CAD programs, Systems Design and Renewable Energy

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• Shout-outs
  • Rich Hoeg of The Northstar Nerd, linked to us from his podcast page! Be sure to check out the others on there!
  • To Google Sketchup! For offering electro-nerds the opportunity to do 3D modeling (easily!). They have a new contest in conjunction with Ponoko (thanks to @dustynrobots for the link). Check it out if interested in winning free software and stuff.Shoutouts
    • Dave has used eMachineShop
• Rants
  • An applications engineering job working with Labview requires a PhD?
  • IEEE Salary Service isn't included with membership fees?? What am I paying for? How are they any better than an eBook company??
  • CadSoft EAGLE needs a new pricing structure. Perhaps @element14 could take a look at it and make more sense of it? Why not charge by the layer instead of the geography??
• Discussion Point
  • A second edition of the NPR story on Hackerspaces played over the weekend. Mentions how MakerBot started out of NYCresistor (and the BotCave!)
  • In an age of increasing hardware abstraction, is it better to be a generalist or a specialist?
  • Jeri has a new video up about her (TSA Body Scanner) backscatter project. Trying to make a Hot Wheels radar gun into a 10 GHz local oscillator. This video is the first in the series and explains the background of radar.
  • Dave & Chris butt heads over whether or not it will be possible to make your own practical chips at home in the future. Dave calls bullshit, Chris calls why not dude.
  • New gesture software for the TI MSP430 Chronos watch. Cool idea!
  • Medical devices are capable of very small form factors, such as this wand/iPhone combo for ultrasound.
  • Renewable energy investment is politically/militarily driven in Isreal. Planning $500 million in investment in the next few years...wean everyone off oil and some of their adversaries have less money!
    • Dave likes the plan in Australia to be 100% renewable by 2020.
    • The molten salt method of storing energy could really help.

We're still looking for submissions for Workplace (and now Workbench) of the week. If you don't, we'll keep posting pictures of Chris in silly hats in my lab. Please email or leave a comment on the WOTW page!

Chris and his recently re-setup lab

Thanks for listening! And let us know what you think of the music (don't worry, Chris can take it!)