Quirky things that us engineering types do...

Anyone else out there ever have weird ideas or thoughts with situations in everyday life?

I've caught myself doing a few weird things...like just last night while I was eating dinner with my parents since I still live at home while going to college. Our dog (a purebred German Sheperd was near the table panting really fast (alot faster than normal). Once I noticed this the first thought that popped into my head was "I wonder how fast he's panting...If I got a microphone and recorded the panting, then load it into some sound software and count the peaks in the audio signal over a period of time I could figure out the frequency of his panting". It was kind of an involuntary thought, I thought about it alittle bit, I realized that most people wouldnt possibly think or even care about doing that.

I told my parents of this idea and they thought I was crazy. So I wanted to see if any other engineering types have similar ideas.

I think you're on your own hehe

Brian

jrz126 said:

Anyone else out there ever have weird ideas or thoughts with situations in everyday life?

I've caught myself doing a few weird things...like just last night while I was eating dinner with my parents since I still live at home while going to college. Our dog (a purebred German Sheperd was near the table panting really fast (alot faster than normal). Once I noticed this the first thought that popped into my head was "I wonder how fast he's panting...If I got a microphone and recorded the panting, then load it into some sound software and count the peaks in the audio signal over a period of time I could figure out the frequency of his panting". It was kind of an involuntary thought, I thought about it alittle bit, I realized that most people wouldnt possibly think or even care about doing that.

I told my parents of this idea and they thought I was crazy. So I wanted to see if any other engineering types have similar ideas.

Click to expand...

You would learn a lot more if you did an FFT of the recorded sound.
And yeah, I'm 64 years old, and i still come up with hare-brained schemes that cause my wife to roll her eyes :roll: when she hears them.
My latest one was an anemometer with a threshold detector, wired to the remote of our awning, just in case we forgot to retract it and then the wind came up.
I realize this may be a little too practical to fit your question, but some of my ideas are way more off the wall than this one.

I'm the same, but I never carry them through.
I think my ideas and my knowledge are OK, but my practical skills are crap. And im lazy

My neighbours cat always raids my bins. It rips the binbags open and strews (is that a word?) garbage all over the place.

I was thinking, I could get a dc fan and make a sensor circuit that turns the fan on when the cat is near. Then put a container of ground pepper or something in front of the fan so that little ****** gets a fit of sneezes!

Or a mini electric fence.

I was laying in bed listening to the birds chirp and was wondering if they have a regular bedtime.

They're chirping before sunrise so how do they know what time to chirp? Do they go to bed at the same time and get X hours of sleep or is it sun-based and their sleep varies throughout the year?

But that dog panting thing is really wacko. :wink:

Mike

and you think that is so bad?

Now a days, it seems that people are throwing out old computers and buying new computers, just to run today's software, and no one ever thinks about the landfill. Why throw em out? why not somehow integrate the new operating systems into the older computers? why throw the WHOLE THING OUT?

I wouldn't be so bad about it if only a chip or at most, an I/O card was thrown out, but they want people to throw the ENTIRE COMPUTER (with the exception of the monitor, provided it is VGA) out.

so if you don't have a pentium, and you don't have internet, then be prepared to throw yours out too.

and here is the worse part! they get rid of serial ports and put in USB ports. Seems to me USB ports are far more of a nuisance to maintain and setup, and all new products depend only on the ports. Why can't these people just leave the serial ports on? They are a heck of alot easier to configure from a programmers standpoint, and I am a programmer myself.

With USB, anyone with windows 3 and under can't even use it!

I think Microsoft is controlling 99% of the computer users out there. I am ashamed with them and will not be buying anything from them until they "smarten up".

serial ports might be easier for you to use with your programs, but they're not easier for the general punter to use with his latest camera, memory card reader, external HD or whatever.

Unfortunately, we represent a small portion of the market and the ordinary punter represents a large portion of the market. Therefore, Microsoft will satisfy the ordinary punter before the likes of me or you. As it happens I quite like USB except for the fact that it's so processor intensive (I'd have preffered to see firewire kick off)

I'm counting on the land-fill problem to secure my job for a few more years. If the government start charging manufacturers hefty amounts for the heaps of waste their defunct products produce then maybe consumer electronics prices will go up. If prices go up, people will be more willing to have stuff repaired and I'll stay in my job longer. But we'll have to see.

Brian

upand_at_them said:

But that dog panting thing is really wacko. :wink:

Mike

Click to expand...

You shouldn't be taking advice on your next project from your dog. But as long as the dog doesn't start telling you about how the CIA is watching you, I guess it's ok.

wow this thread took off pretty quick
It wasnt a project...just a goofy thought I had...
I guess I kinda picked a very goofy example with the dog panting thing, not practical at all...but he was panting at more than twice his normal rate which caused me to wonder how fast he was really going. (it was probably around 2 or 3 times a second).
I guess I'm kinda alone with the crazier thoughts, but thats what makes me unique.

I'm always annoying people by giving them explanations on how the microwave works, and various electronics stuff. They pretend to pay attention, but deep down they're probably thinking: What a geek :lol: . I always like to lean over to a friend right in the middle of a good movie and tell them how stupid and impossible the electronic gadget is on the moviescreen.

I think we all get some pretty wacko ideas though. . .

mstechca said:

Now a days, it seems that people are throwing out old computers and buying new computers, just to run today's software, and no one ever thinks about the landfill. Why throw em out? why not somehow integrate the new operating systems into the older computers? why throw the WHOLE THING OUT?

Click to expand...

yes, throwing stuff out is a waste. however saying that people should just continue using old hardware is rather naive. technology advances, and the old hardware can't even begin to run half of today's software. forget about windows, even if the latest version of windows ran fine on a 5 or 10 year old computer, it still wouldn't be capable of running MATLAB or Mathcad or any modern circuit simulation software... or for that matter any typical modern computer software at all.

it's perfectly reasonable to say that people should find other things to do with old computers, perhaps donating them to charity or something, instead of shipping them to the landfill. however it is completely unreasonable to think that microsoft should focus on making its latest operating systems work with obsolete hardware, thus crippling it for use with newer hardware... it would be a horrible business move and very few people would even care about running it on old hardware anyway.

and complaining about serial ports being replaced by USB? yes, serial ports are nice for simple hardware interfacing, but USB is better in basically every other way... it's significantly faster and more robust... and it's a BUS, so you can connect dozens of devices to one port... yes, it's more complex, but that's the price you pay with absolutely everything... personally I'll take 480 Mbps speed over 115Kbps any day. And if you're determined, you can make use of the USB port with all the software and interface chips out there today. serial ports are used by practically nothing nowadays, so it's pointless for motherboard makers to waste lots of valuable board space for a pair of serial connectors (which are of course much larger than USB connectors) and a UART circuit.

you can still get serial PCI cards and USB-serial converters, so you can easily add serial ports to any computer... and the motherboard manufacturers won't have to waste the board space considering 99.9% of people will never use their serial port...

the world would not be where it is today if we had simply stopped advancing our computer software and hardware and stuck with old 486's forever. there's many reasons that microsoft and the rest of the computer industry need to "smarten up", but the act of continuing to advance technology is not one of them.

and it has to be said, times are going to continue changing, you'll have to let go of the old days where you could access a serial port from QBasic and be done with it... it's time to move on, and if you are concerned about computers ending up in landfills then go out and do something about it. there are companies out there that recycle computers for metal and plastic (I used to work at one) and there are also places that can make use of old, but not entirely obsolete, computers...

thanks evandude you gave me an idea .
i have a PCI card with a parallel port on it . i could hack into the pci port through that.
and get my programmer running on a pci card..hopefully...

I think a lot, load of weird and wonderful ideas pass through my head. I often lay awake at night just thinking **** up! There are so many things that I want to do but I don't know where to bloddy start. Does anyone else feel this way? My girlfriend always rolls her eyes even when it sounds like I'm about to start explaining something to her!!!

I don't think that there is anything weird about that kind of experimentation. I think lots of people wonder about stuff - maybe we're the gang that goes a step further by putting some energy into answering the questions. A friend of mine is putting together some hardware to record and analyze the sounds made by bats. He's good with electronics, software and data manipulation - and he has tons of bats where he lives. I bet his wife thinks it's weird but that's not stopping him.

Pyroandrew said:

There are so many things that I want to do but I don't know where to bloddy start. Does anyone else feel this way?

Click to expand...

I had many ideas when I worked. Now that I am retired I make them all and more! :lol:

Quirky-ness

My quirky behavior.

When driving through traffic, I find myself analyzing traffic flow in the "fluid dynamic" sense. Propagation of traffic waves as drivers stop & go. There are many situations that are analagous to electrical phenomenon!

Standing waves...
"wire capacity/ampacity"
Resistance
charge buildup

and so on..

Yes, I definately do this kind of thing. Unless you do it yourself, you just won't understand it, thats why it annoys most people :lol:

I tend to analyse things, try to impove things. Everywhere I go, I see bad designs, and I "fix" them in my head. Sometimes I fix things for real, but only if they have broken :lol:

I'm curious about the operation of just about every electronic appliance, apart from computers, which don't really bear thinking about. Theres certainly no way of practically assembling your own from ICs and things cheaper than a real one, so i'm not that interested in them.

I very much enjoy practical projects myself, not much of a theory person, though sometimes they drive me a bit mad :lol:

stevez said:

I don't think that there is anything weird about that kind of experimentation. I think lots of people wonder about stuff - maybe we're the gang that goes a step further by putting some energy into answering the questions. A friend of mine is putting together some hardware to record and analyze the sounds made by bats. He's good with electronics, software and data manipulation - and he has tons of bats where he lives. I bet his wife thinks it's weird but that's not stopping him.

Click to expand...

The surprising thing to me is that a lot of people don't wonder about stuff. You guys ever watch Leno's "Jaywalking" segments? I am always amazed that he can find people who are so ignorant of the world around them. Last night he found a gal who thought that the U.S. is in South America. Another one thought Mt. Rushmore is a volcano.
I realize this was a geography question, but I think a large percentage of the population is just wrapped up in their little worlds, and couldn't care less about how things work, or where things are, or what's going on in the world, or...
That's what makes us weird. We are a minority.

mstechca said:

Now a days, it seems that people are throwing out old computers and buying new computers, just to run today's software, and no one ever thinks about the landfill.

Click to expand...

I love going to the Landfill! Me and my dad went to dump stuff and I came back with a Hi-Fi and what looked to me like THE FIRST EVER LAPTOP.

Its a Toshiba T3100e:
I looked it up on the net and it has a 12Mhz Processor! :lol: and a 20mb hard drive. It has 2 serial ports, a parallel port and a floppy drive. It works on DOS.
This ideal for me as a way of interfacing between a PC and circuits. I only know console programming in C++ and evil microsoft cant block me from using the serial port as I/o. Maybe a program to control MIDI messages for my Synths on stage!

But, this is definetly a minority. Who else except electronics geeks would EVER use a serial port these days.

Optikon said:

There are many situations that are analagous to electrical phenomenon!

Click to expand...

I think of this to explain P=IV: (my lecturer started it and I added to it, Im sure were not the first though)

If you were standing at the bottom of a waterfall. The amount of water falling on your head represents I, and the height of the waterfall represents V. The resultant pressure of the water is power. So if you had and extremely high voltage, but just a drop of water (current) you wouldnt have a sore head.

Its not foolproof but water is great for electronic analogies:
Resistor= Dam? Capacitor= Resevoir?

Old Computers ...?

evandude said:

mstechca said:

Now a days, it seems that people are throwing out old computers and buying new computers, just to run today's software, and no one ever thinks about the landfill. Why throw em out? why not somehow integrate the new operating systems into the older computers? why throw the WHOLE THING OUT?

Click to expand...

...
the world would not be where it is today if we had simply stopped advancing our computer software and hardware and stuck with old 486's forever. there's many reasons that microsoft and the rest of the computer industry need to "smarten up", but the act of continuing to advance technology is not one of them.
...

Click to expand...

I still use my 20MHz Toshiba T1900 laptop - running M$ Windoze 3.1 on top of M$DOS 6.1
It may be a trick of the light but I still reckon it works just as good now as it did 12 years ago - it starts up just as fast as my 1Gig Dell Inspiron laptop crippled with M$ Windoze ME (don't laugh !).
I use serial ports a lot - they are STILL a common standard in industry DESPITE Compaq et al insisting we no longer require RS232.
It is NOT obsolite - I am waiting now for a brand new data acquisition system with RS232 and RS485 comms links, the RS232 will connect to a GPS clock, all for a project at work.

Back to the thread ... strange ideas ...
I get accused of being doo-lally about some of my brain waves such as fitting a resistance thermometer inside a bee hive to see how constant the temperature is for day/night and summer/winter - feeding to a little data logger.
I hooked my logic analyser up to my son's car engine fuel injectors to monitor their timing - I reckon you could do a pretty good fuel consumption calculation from this data ! ... Actually we are considering building on this idea to make some form of custom display permanently on the dash, using a microcontroller to do the timing calcs, showing RPM, fuel consumption, MPG, lambda etc, maybe on a small graphic LCD.