and you want to use it as an investment vehicle? Go invest in a frigging distillery, you know? It'd be like people investing in gadget companies because they want to make money. It's like, no. Go give a start. Go on Kickstarter, you butthole. Like, just go away and take your prospecting money everywhere. Oh, I hate it. I hate it so much.

Dave Jones: Well, there's lots of parallel ones like that. The vintage calculator market, right? Yeah. I can't afford to buy the vintage calculator watch I want because they're so valuable. They're hyped up, right? They're so hyped up. Yeah. That they're, you know, I would actually wear it and use the damn thing, right? Right. For what does it know? People buy it and restore it and sell it for like $2,000, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, man.

Dave Jones: And the whole industry is just hyped up and you can't afford to buy these things to use it and enjoy it like it was originally intended. Yeah. I know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Same. Yeah. There's other vintage electronics like that too. I mean, like if you wanted, you know, vintage radios or type ladders. If you wanted an Apple One, you know? Yeah, exactly. Apple One. If you actually wanted to program it, no? Sorry. You're screwed.

Dave Jones: No, you'll have to get one of the, you know, you'll have to get one of the non-genuine ones, you know, one of the kit ones. Oh, makes me angry. Right. Although to be- Granted, there were only 200 of those produced. Yeah. So, you know, pretty limited.

Chris Gammell: Still. Still. Yeah, I know. You know? Yeah, still. Man, that got my blood boiling. Breathe in. Breathe in. Breathe in. All right. So now I'm going to completely change focus and say to do the opposite. Right. Ah, yes. So, China, right? There was this thing Tim O'Reilly had posted about. China. Yes, China. Bingo. But it was just a thing talking about the unrest in China and political unrest. And there's a bunch of pictures. And, you know, I'll link it in and people can look at it if they want to.

Dave Jones: There's recent unrest in China?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, apparently. I mean, like, and they're like a lot of little things, right? But I started thinking about it and just how much that would screw up my world, your world, everyone's world in electronics, right? I mean, let's just focus on electronics. If China shuts its doors tomorrow, we are, oh, it's just, it's going to be.

Dave Jones: They're not going to do it.

Chris Gammell: I know they're not going to. But I'm just saying.

Dave Jones: It's not going to happen.

Chris Gammell: If there was a revolution and not China today, but China tomorrow, right? Right. So my idea is, what do we do then? And maybe that there's even an investing, ooh, investing. There's an idea that maybe you take a loss now and you start making a capacitor factory. Because think about capacitors, right? They're everywhere. But if China shuts down tomorrow. Well, this is Obama's new model, isn't it? Maybe, yeah. I mean, I don't think he's thinking about, like, discrete components, but.

Dave Jones: And he's not actually going to do it. It's all just hot air, right?

Chris Gammell: I think some of it is hot air and it's not going to extend down to components, right? I mean, that's all I care about. If China shuts down tomorrow, we don't have chips because the packaging places are in China. We don't have, you know, passives because they get in bottom of the barrel prices, right? Yep. And what happens then? And maybe there's a business case to starting to do that kind of thing now because either, A, because if something happens, you know, like either you have small runs and.

Dave Jones: There's hardly ever a business case for if something happens. Just in case. Well, yeah. That is, that's not how business works, unfortunately.

Chris Gammell: Well, I have no idea how business works. I'm an engineer. Come on. But maybe then there's business. You idealistic fool, you. I know. I know. But maybe there's a business model in having a junkyard even, like an electronics junkyard, right? Because if it got bad enough, then people are going to be pulling components off boards. Like, I mean, like, I was just thinking about it. I'm like, holy crap, what do we do? I mean, like. Right?

Dave Jones: I can just picture you running around with your hands and flapping around. Holy crap, what are we doing?

Chris Gammell: I know. I know.

Dave Jones: The sky is falling. The sky is falling.

Chris Gammell: I'm very, I'm very, uh, easily influenced. Right.

Dave Jones: So, okay, you're American.

Chris Gammell: I am. Yeah. We forgive you. I flip from things to thing, yes. But I think, look, there's, we've talked about it before. There's, there's real, even if you just take it to the, to the, the non-extreme side of it, right? Then you buy Aussie or American or New Zealand in the case of those boards you got, right? Because you want to buy domestically. I just think, I was actually thinking about that, how you bought that board domestically. Yep. Imagine if, if there, if there started to be problems, right? Those guys' orders, I mean, they, they maintain a business right now, right? But their orders would go through the roof if, if it was like what we were talking before. You know, if you need to get a board in a day or two, right? Or if you need to get a board in two weeks or two when everybody else needs to get the board from the same place, then there's a, there's a business case and starting that now and having a domestic supplier. You know, like there is, there's always a cost to hat to stuff, right? And the cost of low, low cost components and boards from China is risk. There is risk in it. So, um, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, the interesting story with the PCB circuit labs in New Zealand, as soon as my video went live, they were swamped with orders from all over the world. They couldn't believe it. They were really caught. Oh, bonus for them then. Yeah, I know. They were totally caught off guard and they had all these people wanting to, uh, wanting to get boards done. And they were swamped. They, they couldn't keep up. So if you got, um, you know, if you didn't hear from them straight away, that's why, that's why it was proves that there's people out there willing to pay a bit of a price premium for, you know, a, a good quality product and make that, you know, that anti China sort of stand.

Chris Gammell: I guess you could say, um, or, or FSM help us. It means Dave actually has some influence on people.

Dave Jones: Well, I, no, I just, I just talked about it and gave my personal preference.

Chris Gammell: It's just putting it into the light, right? I mean, like sometimes people don't even know it's there. So that's, yeah, that's true.

Dave Jones: Or people, or people might not have even thought about before. They might thought, Hey, that's not a bad idea. I've been buying all these cheapest ass boards from China and it's probably not a good thing in the long term.

Chris Gammell: And, and maybe someday you can talk, well, go on down to Chris's junkyard and, you know, pull, pull old electrolytic caps off of, uh, you know, a CRT board.

Dave Jones: Right. So your house is now going to turn into this huge big pile of, it's mine. It's all mine. I'm holding it for the, for Armageddon.

Chris Gammell: Well, aside from the show being up, I think I have to go. I think my wife is standing at the door with a machete in her hand, ready to chop me into little pieces for that.

Dave Jones: So, uh, and I have to go do it with my MakerBot.

Chris Gammell: You do. All right. Well, good show this week, man. I, uh, you know, I got a little worked up. Lots of rants. You've got a lot out. I got a lot of frustration. It's a good therapy session, right? And next week, next week, we just might have Bunny on the show. We may. Yeah. So, uh, we can ask him about his, uh, experience with, you know, working with Chinese suppliers or Singapore suppliers where he lives. Well, isn't he based there? He's based in Singapore. Uh, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yep. So we'll talk to him about that next week.

Dave Jones: Excellent. See you then.

Chris Gammell: Bye.

Chris Gammell: It was a good Salt of the Earth kind of episode. Salt of the Earth!