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October 2007



Responsibilities of a Design Engineer

Friday, 19 October 2007 10:18 P GMT-06
I was part of a discussion the other day that helped refocus my view of what a design engineer is.  Sometimes it's easy to forget or lose site of why you are an engineer, and what your overriding responsibilities are.  An engineer is a
Category: Engineering Profession

Metal Casting for the Hobbyist

Friday, 19 October 2007 6:03 A GMT-06
My recent experimentation in "Measuring Very High Temperatures" has made me very curious about metal casting as a hobby.  Now that I have some crucibles, the next logical step would be to get a furnace.  Based on my web searching
Category: Home Projects

Surface Mount Assembly Techniques for the Hobbyist

Sunday, 14 October 2007 8:39 P GMT-06
I saw an article in IEEE Spectrum Magazine recently with some techniques that a hobbyist could use for surface mount assembly.  It is clearly obvious that with the small size of surface mount components nowadays the hobbyist can hardly rely on b
Category: Electronics Hobby

Windows XP Laptop Won't Go Into Standby

Friday, 12 October 2007 8:49 P GMT-06
Occasionally my laptop computer will not go into standby either with the normal timeout or by force through the "Start -> Turn Off Computer" menu path.  It just stays on like you didn't do anything.  So I figured some proce
Category: Computers
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Circle Bus Topology

Friday, 12 October 2007 8:41 P GMT-06
One time I was trying to get a 125 MHz processor bus to meet timing requirements in a design that had about 8 processors connected together on the bus.  I tried dozens of different routing topologies.  I can't remember if it actually wo
Category: High Speed Digital Design

Measuring Extremely High Temperatures and Disposing of an Old Hard Drive

Thursday, 11 October 2007 7:55 P GMT-06
Hard drives in personal computers store much personal data.  When a computer reaches the end of its useful life, one dilemma is how to ensure that no one can steal your personal information from your old hard drive.  Even if you send a comp
Category: Home Projects

ESD Testing Fundamentals

Wednesday, 10 October 2007 9:01 P GMT-06
There was an article in Conformity magazine recently that was a very good introduction to ESD testing at the system level [1].  The article explained the background of the tests performed and the differences between chip level tests and system l
Category: High Speed Digital Design

Another Financial Engineer Story

Tuesday, 9 October 2007 8:25 P GMT-06
In the August 2007 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine, there was a story about an online stock trading contest.  The contest is organized by Interactive Brokers Group, to promote careers in the financial industry to engineering students.  The
Category: Engineering Profession

Robot Experimentation

Wednesday, 3 October 2007 5:47 A GMT-06
I believe that robots will increasingly become a part of people's everyday life.  I have been fascinated by robots since 7th grade when I built the robot project in Boys Life Magazine as a science fair project.  Two recent developments
Category: Robotics

RF Communications on Chip?

Tuesday, 2 October 2007 8:20 P GMT-06
Bandwidth limitations in board and system level transmission channels (printed circuit board traces, connectors, and cables) present a serious problem to increasing data rates with 1 bit per symbol NRZ signaling.  All of the current generation s
Category: High Speed Digital Design

Predictive Markets

Monday, 1 October 2007 11:19 P GMT-06
A while ago I wrote an article on predictive markets based on a news story on Yahoo News.  In a recent IEEE Spectrum Magazine , there was a more detailed article on the subject [1].  The article has a few more examples of prediction marke
Category: Engineering Profession Predictive Markets