#86 – Emolumental Evaluation Emporetics

[display_podcast]

• Survey Results are in! Thanks to the 330 or so people that participated! (Results will show up in a separate post)
• Australia lost the SKA to South Africa.
• Chris is going to this year's Bay Area Maker Faire! If you're going to be there, let him know!
• For our European listeners, Future electronics (the distributor) has a program where you can get dev boards if you trade your information. Decent mount of vendors participating.
• Today's show centered around the different types of sales people, Chris has written about this before at Engineer Blogs.
• When is it OK to hang out with vendors? Is there an ethical limit to what you should agree to? Is just lunch OK?
• IBM creates a quasi-off-the-shelf Terabit Transceiver for network communications at under 5W power. Way outside the range of everyday networking but a good sign for the future!
• Altera had a press release this week about their built in optical transceiver.
• This is in line with much of the module-based electronics that are being developed by chip vendors these days.
• Printed electronics on a machine that cost less than $10K! Does Chris win? Thanks to Cherish from Engineer Blogs for pointing it out!
• Want micro machines to go along with your printed chips? Try a printed dragon fly, on a print platform the size of a business  card!
• ZombieTech.tv did a great interview with James Neal (@laen), who runs the DorkbotPDX service (the purple boards).
• Dave has his MakerBot working and printing! He was happy he had to repair the machine so he now knows how it works and what to watch for.
• And the recently posted video!
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdC7kTT-nN4
• Dave is getting custom bean bags made for his office made with a custom fabric (if you're interested, you can easily purchase it here):
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• Chris has been struggling with KiCAD but learning as he goes, similar to the struggles Dave has been having.
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• Dave used to have to do actual tape out on old boards and could do negative patterns in his head!
• COTW:
  • A new(?) chip from Analog Devices, ADM1166, can monitor 10 different power rails and store the continuous voltages for readback after a failure. Can also throw alarms and coordinate power sequencing. Cool chip!
• Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, was sick of people emailing him with "better" punchlines to his comics. He now allows you to add your own ending to a comic strip (registration required, however).