clueless123

Maybe I was super lucky or somehow immune.. but as a Kid I got zapped by flyback transformers quite a bit of times.. (5 or 6 times?) It hurts,and it leaves a burn point where it touched.. but did not killed me.

Eventually I learned to ground the whole thing with a cooper cable and a resistor.

To me, Unit Tests are live documentation for your code. You definitely do not need 100% coverage, but if you can exercise a good percentage of your code, you are making your future "you" live easier.

Just consider that in many cases code lifespan is 20% dev , 80% maintenance.

In my experience, At large companies that hire a lot of contractors, it is not that hard to pull this off. I've seen where the contractors A team do all the interviewing, then you get a C or C- team assigned to work in your project. By the time you "give them a chance", complain up the management chain, go sideways to HR and actually change the team, the contracting firm already got 6 months worth of salary from the team. In short, they do it because it is profitable.

PS.. To add insult to injury, the "engineers" on the team will update ther CV's to show that they worked for "large company X".

Our minds are wired to wonder, recall previous similar situations , associate and predict what is coming.. some minds are more active at this than others.

If you want to get some control over this, try practicing meditation. It will strengthen your ability to focus.

My 10c advise.

I recently found out that "unfinished" structures in Peruvian emerging towns is by design, as you don't start paying property taxes on a building until is "finished" , leaving it on an eternal state of construction, avoids you those taxes..

"His buildings are nicknamed cholets, a portmaneau of chalet (a Swiss mountain house) and cholo (derogatory slang for indigenous person)."

Just a small comment on the above paragraph from the article:

While in mexico the word "cholo" is used on a derogatory manner, in the andes (Peru and Bolivia) the word Cholo is used also as a pride term (like the N word can be used in the US) So people often claim "Cholo Power" for amazing endurance or Cholo Pink for a vivacious color on clothing or "100% Cholo" as a term of proud heritage.

In this particular case, I believe "Cholets" is used as a proud "originality" term.. but it certainly could be used as a demeaning term by the local equivalents of the infamous USA "Karen" type :)

1. This in Peru, far away from FAA's reach ;) 2. No,It must be a camera sync issue.. I was giving it just enough power to keep altitude 3. This was done just for fun.. To prove it could be done, if you wish. The engine (cheap chineese model) crapped out within 10 hours.. Sometime I'll put a newer/better and use it as a sustainer for when thermals are not available

And one more niche area.. Electric engines do not care about low oxygen, going up and down from coastal areas to high altitude Andes is economically achievable. Going from a place like Lima to Jauja in Peru can take 12 hours on a road, but barely 45 minutes by plane.

An early attempt with a Pipistrel sinus motorglider * going back down to the coast requires very little engine time :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOB8yzieYcs

Agree with the big benefits for training, specially if you can swap batteries like you do with industrial drones.

Other niche area where there would be a great benefit:

Remote regions like the amazon jungle where a regular trip between villages (no roads what-so-ever) takes hours or days on small powered canoes vs 15 minutes when flying. Electric seaplanes would not only deliver basic modern services (Medical, Police, Business, etc) to these areas but it could do it without the need of shipping expensive fuel from far away.. Solar chargers would take care of that. ( maintenance would be easier too.. )

My small attempt at the technology :) https://youtu.be/zAwpi7VPQTk

Been using mindmaps to keep "knowledge" for years (freemind) best thing ever.

The older I get, the more useful they become.

In this case, ships will be heavily loaded on the way down (carrying heavy produce) and lightly loaded on the way up (carrying lighter products like medicine or high value manufactured goods)

How high can this ships go? How Fast?

All along the Andes in South America there is a dire need to efficiently move products from high altitude to the coast (where major cities are)

In Peru for example, there are hundreds of small farming towns sitting at 10'000+ feet of altitude but just 40 straight line miles from the ocean.. Today to get there, trucks have to use one of the few roads that ,zig-zag up to the high lands before heading into any of this towns. ( an 8 to 16 hour trip )

Being able to ship produce straight down to the big cities on the coast would be a game changer.

* I posted this on another thread, but I just found this is the OP

How high can this ships go? How Fast?

All along the Andes in south america there is a dire need to efficiently move products from high altitude to the coast (where major cities are)

In Peru for example, there are hundreds of small farming towns sitting at 10'000+ feet of altitude but just 40 straight line miles from the ocean.. Today to get there, trucks have to use one of the few roads that ,zig-zag up to the high lands before heading into any of this towns. ( an 8 to 16 hour trip )

Being able to ship produce straight down to the big cities on the coast would be a game changer.

This brings nice old memories to me.. Some forty some years ago, as a kid, I wrote a morse-to-text decoder program in Basic that took it's input from the audio in port that Tandy's Model 1 had to load code from audio cassetes. Big was my surprise when the text coming out was mostly few letters long amateur radio "codes" sparkled with actual words here and there.. pretty much uninteligeble stuff. Still it was a great experience for a young kid of the time.

Agreed and point taken.. A good MBA's would realize the short sightedness of the actions they are taking (like they should have done in Boeing's case) and good engineers should have the integrity to say "you want me to do what? hell no!" That said, the malady I speak about is very real. (maybe even endimic?)

I might be biased (I am an engineer) but I call this behaviour " MBA mentality VS Engineer mentality". Is this malady that slowly has infected top engineering firms (Read HP, Boeing, IBM) and converted them into "sales organizations" that rely on marketing and old reputation to survive. MBA's concentrate on the (albeit short term) profits, Engineers concentrate on the the product.

Over here in S.A. there is a common saying: Behind every fortune there is a crime. I guess it is pretty international after all.

So sad, such a genius.

In my experience this is not 100% true. Many times you get involved on OSS to "scratch your own itch" be it a personal project from scratch or collaborating on somebody else OSS project by fixing/adding something that irks/needs you specifically.

Wow! Looks exactly like the desert of Paracas in Peru. Amazing!

VR Apps (Alt Space and others) can solve most of this issues right now. The soon coming generation of VR googles actually read your face expressions and replicates them online. IMHO, At the current pace of development, in less than a year, this will be the new reality.

Some fun facts..

Andean Condors in Peru glide from 14'000 ft up in the andes of Pampa Galeras all way the down to sea level at the Guano islands in the coast of Paracas. All to get stuffed eating crushed sea lions babies carcases..

After eating , Condors can't take of from the ground by flapping.. they got to "hop" up a hill to be able to launch into the incoming air to get some altitude.

Then they fly back up to 14'000ft by a combination of dynamic lift, thermals and wave induced lift when available.

A few years ago, a group of top paraglider pilots tried to recreate their journey up the mountains, but it ended with both pilots pretty badly injured after encountering nasty turbulent winds on the mountain canyons.

FWIW, the estimated glide ratio of a South American Andean Condor is ~ 12:1 or about what a competition Paraglider does. (Or an old hang glider)

You can point your telescope to any reflection or light (even fluorescent ones) on a room, and the induce vibration will be enough to create a signal to listen.. I accidentally figured that out when I was 13 or so, and tried to build a led walkie-talkie.. I kept hearing other voices, and that is what it was..

Fantastic Skydiving vehicle.. If you can get 9 people (+ gear) 12'000ft on a 30 minutes flight, then you can glide all the way down for the next load. at $6 worth of fuel it would be a game changer.

You can even ground tow to altitude then go flying.. Glider have been doing that for ages..

On the glider world, that is called a sustainer engine.. :) And here is my first attempt at an electric one.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAwpi7VPQTk

Motor: http://www.freerchobby.cc/ 202/80 27 brushless motor with hall sensor

Controller: https://kellyev.com/shop/khb/ KHB - High Power Opto-Isolated Brushless Motor Controller With Regen (72V-144V) (400A) * must choose high speed option controller to get more than 2000RPM !

Batteries : 6 * CNHL 8000MAH 22.2V 6S 30C LIPO BATTERY Propeller: Wood 49" Pitch 30

Doing my part to solve the issue :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBTZG1qkH5s

Exactly the same for Peru where I live.