Category: Engineering

Engineering Toys for Girls

GoldieBlox Founder Debbie Sterling on Disrupting the Pink Aisle | The Embrace Ambition Summit

Kudos to GoldieBlox for their “disrupting the pink aisle” ad campaign.

Our girls deserve better more than toy stores’ pink ghettos.1I wish Legos would bring back their “What it is is beautiful” ad.

Update. The original video is gone, so I’ve updated the post with a related, relevant video.

From My Inbox

hey sir.!!
im really glad to see u in ur forum nd im doin btech 2nd year frm india..!!
frm childhood im very interested in these microcontrollers play..!!!!
frm ur forum im starting dis(wireless transmission of electricity) project nd i gt all d components with me nd i wnt to make theory work as first…!!!
so please kindly send me links which r accurate standard pdf…to make it as theory…!!!
plz help me up sir…!!!

If this was the first such request, I’d ignore it. Unfortunately, this is only the latest of many requests I have received from college engineering students wanting me to help them duplicate Jamison’s 6th-grade science fair project.1Jamison’s project is based on the Instructable, “Low-Power Wireless Charging.” As is typical, he is requesting the information I already provided.

Sad.

But wait — there’s more

See all posts on Jamison’s Wireless Power Transmission project.

Jamison’s Simple LED Project


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Jamison is playing with LEDs, transistors, and his iPod. Here are some links we found useful.

I think it’s time for another trip to Fry’s and then start working our way through Make: Electronics.

Get Excited and Make Things

Someone at work loves the “Stay Calm and Carry On” posters. There are a few posted around. Because I could, I posted “Freak Out and Throw Stuff” parody posters in my cube.

Today, I discovered a much better poster by Matt Jones: “Get Excited and Make Things.”

Printed and posted.

Image credit: “Get Excited and Make Things” by Matt Jones. Used under a Creative Commons license.

UC Berkeley CS169 SaaS Online for Free

UC Berkeley offers its CS169 Software as a Service class online for free.

Software Engineering – Ideas and techniques for designing, developing, and modifying large software systems. Function-oriented and object-oriented modular design techniques, designing for re-use and maintainability. Specification and documentation. Verification and validation. Cost and quality metrics and estimation. Project team organization and management. Students will work in teams on a substantial programming project.

Agile is a major component. Useful links:

You won’t get any credit for taking this course online, just knowledge.