Electrical Engineering

5:22 AM

morning

2 hours later…

abdullah kahraman

7:37 AM

1 hour later…

raforanz

8:39 AM

4 hours later…

12:43 PM

hi everybody

3 hours later…

3:15 PM

We seem to have attracted a vandal, making comments w/ edits and snide moderator remarks

whatsisname

thats no good

3:35 PM

@ScottSeidman I think our regular is back, haven't seen him for quite a while until recently

@jippie Oh joy

@ScottSeidman Some of his answers got so disturbing that a feature was introduced on SE to hide answer text when marked as spam or abuse.

that is for 10k+ rep users

4:08 PM

There's a regular vandal?

@VladimirCravero a.k.a. the troll. Don't feed him.

@VladimirCravero When you see an answer from his hand, just flag for spam or abuse and ignore him.

@jippie of course I won't feed him, I just wonder why someone should be so dedicated to earn the "regular" nickname

@jippie He's been back for a couple weeks, but the mods (or automated systems?) have been doing a good job of knocking his stuff out before it gets seen.

@VladimirCravero Mental illness seems to be the most likely explanation.

4:24 PM

@ThePhoton well that's kinda sad, I hope somebody in real life can help him/her

@VladimirCravero Agreed.

@ThePhoton I haven't been as active as a while ago too, so that is quite possible yes.

4:40 PM

grEEts all

@placeholder Ahoy

@ThePhoton Arrgh!

So it seems that chat isn't as busy as it once was, with far less banter.

@placeholder It's so sad that International Talk Like a Pirate Day is only once a year.

@ThePhoton It doesn't have to be ... At one of my companies we called ourselves "Tourettes technology" which was sort of and sort of not SFW. I think TLAPD would be way better as long as you din't use various sexist terms.

@ScottSeidman someone isn't quite clear on somethings .. gotta love "The question doesn't ask about the spectrum, it asks about the bandwidth" WTF?

@placeholder and @ScottSeidman, TBH I thought Scott's answer wasn't very clear about the distinction between bandwidth and maximum frequency.

5:27 PM

@ThePhoton we threw a pirate themed party a couple of weeks ago here at my university

That was quite nice, especially because of the female pirates

5:45 PM

@ThePhoton MEH, while mathematical it is correct.

@placeholder Q: " is the necessary bandwidth of the channel twice the audio frequency of the tone used for CW?" A: "yes" (before Scott edited).

I consider this an incorrect answer (but maybe I just misunderstood exactly what question Scott was answering, so I just say it's unclear)

Actually, the "yes" is still there.

@ThePhoton I get his point. I think he's right, actually, or at least not wrong. I don't think I'm that wrong, though ;)

@ScottSeidman When the question isn't very clear to begin with, it's easy for different people to interpret it differently and give answers that depend on that.

Also Chris seems to be on a answer-criticizing jag.

@ThePhoton That was my read. I go right to sampling theory, but Chris is quite up on modulation.

@ScottSeidman I think you focused on the word "audio" while the rest of us focused on "used for the CW" and interpreted it to mean the carrier, rather than an audio submodulation.

6:00 PM

@ThePhoton Yup. All in all, though, fine handling and polite discourse. The OP can take from it what he needs.

@ScottSeidman You would get my +1 if you explained in your answer how you interpreted it and why that leads to the rest of your answer.

@ThePhoton Thnx. Might go back and edit it, if I have time to dig up the rig figs on AM. Digging out from a pre-college week long experience I taught last week. 18 high school students, 8 hours/day!

Did ensemble averaging on evoked potentials, strain gages, thermistors w/ thermodilution to measure flow, and built a microcontroller circuit that uses ultrasound to measure distance and adjust PWM on a motor, w/ the intent of determining whether it could help pepple w/ visual impairment do close up work. Had 18 HS students soldering up the circuit!

NIfty device they could take home for about $10/unit!

@ScottSeidman And no emergency room visits?

Not for burns, but had one student show up in the morning w/ head to toe hives that put him in the ER till 4AM ;(

@ScottSeidman :(

6:06 PM

I was actually proud of the soldering, though. Laid down some rules for when the irons were on, and they all listened very closely.

I have an interesting brainstorming experience w/ these kids. The idea behind brainstorming is to get ALL ideas, not good ideas, so for my college seniors, I use an example by having them brainstorm ways to make money w/ a million ball bearings. The college seniors go to work, and after a bit one will always ask "can we melt them?"

I reply that noone told them they couldn't, so they could!. Then they ask "does it have to be legal?" I ask them if anyone told them it has to be legal. The high school students just use melting and illegal ideas w/o asking!! Makes me wonder whether these kids are special self-selecting students, or whether we're crushing the college students imaginations to dust by the time they're seniors.

@ScottSeidman Somewhere along the way, some other Prof with a dogmatic focus on professional ethics probably marked the college guys down for suggesting something illegal.

@ThePhoton Might have even been me! I teach them research ethics at a different point, and I read them the riot act on animal ethics. We do a live animal lab in the engineering phsyiology courses, and I point out that I need to earn their respect, but the animals are absolutely entitled to their respect.

3 hours later…

9:31 PM

@ScottSeidman I had a biology teacher in high school, who started off the year (his first year teaching) by trying to teach qualitative concepts, and how to reason out or predict the answer without having told us the answer beforehand. I liked it, and I did well on the first test... but the "straight-A" students didn't get an 'A'. After the first test, the class changed to rote memorization of biology, and I did a lot worse.

9:57 PM

I can't believe one little singular matrix should prevent me simulating my whole circuit

@ThePhoton did you still have a question about VA?

@W5VO Not really at this point. More about how to structure a model to avoid convergence problems.

@ThePhoton avoid discontinuities and tangents ;)

@W5VO and positive feedback.

( I work with people who do a lot of VA

10:01 PM

@W5VO Do you know which simulator they use it in?

@ThePhoton I think they prefer HSPICE, but I know they've done it in Spectre as well

@W5VO Is Spectre part of Cadence?

@ThePhoton yes

Yeah, basically what I'm using VA for is be able to have the same model in both ADS and Cadence/Spectre.

@ThePhoton Sounds reasonable. We don't really use the Agilent design environments

10:05 PM

@W5VO If you do power stuff, it's probably not the right tool

@ThePhoton I do power with Saber, but all of the IC stuff is with Cadence Virtuoso

@W5VO TBH I know practically nothing about IC design tools. Never even took an IC design class in school.

@ThePhoton They behave like they were designed 20-30 years ago (just like almost every EDA tool).

@W5VO That's good because it means my text-mode SPICE skills are still useful.