Alteritous Andy's Absquatulation

From The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

[display_podcast]

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, much like Don Knuth did for his programming book.
Chris is officially a ham! His callsign is KD8RND! (Dave is warming up his vocal chords)
Do you prefer calling or emailing?
Andy--PhotonicInduction on YouTube--announced he's officially shutting down his YT channel (NSFW language possibly).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC-IYP1xjow
Dave got and has unboxed his MakerBot Thing-o-matic. Chris met one of the 3D printing competitors today from MakerGear.
This American Life on NPR had a great feature on how consumer products are made, specifically Apple stuff at Foxconn.
OpenCores is now taking donations for their development of an Open RISC processor.
Cory Doctorow had a good speech at 28c3 about the impending closing off of electronics systems in the future.
A process engineer managed to sneak some fun stuff out of a fab:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmrBs3BX9SQ
Dave is building a ArduCopter currently but new types of quads keep on getting released. The AR Parrot 2.0 has a 720P camera mounted on it and is only $300!
Friend and IT Guru Alan Garfield was miffed that MicroChip doesn't provide command line tools anymore. Are IDEs the only way, in the eyes of vendors?
Chris is making videos for the soon-to-be-released CEE (started on KickStarter)
Shonky Product of the Week:
- The HojoMotor is a perpetual energy motor based on permanent magnets (how original!). The video is frigg'n hilarious! Watch it before the site is shut down! ;-)
Chip of the Week:
- Listener Clifford Wolfe writes in about the LMC6042 because of the 2 fA (typ) input bias current for sensitive applications.
- Chris also likes the LMP7721, which specs 3 fA typical (Chris mispoke, the max is actually 20 fA).
- Dave and Chris like any chip that offers an upgradable option (through binning or otherwise)!