China, Entrepreneurs and Blue Collar Reality

Dave made it home safe and sound! We’re glad to have him back and appreciate Jeff from MightyOhm stepping up to the plate in his absence. This week we jumped right past the videos Dave plans on posting and into talking about current events, so why don’t we do the same with the links?

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• Shoutouts!
  • Thanks for the mention from Jack Ganssle, rock star of the embedded world for mentioning The Amp Hour in his column. And he mentions Jeri's awesome garage experimenting as well!
  • In terms of larger custom designs, we like Jeff's idea of using MOSIS for chip development.
  • We were added to the Podcast Bunker. Thanks!
  • Dean Kamen, famed inventor of the Segway, has a new show called "The Dean of Invention" on the Discovery Channel. The first episode about biometrics is available for free online.
• Discussion Points
  • • Sky high! A video on fixing an RF control tower! Awesome!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDNGZVmhkTo

  • Speaking of dangerous, a 500 kV rock sorter that blows rocks apart with high voltage (thanks to reddit for the link mention)
  • Blue collar vs. White collar. Mike Rowe (of the Discovery Channel show, Dirty Jobs) discusses why the former is important for a strong middle class.
  • Also important is the role of entrepreneurs. Chris went to a seminar last night with Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen of the University of Michigan's Center for Entrepreneurship. While Dave and Chris were slightly skeptical about the "teaching" of building businesses, from what we hear it sounds like they are doing it right: namely the "doing".
  • Speaking of entrepreneurs, Dave noticed the "EcoSwitch" is finally available. It's a cautionary tale about staying away from companies that claim to want to help you design your invention.
• Rants
  • Dave doesn't like that it's "Open Hardware" instead of "Open Source Hardware", mostly that he's corrected about it. Who cares about the name?
  • China / US tensions building. Bills introduced in US gov't, China cutting off rare earth supplies. Could get messy, but hopefully it's just dumb politicians rattling the saber.

It was good to have Dave back and us making fun of one another from different continents. Something about that just seems right. Do you have something to make fun of us about? Did we miss or mess something up? Let us know in the comments!