morgan, Author at Theory and Practice

Etching Brass

I ran across the steampunk workshop’s brass etching guide a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to try it out since then. Last week I finally got around to it, and the results look pretty nice.

The process is pretty simple.

Step one is to print a stencil onto glossy paper (I used old magazine pages) using a laser printer. The laser printer is necessary because the toner can be melted using an iron.

I cleaned the brass I was planning to use by polishing it with steel wool, then rubbing it down with alcohol to remove any oils from my fingers. Next I put the stencil face down on my brass and ironed it. I held the iron down on each stencil for two or three minutes and pushed pretty hard. This melted the toner and stuck it to the brass.

After ironing, the paper was stuck to the toner, which was stuck to the brass. I soaked the whole thing in water overnight, then gently brushed away all the paper. Some of my stencils ended up with a couple of holes, so I painted over those with some acrylic paint.

The next step was the actual etching. This involves submerging the brass in a copper sulfate solution and running a current through it. The copper sulfate solution is a very pretty blue.

The working piece (which you want to remove metal from) gets connected to the positive terminal of an old battery charger I had. I used an old piece of brass about the same size as my working piece as the negative terminal. When I hooked up the battery charger, molecules would leave the surface of the positively charged plate and be deposited on the negatively charged plate.

The etching took about half an hour to an hour, but part of that was because my current was actually too high. Normally a higher current corresponds to faster etching, but in my case the high current caused the battery charger to overheat and shut down. I had to keep letting the battery charger cool before I could restart the etching. I could reduce the current by putting a resistor in series with the brass plates, but it would have to be a very small, very high power resistor.

The battery charger is rated for 6A, but I was running probably 12 to 20 through it. Let’s just assume 16A. That means my brass etching setup probably has a resistance of about 12/16 = .75 Ohms (see Ohm’s law). To drop the current to only 6A, we’d need a resistor that was 12/6-.75=1.25 Ohms. It would have to be able to withstand 1.25*6^2 = 45W. That’s is a beefy resistor.

An alternative to a series resistor is to make the resistance of my etching bath higher. I could do this by using a smaller negative terminal. The negative terminal should be about the same size as the working piece so that it etches evenly, but I think I could get away with using a brass mesh rather than with using a brass plate.

In any case, my etches came out fairly nicely. The holes I patched up using acrylic paint didn’t turn out very well. I think the acrylic paint pulled off while I was etching. Everything covered by toner turned out nicely though. After I had finished the etching, I grabbed some steel wool and polished the whole thing to a nice shine.

Shop Class as Soul Craft review

I’ve been seeing Shop Class as Soulcraft around for a while now. One of the local hackerspaces has a copy, Venkat Rao over at Ribbon Farm put the book on his reading list, and it showed up on the shelves of my local technical bookstore. I put off reading it because I was worried about it being too polemical and reactionary, but with so many people recommending it, I had to give it a chance.

The book, by Matthew Crawford, focuses on how shop class and working with your hands is both economically and morally worthwhile. The author works as a motorcycle mechanic, but has a PhD in philosophy and got his bachelor’s degree in physics. I tend to have a real fascination with people who’ve seen what’s supposed to be good and chosen something else, so just from his background I already like the author. The book itself seemed overly verbose and grandiose. This might just be because the author has a PhD in philosophy, but I think there’s some attempt to be as respectable as possible while praising blue collar work above white collar work. Despite the verbosity, I liked the book.

There was a lot of ground covered in the book, but it seemed to have three main points. Crawford argues that “Blue Collar” work, and any work that involves actually making something physical, is more emotionally fulfilling and economically secure than white collar work. He also makes the argument that making things is a very different way of knowing than simply doing theoretical work. Shop Class as Soulcraft also had a long autobiographical portion, showing how and why Crawford had gotten involved with the mechanical arts.

Work in general is hard and most people wouldn’t volunteer to do it. That’s why they pay you for it. Crawford acknowledges this, but then goes on to say that work that involves some concrete and external metric (such as all work that involves making something) is more fulfilling. It shelters the employee from some of the capriciousness of management. Both the employee and the manager can look at the thing that is built and tell if it meets its criteria. Knowledge workers have no such thing to fall back on, and are thus more subject to the whim of management.

Not only that, the pressure over the last hundred years to put all manual labor in an assembly line seems to have reached everywhere that it could. Any manual fields that have avoided an assembly line are unlikely to be transformed. Repair work, construction, and installation all demand that a person be at a specific place, so those jobs are more or less immune to outsourcing. White collar knowledge work does not have either of these safety nets. Programming, human resources, and similar knowledge work have all begun to face outsourcing and assembly-lining. White collar jobs are no longer as secure or well paying.

Knowledge through doing is something that I’ve been considering more and more lately. I’ve been continually impressed with how much some of my friends know. Those friends of mine who are consistently making things, hacking, or working on projects seem to know quite a bit more about the world. Crawford argues that this is because it is only through making things that we really run into the physical reality of our universe. Only by trying to do something do we find out what’s possible.

One example the book gives of the differences between knowledge through doing and theoretical knowledge is that of shoelaces. According to knot theory, it’s always possible to untie a shoelace just by pulling on one end. It doesn’t matter if it’s double knotted or tied in some crazy way. As anyone who’s hiked up a mountain and come home with wet, muddy shoelaces can attest, this is not true. A mathematically ideal shoelace may have this untie-able property, but in the real world it depends on the quality of the shoelace.

Theoretical knowledge is useful, and Crawford is quick to point out that it is worthwhile, but all problems occur in the real world. Theoretical knowledge can inspire solutions, and even lead to very effective solutions, but you have to be careful that the theory doesn’t assume ideal shoelaces. Also, those without a theoretical background are still capable of doing very intense intellectual work very well, especially if they have a deep well of experience to draw upon.

I found the autobiographical portions of the book very interesting. The author seems to have had an exciting life in many ways, much of it filled with wood working and car or motorcycle repair. I enjoyed reading about his life, but some of it seemed not so much to support his point as to talk about how he arrived at his point.

My main criticism of the book is that it tends to be light on many details. For example, one chapter deals with the construction of the blue collar/white collar separation. Crawford makes the point that this was done explicitly by scientific management devotees. He offers some support, but doesn’t go very in depth into the topic. I suppose that I have to accept that a polemic book isn’t meant to be a history book, but I think Shop Class as Soulcraft could have used more detailed analysis throughout.

Overall I’d say this was a good book. It was a fast read; I got through it in about two days. Reading the book did a lot to organize my own thoughts on work and making things. I don’t think I learned a lot of new things from the book, but I did enjoy it. I give it 5/7.

Ubiquitous Computing Devices

Mark Weiser’s description of the three main Ubiquitous Computing devices was prescient. He named them the tab, the pad, and the board in order of increasing size. I have at least one of each in my house now. This was published about 20 years ago, so our terminology has changed a bit. The tab, wrote Weiser, was a handheld computer. The pad is more the size of a book or laptop. The board was wall sized.

My Android phone definitely counts as a tab, though we call those smartphones now. My Nook Tablet seems to resemble a pad (tabs and pads mean the same thing now). In my living room I have a computer connected to a projector for watching movies; this definitely counts as a board. These devices all embody different ways for consuming media, and in the present day they’re used almost exactly as Weiser predicted with only one main difference.

The pad, as originally envisioned, was supposed to be fairly stationary. A user might carry their tab around, but they’d be able to find pads anywhere. If you can pick up a pad no matter where you go, there’s no need to carry one with you. Pads haven’t become that commonplace yet, but even if they do I don’t think people will stop carrying theirs around. The modern equivalent of the pad, such as my nook, goes everywhere with its owner. One of my friends just bought a new coat because it had pockets big enough for his Kindle. The tab (smartphone) has a screen that’s just too small to be useful when you’re out and about. Even if every table in every cafe eventually has a scratch pad, that still won’t help you when you’re on the bus.

The modern desktop is a much better fit to Weiser’s expectations for the pad. There are desktops pretty much everywhere that you go (work, home, the library). You wouldn’t carry it with you. It’s even the main tool for creating content. When I want to do a lot of work on my smartphone (like write a new app for it) I do that work on my desktop and then transfer it to my phone or nook.

The modern laptop fits more under the tab category, for the same reason that my nook goes there. I still carry it around with me all the time. While touchscreen devices are great for consuming content, they don’t work as well as for creating it. The OCR just isn’t there yet. It may never be, as anyone who’s tried to read my handwriting can attest.

There seems to be place in Weiser’s world for a completely different kind of device. One devoted solely to content creation. Keyboard and mouse work very well for a lot of tasks. I wouldn’t have wanted to write this post on a touchscreen, for example. There are other input tools that people need for more complicated tasks.

The tab/pad combo is getting better as a storage platform and screen, but I don’t think it will ever take over for any kind of content creation. Perhaps as technology improves it will become the main computing device that you use, that carries around your files, your music, your life. When you’re at home, you may plug it into a dock that allows it to interface with larger screens and more appropriate user interfaces (maybe it’ll even do that wirelessly).

In spite of the focus on content consumption rather than creation, Weiser’s vision seems to have come true today. That’s one nice thing about reading old articles. It really feels like you’re living in the future.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

I read Peter F. Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship this month. I was looking for a good overview of innovation in technological fields. I’ve been interested in startups and high-tech companies for a few years now, but most of what I’d read was very specific advice, and not an overview of the field and how innovation works in general.

I chose Drucker’s book because I’d heard good reviews of his management and economic advice. After finishing the book, I did a bit more research on Drucker as a person. His Wikipedia entry is pretty interesting. He seems like he was an interesting and insightful guy. It probably helps that his economic and political opinions align pretty well with my own.

The book was great, but it had a much different perspective on innovation than I expected. Drucker focuses on innovation in a variety of industries, not just high tech. He definitely support high tech innovation, but he states that it’s riskier and more difficult than innovation in other areas. I found this passage from the conclusion especially poignant.

High tech […] is only one area of innovation and entrepreneurship. The great bulk of innovations lies in other areas. But also, a high-tech policy will run into political obstacles that will defeat it in short order. In terms of job creation, high tech is the maker of tomorrow rather than the maker of today. […] High Tech in the United States created no more jobs in the period 1970-85 than “smokestack” lost: about five to six million. All the additional jobs in the American economy during that period, a total of 35 million, were created by new ventures that were not high-tech but middle-tech, low-tech, or no-tech.

The book is engaging, but reads like a bunch of lists of how to succeed as an innovative entrepreneur. Drucker lists the areas that you can innovate in, ways to achieve innovation, and ways to succeed as an innovative company. These lists are interspersed with a lot of advice and a few case studies. The advice all seems useful, and after finishing the book I was left with the opinion that this would be a good book to come back to over the next few years to re-read those parts that were especially insightful.

Freedom and freedoms

It seems like talking heads on the news, in all kinds of mass media really, use the word “Freedom” as a cudgel to bludgeon opposing arguments with. Bills are drafted that will “save our Freedom,” others are condemned for destroying Freedom. Politicians, the public, and the journalists themselves are all accused of not caring about Freedom.

The problem with this, other than the political infighting it causes, is that it treats freedom as some indivisible thing. People speak of freedom as if you either have it or you don’t. Freedom isn’t like that.

There’s no such thing as “Freedom,” there are only freedoms. I have a freedom to vote (when I’m old enough), to say what I want (as long as I avoid certain topics in certain places), and to date who I want (as long as I don’t mind being mocked or worse if I date the wrong person). These and others are freedoms that we have, and I think that losing sight of this and treating Freedom as one homogeneous thing is dangerous.

By living in the society that we do, we agree to give up certain freedoms in return for certain guarantees. Everyone gives up some “freedoms to” so that everyone can expect “freedoms from.” I don’t have the freedom to beat you up and take your hat, but I can expect to remain free from beatings and hat thievery myself. It’s important to realize that we make these trade offs so that we don’t start making the wrong trade offs, or not realizing it when a trade off is being made.

If we treat Freedom as an indivisible thing, we may go around thinking we have Freedom because we can do X, even though our freedoms to do y and z have been reduced. If we’re too focused on what Freedom means and whether we have it, we may not notice that our freedoms are being eroded until all that’s left is a little island of freedoms that exactly defines what we thought Freedom was. This is the situation that I think we’re in now. People are getting wrapped up in what Freedom is and who has it, and they aren’t noticing that many of our freedoms are being revoked or wrapped in stipulations and conditions.

Another risk is that we might start to think that we have Freedom and those other poor folks over there don’t. Maybe we should bring them our Freedom? This despite the fact that they may have freedoms we don’t have and we may have freedoms that they don’t have. There’s more than one possibility here.

Next time you hear someone (or yourself) start talking about Freedom, unpack the statement. What freedom is it that you’re talking about at the moment? What are the effects of that freedom and how might that freedom be affected by what you’re considering? How would what you’re talking about affect other freedoms? This case-by-case treatment will lead to a much more Free country.

Quorum Sensing and iGEM

As an electrical engineer, I’m used to being able to wire components together to get essentially interference free communication. In biological systems, this capability isn’t available. Cells communicate with each other mainly using proteins and other small molecules that diffuse through cell membranes. This means that all neighbors of a cell may sense whatever it’s transmitting, along the lines of wireless networks. Unlike wireless networks, cells don’t have IP addresses and their state is very stochastic. This makes effective cellular communication very difficult and inaccurate.

Quorum sensing seems to be the method most used by cells to communicate. In nature it’s just used to sense local concentrations of cells. This can be used by engineers to accomplish a variety of different tasks that require cells to work together.

Many iGEM projects this year deal with new ways of using quorum sensing. Many of the projects use quorum sensing to differentiate cells, while others use quorum sensing for environmental detection or generalized communication mechanisms.

Grenoble: Mercury Detection using E-coli

The Grenoble team created e-coli that switch from one state to another in the presence of mercury. If mercury is present, the cells become “sender cells” that produce a quorum sensing molecule. Cells where IPTG is dominant over mercury become “receiver cells”. These cells produce RFP if the concentration of the quorum sensing molecule is high enough. The layout of the cells causes only the receiver cells closest to the sender cells to turn red. This creates a visible indicator of the concentration of mercury in the sample.

USTC: Infection targeting anti-bacterials

The USTC-China team developed a genetic circuit that allows for differentiation of cells. Cells become either “sleeper” cells or “attacker” cells, and AHL quorum sensing causes a suitable percentage of the undifferentiated cells to become attackers. The attacker cells move towards a bacterial infection (of AIIS) through chemotaxis. When the concentration of the molecule produced by the AIIS infection becomes high enough, the attacker cells create pyosin, which causes them to die. Excess pyosin is released that kills the bacterial infection.

Monterey: Code interpretation through quorum sensing

The Monterey, Mexico team developed three different strains of e-coli. Each strain responds to a different wavelength of light by releasing a different quorum sensing molecule. The strains can communicate among each other through these quorum sensing molecules to determine which color light has been shone on them. By using bistable switches, it is possible to record the order of the light that was received.

Peking: Chemical wire toolbox

As part of their chemical wire toolbox, the Peking team developed a set of quorum sensing molecules that can be used to send signals between cells. Their goal was to create a number of orthogonal signal mechanisms to allow cells to communicate with each other without interfering with other routes of communications (basically creating the non-interfering wires I take for granted in EE).

Sevilla: Ubbit communication standard

The Sevilla team created a standard for information exchange among cells. Like the wire toolbox from Peking, the Sevilla Ubbit is a standardized communication mechanism among cells. The Ubbit is meant to be a synthetic quorum sensing molecule.

Interesting iGEM Projects

The UW just won the world championships for iGEM. iGEM is the international Genetically Engineered Machine foundation. They sponsor yearly competitions where university undergraduates can compete to build interesting genetic components (biobricks).

This seems like such a fun competition. I’m kicking myself for not getting involved in it when I was an undergrad. The UW team this year came up with some amazing genetic circuits to generate diesel in e. coli and grow proteases that break down gluten (not at the same time, these are two different projects).

It looks like there are a lot of other interesting iGEM projects from other schools, so I’ll list some of the ones that I like the most.

Bioremediation

Many modern manufacturing techniques result, either directly or indirectly (accidently), in the release of toxic chemicals into the environment. Several methods exist for dealing with this, such as dispersing the chemicals or attempting to collect and store them elsewhere. These methods are often ineffective or partially effective, and can take years to show results.

Bioremediation, which involves the use of special cells that interact with pollution, may offer a more effective solution. Several iGEM projects deal with this in some way. Some of the projects specifically attempt to create cells that would remove pollutants, while other projects make cells more robust to pollution. The latter property would make the cells more suited to bioremediation.

Panama

The Panamanian team worked on a biobrick that synthesizes rhamnolipids. These are surfactants that decrease the surface tension of water, allowing spilled oil to be recovered more easily. This may at some point be a more effective way to produce surfactants than the one currently used.

NYC_Wetware

The NYC_Wetware team focused on providing cells with radiation resistance. The hope is that radiation resistance could be used for bioremediation after nuclear accidents.

Lethbridge

The Lethbridge team worked to create a kit to clean up tailings ponds. Tailings ponds are storage ponds where oil refineries store toxic waste. The current methods of dealing with these tailings ponds can take years. The tailings pond cleanup kit produced by Lethbridge uses synthetically produced proteins to metabolize toxic organic compounds. Some heavy metals were induced to form nanoparticles, which can be removed with the generated biomass. They also looked at increasing the sedimentation rates in the ponds using cells expressing a specific antigen.

Queens Canada

The Queens Canada team worked on making multicellular eukaryotic organisms that could break down several pollutants. They modified the C. elegans nematode to sense and move towards specific pollutants. The worms also had genes inserted to detect and degrade naphthalene.

Removing Antibiotic Resistance

Two teams worked on using the CRISPR genes on bacterial DNA. These genes act as an immune system for the bacteria, giving them resistance to external plasmids and phages. Antibiotic resistance in some bacteria is due to the CRISPR mechanism.

Georgia Tech

The Georgia Tech team worked to add CRISPR fitness to non-antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. Their hope was that this would allow the non-antibiotic resistant bacteria to outcompete the antibiotic resistant bacteria.

USC

Plasmids are can cause horizontal antibiotic resistance transfer among bacteria. By giving bacteria CRISPR resistance to certain plasmids, the USC team plans to create bacteria that cannot receive antibiotic resistance in this way.

Optical Signaling

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania team developed two different strains of Human Embryonic Kidney cells. One of the strains was engineered to produce light at 480nm, while the other strain was engineered to respond to incident blue light by producing blue light itself.

Vitamin Producing Yeast

Synthetic biology has the ability to improve the foods that we eat and make them more nutritious. Brewer’s yeast, one of the primary cell types used in the iGEM competition, is also used in the food production industry for breads, beers, and other foods. Since it makes such a good chassis for engineered pathways and is useful in food production, it’s a good vector to deliver manufactured molecules to humans.

Two teams focused on making yeast more nutritious.

Johns Hopkins

The Johns Hopkins team, for example, added genes to produce vitamin A and vitamin C to yeast. They then performed baking experiments to determine how easy their new yeast was to use in cooking.

Washington University in St. Louis

The Washington University in St. Louis also inserted genes for vitamin A into yeast. They also looked at the production of a similar molecule used in perfume manufacture.

Glucose Detection

Missouri Miners

The Missouri Miners team worked on biobricks to detect glucose in various concentrations. This has the potential to decrease the cost of blood sugar monitoring and increase the quality of life of many diabetics. In the long term, it could also be used to cause cells to produce insulin in the presence of glucose, which could lead to a more permanent cure of the disorder.

In praise of requirement shift

One of the complaints that I’ve heard most often from engineers in various industries is about the requirements shift that often happens midway through a project. It’s a common refrain: “I had almost finished the project, and then my boss told me to do everything in a totally different way. Why can’t they just make up their minds?”

I’ve only ever worked at small companies where the design decisions were fairly transparent. With only two levels between me and the CEO, it was always pretty obvious why any change was being made. In general I haven’t had to deal with this issue very much in my career, but up to now I’ve been sympathetic to those people who have. A recent project that I worked on gave me some insight into requirement shift from a manager’s perspective, and I now have a lot more respect for projects that experience a lot of shift and upheaval.

A few weeks ago I decided to build myself a frisbot. My idea was to mount some photo-sensors a two wheeled chassis (each wheel would be a frisbee, hence “frisbot”). The bot would then be able to follow a light around. I had a good idea of how I wanted to design the electronics (finally using that MSP430 launchpad I got a while ago), but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to build the chassis. I was thinking a simple plank of wood with the various components mounted to it, but I hadn’t thought much farther than that. I convinced my friend Jared, who has an irrepressible drafting habit, to help me out with the mechanical design.

The two of us sat down and I showed him some videos of other frisbots, and showed him the different electrical components that had to fit on the chassis and we talked a bit about the design. Then we split up and got to work, I wrestled with the MSP430 DAC and he started drafting out the chassis design. Since I hadn’t really done much to spec out the chassis, Jared started asking a few questions about the chassis.

Him: How do you want the motors attached? Can we just mount them on wooden plates perpendicular to the base?

Me: Sure that works. Oh, but can you make them easy to remove so that I can replace the motors later if I want? And add some space to allow bigger motors in the future?

Later

Jared: Ok, the motors plates are done. And you were going to put the dev board here? (points to his design)

Me: Ya, that’s what I was thinking. Oh, wait! I might want to use a different microcontroller later, can you make the space for it larger?

We went through a few rounds of questions like this. He would ask for clarification, and I’d suddenly realize that we could do something slightly differently and make for a better or more flexible design. Admittedly, if I’d spec’d the thing out beforehand this probably would have gone a lot more smoothly. Jared, nice guy that he is, didn’t punch me in the face even after I asked him to change things for the fourth time.

The main point of this story is that the reason for requirement shift is because you don’t know everything you need to do until you’re actually working on it. That’s when a lot of questions get answered. Even if I had written down a full specification for the chassis beforehand, some of Jared’s questions spurred me to think of things that I wouldn’t have even considered beforehand, like adding a crossbrace to the motor plate. The act of making it changed what I thought was best and informed a lot of the design decisions.

Generalizing from this one experience, it seems that requirement shift on a project means you’re doing something new. If you’ve done it before, you know how to do it and don’t have to worry about changing the design halfway through. But if you’ve done it before, then it’s boring. One of the main reasons I like to design and build things is that it’s an educational and inspiring experience. If I only ever build things that I know how to make, then I’m not learning anything or doing interesting things. Even something that was once interesting can become mundane and boring after you’ve done it enough. Having to rethink a design halfway through is actually why I do what I do.

I think one of the main reasons that people complain about requirement shift so much is that in larger companies, the engineers are often isolated from many design decisions. They’re so removed from the design process that they don’t get to experience the wonder of discovery that happens when you realize you have to do something different. It’s not a problem with requirement shift, it’s a problem with openness in the company. This may be why startups don’t have a problem with it. Everyone in the startup gets to experience the fun parts of the design, so they don’t balk when things change.

If you don’t have requirements shift, you’re doing something easy and boring.

Motivating Motivation

I have trouble motivating myself to do interesting things. If I don’t force myself not to, I’ll tend to sit on the couch eating cheese-puffs and reading web comics all day. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating cheese-puffs and reading web comics, but I would like to accomplish things in my life. I want to look back on my days and years and be able to point to many things that I have done to make the world a better place in small or large ways. So I need to do things.

The problem is, there are many things that I could do, and I don’t find myself too motivated to do any of them. Or I’ll work on them a little bit, but when they get a little bit hard I’ll change gears completely and work on something else. This causes me to make little overall progress on any one thing.

I need to hack my brain so that I am motivated to do interesting things. At the lowest level, I’ve known for a while that my physical state of being dramatically effects what I want to do. If well-rested, moderately full, and have been drinking water regularly, I’ll be much more willing to do interesting things. Similarly, if I’ve gotten some vigorous exercise then I’m more likely to be motivated.

These are probably the things I can do that will have the most impact on how motivated I am, and I’ve known about these thing for some time. Obviously just knowing that I should do those things is not sufficient.

Here are the actions that I will take:

Carry around snacks and a full water bottle, and use them before I need to.
Notice if I am getting hungry, and immediately make plans to go eat. If I’m doing something worthwhile, then I can put off eating. If I’m just puttering around, then I should go eat immediately.
Go for a morning jog. I think that even a quick mile jog for a few minutes would work well. I’ll try this tomorrow morning and see how it goes.

So that’s my plan to deal with the physical sources of ennui. What about other sources?

I’ve found that I can be a lot more motivated if I’m accomplishing something. Basically I need to set up success spirals for myself; to use other words, I need to put myself in a state of flow.

One way to do this is to break up any job that I have to do into multiple chunks. General to do lists are helpful, but I often get discouraged if the list items are large. I think I need to focus on much smaller, simply achievable goals.

Another thing that I can do is visualize success. Think about what it will feel, taste, smell like to have this thing done. Think about bragging to my friends about having made this awesome thing. Visualize having the thing done, and playing around with it. Consider all of the things that I will have learned from the project, and all of the people that I will have helped.

Lastly, I can use other people to help motivate myself. I’ve unofficially been trying to do this with my RSS feeds by subscribing to the feeds of amazing people who do interesting things. The thing is, I usually just get wrapped up in reading all of those feeds. The idea seems to be a good one, but the implementation needs work.

What I’ll do is keep a list of things that are incredibly motivating to me. Any time I find a new picture, video, or blog post that gets me excited about doing things, I’ll put it on that list. When I’m feeling un-motivated, I’ll take a look at that list of things and watch a few from it, then get back to doing my own things.

I was motivated enough to write this, now I just need to be motivated enough to put it into practice. It’ll be a success spiral of motivation.

Engineers vs Pretengineers

I’m an engineer, and I have been one since the University of Washington bestowed upon me a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. I wonder, though, if my graduation was the day that I can point to and say “on that day I became an engineer”. Is engineer a status that is defined by some outside body, or by one’s actions and thought patterns?

Every once in a while I’ll teach a workshop or work a shift at Metrix Create:Space. Metrix is a hackerspace where people can come and build things, and the staff there are expected to help people build things. Since Metrix is the kind of place that people like me want to hang out in, it can be hard to tell if an employee is actually working or if they’re just there to build their own stuff. To fix that problem, staff at Metrix who are on the clock wear labcoats.

These labcoats have a name and title embroidered on them. Most of the labcoats have the title of “pretengineer”. The labcoats for people like me, who are accredited by some institution, have the the title “actual engineer”. Pretengineers and Actual Engineers don’t do different jobs at Metrix, and most Pretengineers don’t know significantly less about a subject than the Actual Engineers.

Some of the Pretengineers at Metrix make more things and have a much more technological mindset than some of the Actual Engineers that I know. What it comes down to is, for a place like Metrix there’s no difference between the two. Maybe an expectation of quality, but that expectation is met by everyone who works here, not just the people who have a degree in engineering.

I don’t think that being an engineer has anything to do with what some school or other has decreed you know. It seems to be more of an attitude towards problems. If the first thing you do when you see a problem is think about how to solve it with math and technology, then you are an engineer. It doesn’t even matter how much math or technology you know about, or how much skill you have. If you are willing to try the math and solve problems with technology and experiment until you figure out how to do it, then you’ll eventually learn everything that you need to know.

All a degree in engineering is good for is showing that you have some minimum level of skill, not that you’re an engineer in the first place. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In projects upon which lives depend, like bridges or pacemakers, you want to be sure that the person designing it has made (and learned from) all their mistakes already. Having some kind of standards body that recognizes people who are qualified to work on safety critical projects is all well and good. People who have followed other routes to excellence may not be able to be qualified by that standards body, even if they are already quite skilled.

My concern is that having such a standards body, or even having the hoop of “college graduate”, will push people who are actually already quite accomplished engineers away from the field. And that’s a shame. There are many valid ways of solving problems, but thinking that someone (yourself or someone else) isn’t capable of using one just because of some standards organization hasn’t approved them is severely limiting.

Open source movements, software and hardware both, are doing great things to make engineering something that everyone is allowed to do. The rise of maker and hacker culture is encouraging everyone to become engineers, whether they realize it or not. We’re moving more and more towards a world where everyone uses the techniques of engineering. My hope is that people start realizing this, and claiming the title of engineer with pride.

I’m an engineer. When I set out to solve a problem, I start by quantifying it and applying my technological tools to it. What do you do?