The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only knows a good one. Some people are hedgehogs. I'm a fox. Unfortunately the professional world seems to favor hedgehogs. Especially in academia you are often asked to focus on one thing and one thing only. This is how careers advance and people are hired. Over the last three years I tried to focus doing one thing extensively (research) it didn't make me happy. It took long for me to realize that the fundamental problem limiting my happiness was trying to be a hedgehog. Putting on a spiny suit didn't make me a hedgehog. When I finally realized I fail if I try to be someone else I shifted. Right now all I try is to be the best Me there is.
I recently interviewed with a company whos equipment I've been using doing research. They looked for someone to train people to use it. The job sounded fantastic at first: Well paid, travel, different work environments etc. During the interview I realized that although I was perfectly qualified for the job (a person working there told me I had the job before that already, based on my qualification) I was not the person they were looking for. They also did and turned me down. This would be a dissapointing turn in a career, it wasn't. Honestly it was liberating. I took a position I applied for before even noticing this was around: The austrian internet users interest group Read More »
The Element of Surprise
B1DIL - Atmel AT32UC3B1256, AVR32 Microcontroller Module with USB Interface.
Reusch also has a similar board, the U6DIL, with the Atmel AT90USB1286. Both cost EUR 30. Since they use thinner contacts than the Arduino Nano (which does not exist in a ATUSB version yet and costs more), they fit into IC sockets.
This is a flexible array of LEDs mounted on paper. Hand-drawn silver ink lines form the interconnects between the LEDs.
Two professors from the University of Illinois; one specializing in materials science, the other in electrical engineering, have combined their talents to take the idea of printing circuits onto non-standard materials one step further by developing a conductive ink that can be used in a traditional rollerball ink pen to draw circuits by hand onto paper and other porous materials. In their paper published in Advanced Materials, team leads Jennifer Lewis, Jennifer Bernhard and colleagues describe how they were able to make a type of ink from silver nanoparticles that would remain a liquid while in the pen, but would dry like regular ink once applied. The pen could was then used to draw a functioning LCD display and an antenna. Read More »
