Patrick Mannion
Brand Director, EDN, Test & Measurement World, Planet Analog
I'm brand director for EDN, Test & Measurement World & Planet Analog, where I'm responsible for the overall content and ensuring the brands grow while remaining true to their promise to both users' and sponsors. Since graduating with an National Diploma in Electronic Engineering in 1987 (Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland), I've been either doing or covering technology, design, and learning and have a passion for developing ideas, content and platforms that help engineers and innovators connect and get from concept to reality as quickly as possible -- and have a little fun in the process. When not thinking about that, I like to annoy my wife and tease my two little ones til they cry 'uncle' and can't take it anymore. That makes business travel a lot more attractive for everyone involved. I also like running, lots of music, reading (philosophy, biographies, mostly), hiking, home improvement (technology and reconstruction), playing with media, and gadgets.
patrick.mannion
's contributions
- 06.05.2013
- Teardown: The Engineer’s Mind
- I agree with Sparky_Watt that it really needs that non-engineer perspective, ideally some folks could pass it around and get that perspective and add in some comments here. That would be great -- in between tasks:)
- 05.07.2013
- Teardown: Disposable 1-Tbyte NAS drives: How'd that happen?
- It just gets better: 1-Tbyte, 7-mm thick hard drive just announced today by Western Digital: http://www.wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=800
- 05.07.2013
- Teardown: Disposable 1-Tbyte NAS drives: How'd that happen?
- I share your fetish: those magnets are right next to me here on my desk, keeping my metal items all together! I can't bring myself to hand them over to my son.:)
- 05.07.2013
- Teardown: Disposable 1-Tbyte NAS drives: How'd that happen?
- That's the odd thing about this whole situation: It wasn't worth spending the time to fix it, even if it were possible. It was almost full and I needed a bigger drive anyway, so chucking it is no big deal, in theory. (In practice, I too have a hard time dumping the parts and still have them.) If I was stuck, and desperately needed to salvage the data, I could spend time trying to fix it, though the HD cycling/chatter noise, as if stuck on a section, makes me think it's kaput. As it stands, i have backups and so, despite it being 1 Tbytes, it's just simply dumpable. I'm ashamed to be part of the 'chuck vs fix' culture, but that's kind of the point of the whole teardown: so much technological complexity...and it's instantly replaceable with the next gen. (Remember when we used to try and fix TVs??)
- 05.07.2013
- Teardown: Disposable 1-Tbyte NAS drives: How'd that happen?
- ooo....! Nice catch David! Fixed - and thank you.
- 04.30.2013
- EDN on LEDs Part 2: LED Lighting System Design
- Hey Donntech, it's going to be quite the packed hour, but we'll be able to address some of your questions I think. Hope you can join us!
- 09.11.2012
- Mobile phone interference with plane instruments: Myth or reality?
- It has to be a complete ban or device manufacturers and users would be in constant battles with the FAA or FCC over which devices deserve an 'exception' and then we have to spend the time on testing ad nauseum. Our sister site, www.designconcommunity.com has a great discussion on this from the EMI/EMC point of view, and if you know Eric Bogatin his comment is the final word on this, for me anyway: http://www.designconcommunity.com/author.asp?section_id=2549&doc_id=260925&
- 09.11.2012
- Mobile phone interference with plane instruments: Myth or reality?
- I had a funny incident with my ebook reader a while back: I'm pretty good about turning everything off 'on demand' (the airline stewards have enough odd characters to deal with without me adding to it.) However, I was so immersed in my ebook, and it felt so natural and like a real book (kudos to Nook and B&N), that I totally forgot it was 'electronic'. The steward came by right before takeoff and I swear she wanted to grab me by the throat as she said most annoyedly, "Sir, did you not hear the repeated instructions to turn of ALL electronic equipment..." Best intentions, tricked by seamless technology. Oh well:)
- 03.08.2013
- Pick your favorite contributor; winner gets $5000!
- The point about motivation and reward is very important, alpha60: we pondered this very issue back when we wrote our EDN Ethos in 2011. In essence, the motivation and driving force behind EDN and its community is the love of the art of engineering and its mission to be a knowledge sharing and mentoring platform. That's the whole motivating force, so the reward comes a much higher level than $5K. In the end, it's just 'play money' for the winner, the real reward is recognition and appreciation from the community. I could say more, but I think the video you point us to pretty much says it all: Thanks for sharing it!
- 04.03.2013
- 6 more sessions I’d like to see at DESIGN West
- The law of unintended consequences (or simply poor design or lack of experimentation before deployment) seems to have hit hard here: thanks for that link reportingsjr. I'll ask Rick if he can put this question about the unsanitary and inconvenience angle to the BigBelly team. Chances are it has come up and they may be working on Rev.2. Hope so. That thread puts me right off the idea.
