Anablog
Senior Technical Editor, Steve Taranovich, muses about the analog world of electronics as it relates to electrical engineers and analog aficionados.
LTspice seminar with Mike Engelhardt
Last week I was lucky enough to get tipped off about the last seminar this year for Linear Technology’s free Spice program, LTspice. The seminar was given by the author of the program, Linear Tech employee Mike Engelhardt. From hanging around LT design engineers, I have heard that there is a little PSpice DNA in the company. Mike once said that he hired a former PSpice programmer to help wi ...... Read More
Comments (19)LTspice seminar today, TI Tech day Thursday, Computer History Museum Saturday plus eFlea breakfast
Lots of happenings this week in Silicon Valley: LTspice seminar today at Linear Techhttp://www.nuhorizons.com/xpresstrack/ltspice/ TI Tech day at the Doubletree Hotel on Thursday the 8thhttp://www.ti.com/ww/en/techdays/2011/docs/sanjose_agenda-dec.pdf Our usual eFlea breakfast (no flea market in winter) Saturday Dec 10, 2011, 7:00-10:00 PM Bobbi’s Coffee Shop 1361 S De Anza Blvd Cuper ...... Read More
Comments (3)Make 27.63 an hour and you are a professional
Sent by alert fellow Croatian, and offered without a rant or comment, is this link to a proposed law that will classify tech workers making over $27.63 an hour as “an employee in a professional capacity”. So there you have it, an arbitrary number you can strive for. $25 an hour is about $50k a year, so good luck with your career. Once you make it, you can call yourself a pr ...... Read More
Comments (0)Bangalore tech workers are the Ugly Indian
I saw a great article in the BBC about a volunteer group in Bangalore that calls themselves the Ugly Indian. The group is largely comprised of engineers and technical workers. Like engineers everywhere, they love to solve problems. The problem they decided to tackle was run-down sections of Bangalore that have become open garbage dumps. They don’t try to sell something to fix it. They don&# ...... Read More
Comments (25)Medical electronics webinar Dec 7
EDN editorial director Patrick Mannion has tipped me off to a medical electronics webinar. He notes: “Seems like something worth looking into. It’s titled “The Medical Electronics Balancing Act: How to lower cost while boosting innovation” and it’s on December 7, 2011 at 1 pm EDT.” This is a sponsored webinar, with contributors from Freescale and PTC, the ...... Read More
Comments (1)Fission Chips and Mushy EEs party Dec 14 2011
The fine folks at our sister publication EETimes are putting on an engineer get together here in Silicon Valley. It will be Wednesday, December 14, 2011 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (PT) in San Jose, CA. From the invite: Join Us! EE Times wants to solder the EE back into Christmas-ee, and we need you, esteemed engineer! We’ll be hosting our first ever engineering social event - Fission Chip ...... Read More
Comments (0)Linear Tech and Maxim smackdown at the loco
So my analog guru buddy Eric Schlaepfer, who worked at Maxim at the time, came over to St. John’s grill, where a lot of us analog folks get hammered, ahhh, errr, I mean conduct inter-company team-building exercises. Eric was all jazzed and had an advertisement for a new MAX17710 Maxim charger chip for micro-battery energy cell. He also brought over an ultra cool Maxim demo board with a thin ...... Read More
Comments (4)Ott, Gilbert, Sauer, Harvey, and Fong discuss the new Spice model for transmission lines
The previous blog post talks about Roy McCammon’s method to do Spice simulation of transmission lines. Before blogging about it, I sent the links to his original EETimes article to several analog aficionado pals. Their responses, praise, and repartee are printed below. Henry Ott, a former member of Bell Labs working for the Longlines division is a treasured source for anything about transmi ...... Read More
Comments (5)Improved Spice model of a transmission line
Diligent reader Roy McCammon wrote me to point out an article he did over at EETimes. He felt that not many “real” engineers would see it over there, so he wanted me to republish it in EDN. Sorry, Roy, that can’t happen. If you wanted EDN readers to see it, you should have sent it to EDN, not my sister management/lifestyle publication. I did have to admit Roy worked up a dandy ...... Read More
Comments (2)Tour of the NASA Ames Sustainability Base green building
Alert reader and fellow Croatian Andy T tipped me off about an IEEE tour of the super-green platinum cool-dude NASA building just a couple miles from my house in the Ames Research center next to Moffett Field. The location for you Google Earth fans is 37°24′39.73″N 122° 3′42.37″W NASA had the architects use so-called green design principles throughout the bui ...... Read More
Comments (13)Another messy lab photo for your enjoyment
Randall Logan of Scientific Solutions (the Canadian one) saw the picture of Jim Williams’ lab bench in my recent editorial. He was nice enough to send this photo of the lab of Harold T. Gordon. Randall notes “He made very valuable contributions in the field of entomology.” Harold T. Gordon in his lab. Click to enlarge. ...... Read More
Comments (9)Six weeks later, still a nation of idiots
My college buddy Russ Grosse sent me a link to an article that claims cold fusion is just around the corner. Russ knew I would be especially outraged since the article does not come from some “over-unity” pseudo-science website, but from Forbes Magazine. I guess this a nice bookend to that GE magazine article I ridiculed six weeks ago. GE should know better. GE is the outfit that mov ...... Read More
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