The Amp Hour

A bit of a mixed bag episode. Chris is off to Maker Faire, and Dave likes to carry a man bag. 

Lots of talk about CAD, Education, Startups and China today! Sparkfun is having a soldering contest! Just like paying for FedEx, people are almost always willing to pay for faster service. Dave is working on his MakerBot directly after recording the show today. Chris is off on a trip to go do a technology transfer [...]

Chris is back from Hawaii, and we are joined once again by Jeff Keyzer of Mightyohm.com. All about Sabaticals, and trying to get out of working for a living :-> We ridicule a Spray-On Antenna in a can! We are reluctant to mention a new reality TV show called Top Engineer. Before auditioning, be sure to [...]

Whilst Chris is on his belated honeymoon, regular cohort Jeff Keyzer from Mightohm.com takes over. Jeff has been travelling again: He barely survived Berlin for New Years, what with their readily available fireworks, unlike Australia. The Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey Another surplus shop tour, including the TWR swap meet. Will Detroit just [...]

Dave's choice of an Arduino as the brains of his new power supply is giving him strife. They are manufacturing the 6502 again! Similar to how Rochester Electronics makes old parts. "Programming (Hardware) is like sex: One mistake and you'll support it for the rest of your life!" Chris is looking at a new project [...]

Happy Chinese New Year! Find out how to say it on YouTube. Or how to say it as a hardware engineer! Dave wasn't able to get parts from AliBaba. So is he a locavore now? Locatech? Ugh, terrible term. Dave's new boards are from NZ! http://www.pcbzone.net Chris likes the LPKF S43, which can dispense solderpaste right [...]

Chris visited a FabLab today (not a fab!) to work on some projects and hang out with friends. Chris has also been reading Neil Gershenfeld's book of the same name, FAB. Melbourne had its first MakerFaire, though Dave was not able to go, unfortunately. Dr. Howard Johnson offered rewards for finding errors in his book, [...]

Welcome Dr. Howard Johnson! He has published two reference books that are a must-have for the field of high speed signal propagation: High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic Howard hails from Twisp, WA. Martin Graham, the co-author of his book, was also his longtime mentor [...]

Happy New Year! We hope 2012 will be a great year for The Amp Hour and all of our listeners! We have a new theme by Paul Stevenson! We love it! Chris has a ham exam scheduled for next Sunday! Dave has been chasing a hum at his new studios, he took a spectrum snapshot [...]

Welcome to Ben Krasnow! (Also seen as bkraz333 on YouTube) We decided we had to have Ben on the show once we saw his crazy LED in a contact lens video: Ben started as a researcher/technician with a TMS lab, which led him to starting his own business, Mag Design and Engineering. That also led [...]

Thank you, thank you to all of our donors. We are currently shopping for Virtual Private Servers and will hopefully have zippy web service by the end of the calendar year! If you're still interested in joining the cause and helping out, please check out our Donation page. Thanks again! Thanks to PStevenson for including [...]

Welcome back Jeff! Joining us for some holiday fun!   Chris started a new engineering job today! Dave is getting the keys to his new lab today! Jeff is attending DorkBot Austin tonight! Reminds Chris of PechaKucha. What should we call a group of nerds standing around? Chris likes the term, "a grumbling of [...]

Chris reveals (to those that did not already know) that he used to work at Keithley Instruments and recently left to go work at an unnamed company. Chris has the whole week off! He wrote more about leaving his engineering job on Engineer Blogs. Keithley was recently bought by Danaher, who also owns Tektronix, Fluke, Seabird [...]

This weeks special guest is John Edmond, the co-founder and Director of Advanced Optoelectronics Technology at Cree, Inc in Durham, NC.     John talks about the history of Cree and how they built the company with no venture capital. Awesome! Lots of technical LED talk on manufacturing, Stokes loss, Haitz's law and chemistries involved in [...]

  Chris explains what he thinks Thanksgiving was about (or what he thought it was about, he's no historian). The Daily Show had a segment about "Evacuation Day" and the history behind it. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Happy Evacuation Day www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor [...]

Chris has been issued a challenge to get his (ham) technician's license by the new year. Can he do it? Do 10 others want to do it with him? If so, we can get Dave to sing on air! (or can we?) Dave has a beef with the Agilent U1272A's data export capabilities. Perhaps Dave [...]

Great comics from OhmArt! Be sure to check them out and buy some of their merchandise! Tales from the cube talks about a label over an EPROM...has anyone seen this article? Bill Schweber wrote about the persistence and insanity of engineers chasing problems. Katie Luper is a former lawyer going back to school for [...]