This is just the most wonderful invention that I’ve come across in recent years. It’s called the Vilcus plug dactyloadapter and according to the website, it was created to solve the problem: Create an adapter for sticking fingers into electrical sockets.

Well, getting myself electrocuted on purpose isn’t something unknown to me. I have done it several times during my youth and I have lived to tell the tale. What can I say. We’ve all done silly things when we were young. At the very least, I can claim that it was educational.

I have always had a natural curiosity for all kinds of things. Just the other day, there were two big screen televisions and a camera sitting in the room that we used to do mark auditing. Being naturally curious, I walked up to it and toyed around with it. Little did I know that the room had been double booked for a tele-conference session. Since I had messed around with it, the technician wasn’t very happy. When he asked me why I touched it, I gave him the honest answer: it was sitting there (begging to be touched).

Since I was young, I’ve been curious about the nature of electricity. It played a role in every part of my life but I had no idea how it looked or felt like. So, I endeavoured to find out by conducting a series of little experiments, which involved exposing myself to a good jolt of 240V mains electricity. All I can say is that, it did not feel like anything else that I’ve ever felt before in my life.

When anyone asks me why I chose to go into double E engineering, I will relate my youthful indiscretions to them. The typical response that I get is one of shock and surprise. But honestly, I kind of liked it. This device is exactly what I need to get my fix.

Alternative energy, especially renewable power, is an exciting area of work in engineering today. Everyone in the world seems to be interested in it. The trouble in the past, was that oil was extremely cheap. So, there was no impetus to push for alternative sources of energy. But the rising oil prices is changing all this and if it ever hits $200 a barrel, alternative energy technologies will be mighty cheap in comparison.

So, I was just thinking about things back in Malaysia. This is an interesting area of engineering research that I think our country could possibly contribute to. We have an abundance of sun, which is a practically infinite source of energy. Solar power is an obvious was to capture this energy. However, biofuels are another way to capture and convert direct energy from the sun.

Solar technology is fairly mature. The main problem in this area is efficiency. So, further research into this area would involve finding new materials or fabrication technologies to improve the conversion efficiencies. However, this is a high technology field. There is also another lower technology field that merely exploits the thermal energy put out by the sun. That is what’s used in many homes to generate their hot water, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Abundant thermal energy can be used for a variety of other applications.

The biofuel option is still in it’s infancy. As the world’s #1 exporter of palm oil, we already have an abundant source of potential energy. The key is to figure out how to harness this energy as a conventional energy source. However, palm oil isn’t the only potential source of biofuels. A lot of people are also looking at potential sources of ethanol. But there is a natural limit for any biological fuel source, that is the available land area. It is unlikely that any area developed as a farm, could double as anything else at the same time.

However, beyond developing technologies, we need to focus more on prudent exploitation. Land area is the limiting factor in either case and it would be useful to learn how to best manage a finite plot of land. Also, biofuel crops depend on the mineral content in the ground to grow. Therefore, the ultimate limiting factor will once again be the minerals in the ground.

I’m starting to believe in Stephen Hawking’s call for us to seriously explore extra-solar colonisation. It will ultimately, be our only salvation.

PS: It is now possible to build water pipes in silicon. This will allow us to construct solar cells that can convert photonic energy to free electrons, and convert thermal energy into steam. This can all be built on the same bulk silicon. It’ll also help to cool down all the solar cells that are being baked 12 hours a day, prolonging it’s lifespan and reducing maintenance costs.

I’ve been rather busy auditing the marks for several papers. Of all the modules that I checked, less than half of them were without error. There was only one engineering module that had some minor problem and was promptly fixed. However, for some reason, every management module that I audited had problems in them, with some very major problems, beyond my pay grade to solve.

For this particular module, there were no marks written on the answer scripts. In fact, there were numerous sheets with not even a scratch on them. This means that there is no indication that the sheets have even been read. Then, there were not marks written on the sheets themselves. So, I could not check if the totals in the mark book were actually correct. Even the final totals on the mark book are incorrectly entered. And finally, the distribution of marks were skewed.

I then emailed the examiner with a list of the problems and asked to meet up to rectify them. I was then asked by the examiner to fix some of them myself, and ignore some of the other problems. Obviously, I bumped this up and was told that I could not do it myself, for very obvious reasons that it’s just beyond my pay grade. Since I was lucky enough to have been assigned that module, I was the one who had to settle it.

I was told by the department that the examiner is from the business school next door. So, I called them up to contact the examiner. I was then told that there was no such person. Then, I asked if there might be an external lecturer with that name and was told that there was no such person. Panic!

Then, I dug up the earlier email from the examiner, which listed a mobile number as a contact number. I called up the mobile and got the examiner on the line. I then found out that the examiner lives in a second city and teaches at a third university but is also attached to an institute within the university. So, I guess that the examiner is some sort of adjunct lecturer. However, the examiner is currently overseas and will not be back until next week.

So, I set up a meeting with the examiner. However, I’ve just been told that I might not need to meet up with the examiner as the matter might be taken out of my hands. This is a problematic issue as the marks are needed by last week. We have bumped the issue up and are waiting for more direction. I’m hoping that they will take the thing out of my hands as there is little that I can do about it anyway, except act as an errand boy.

I have just read an interesting blog today, about the dichotomy between engineering types and business types, and how it causes problems within an organisation. It was an interesting read and it brought to mind the issue of an engineering shortage in industrial nations. Although the examples given in the blog were mainly programmers vs managers, it is something that equally applies to engineers.

I had particularly liked a couple of points raised:

• Programmers are craftsmen. As craftsmen, they work to a quality line, NOT a deadline. Programmers do not respect authority, only ability. There is programmer calculus: “We have two different opinions. You have one vote. I, being smarter and more well-informed, have two votes.”
• The industrial world lowered production costs to make money. The post-industrial world raises quality to make money. Managers are trained to focus on efficiency, product goals, and deadlines: these are byproducts of the industrial era. Senior executives are essentially in denial about the fact that software can’t be mapped to industrial benchmarks.
• Business types have an artificial sense of urgency, which leads to wastefulness. Executives are focused on putting out new features quickly, because “tech moves fast.” However, user goals change very slowly. There’s not really a need to “move fast.”
• It’s genuinely impossible to answer a lot of simple business questions when it comes to software. For example, with estimating deadlines: “Writing software is like walking through a minefield. It’s really fast to get through…as long as you don’t step on any mines.”

Sometimes, I wonder how things will turn out in the end. An “insurgence” of quality is truly needed indeed.

A recent article in the NYTimes is highlighting a crisis happening in Japan. According to the article, Japan is suffering a “flight from science”. It was engineering prowess that lifted the country from it’s postwar defeat but few are interested in entering such professions today.

In actual fact, this is not a problem that is unique to Japan. It is something that is happening everywhere in this world. Even here at Cambridge, a random survey of engineering graduates will find that few end up working in engineering fields while most end up in banking and consulting. Why?

The answer is a very simple one.

Engineers spend many years of our lives working hard and actually learning real skills at university, only to end up in a job that is under paid, under appreciated, working as an expendable component in an over-glorified assembly line, under a boss who knows nothing about solving problems and having them take the credit for the solutions to problems that we come up with.

Hence, such a situation should come as no surprise to anyone at all.

For example, an engineering PhD in the UK, can either get paid £25,000/year for an exciting and challenging engineering job, or get paid £45,000/year for a boring and simple programming job for a financial institution, the choice becomes very simple for most of us. Although most engineers like the challenge of solving real difficult problems, we have to think about things like marriage, kids and a family as well.

Personally, I don’t think that there is a shortage of engineers at all. Most management types think that we are all expendable cogs in the machine anyway. So, economics will dictate the fact that since we can be replaced by any pizza delivery boy with two weeks of training in pressing some buttons in order, we will not get the pay that we deserve.

I believe that there is definitely a surplus of engineers in this world today. This is partially as a result of the push by various governments. Governments recognise that they need a large number of people with engineering skills. But they may have gone overboard in encouraging and pushing people into the service. As a result, we end up with a large surplus.

So, I’ll wait till the day comes when engineers get paid more than bankers. That will actually be the day when there is a crisis of engineering. Until then, we will just have to find other ways to enjoy both the joys of solving real problems, while making enough money to have a life. The only way for engineers to do this today, is to become entrepreneurs themselves.

We are provided with a free flow of English tea in the engineering department, between 10am to 4pm, daily. In the earlier hours of the day, free coffee is provided instead. This is nice but there’s something particular about tea drinking in the department that I’ve found fairly surprising.

Considering that we’re all a bunch of engineers, I would think that most people would’ve figured out how to make an efficient cup of tea, by now. But for some reason, nobody else seems to be making a cup of tea the way that I do, and introduce more waste as a result. Engineers are supposed to optimise processes.

So, for the benefit of everyone else, here is my method of making tea:

1. Take an empty cup. It is essential to start with a dry, empty cup.
2. Add in sugar to taste. Amount should be proportional to size of the cup.
3. Pour in the hot tea. Pour in the tea at one side, directly onto the sugar.
4. Pour in the milk. Pour in the milk from a slight height.

Notice anything missing? If you did not, please look through the list again and try imagining the steps involved. You will notice that there is an essential step missing: stirring the cup. With this four step method, there is no need to stir the mixture. As a result, you will save the use of a spoon, which either needs to be washed or recycled later. And for a large department like ours, it quickly adds up to a lot of spoons.

The key action in this is the pouring of the tea. The hot tea will naturally dissolve the sugar and if poured correctly, will automagically stir the cup. Ditto for the milk. The only catch is with the sugar. The amount of sugar added has to be proportional to the cup to avoid leaving any sugar, after the cup is filled. It’s also essential to start with a dry and empty cup to avoid the sugar from sticking.

I can assure you that this method works with a single teaspoon of sugar. I have never tried it with more because I don’t usually take sugar at all. Feel free to experiment with the amount of sugar and the pouring technique. The two are related.

If you can come up with an even more efficient method of making an efficient cup of tea, please leave it in the comments section!

PS: I can finally classify this under my new category: ecomental issues

I had at first thought of writing about something else today, but seeing that I came across this gem of an article, I thought that I’d write about this instead. According to the article, an engineers’ personality traits make them excellent field operatives (i.e. on the ground terrorists). When I read the quote below, I didn’t know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult.

Engineers ideally make excellent strategic planners, and they make excellent field operatives. They think differently from how other people think

Regardless, I was very interested in what these special personality traits were that set us apart from normal people. So, I looked around and found a very interesting definition of an engineer. For this, I will just quote an excellent definition from a letter published by the Institute of Engineering & Technology here. It goes like this:

It may be easier to define an engineer by what he or she is not. An engineer is generally not a scientist, but takes scientific discoveries and applies them to the real world. An engineer is not a life scientist. An engineer is not a mathematician, but can do sums better than any accountant. Some engineers display excellent art capabilities – but they are not artists.

Engineers are creative, imaginative, capable and resourceful. Engineers make things work and bring ideas from the drawing board to real tangible entities. In Victorian times, engineers built big things. Now, while engineers still build big things, they also create things based on that great 20th Century discovery – electronics.

It’s easy to see that engineers created the canals, roads and bridges, the boats, cars and lorries. But engineers also created and operate telephone networks. Engineers bring the TV signals to you and designed the TVs in your house. Engineers made the rockets that flew man to the Moon, launched satellites that keep the world talking and designed and built the satnav in your car.

Engineers designed the medical equipment that allows you to see inside your body. Engineers created the radar and avionics systems that allow planes to land safely. Engineers designed the chips that are at the heart of everything ‘electronic’.

Engineers can be infuriating because they have an innate intuition about all things mechanical and electrical. To quote a delightful Dilbert cartoon – we have ‘the knack’. We are not without fault, though. We never read instructions and before spell check we could not spell. We don’t suffer fools gladly, we may be insecure – which explains why we take the lid off just to see what’s inside, we may be a bit ‘nerdy’ and we hate being told what to do!

When I give this message to teachers who are responsible for bringing on the next generation of engineers, I remind them what was said about Thomas Edison when he was at school. He was told that he was too stupid to learn anything, that his mind was ‘addled’. His inventions are too many to mention here, but you would not be reading at night or making phone calls without his engineering discoveries.

Charles Curry FIET
Ross-on-Wye

That, I think, is a wonderful definition of an engineer. I guess that being people who hate being told what to do, it makes us natural rebels. Then, being slightly insecure, makes us easy targets for conversion. Finally, being creative, imaginative, capable and resourceful, makes us ideally suited to independent field work.

So, it isn’t inconceivable that we would actually make good terrorists. The fact that we know how things works on the inside, does help when you’re trying to figure out how to take it apart. It doesn’t mean that all of us have suicidal tendencies though!

PS: I can totally relate to the part about not suffering fools gladly! d:

May I be the first to say: All hail our new robotic quadruped overlords!. It’s name is BigDog.

Well, it’s only a matter of time now, before our machines develop enough capabilities to wipe us off the planet. As this video patently illustrates, it is not longer impossible for them to mimic real life physical movement and reflexes. The only thing that this robot lacks is an autonomous thinking capability.

The engineer in me can see and appreciate the amount of engineering elegance that must have gone into the design of such a marvel. Walking on four legs isn’t so much of an issue but being able to quickly recover from being suddenly thrown off balance, is a great accomplishment. At the very least, this will see such a robot being useful for ferrying things around. The present robot can already carry a few hundred pounds in weight, which brings to mind a very useful application.

The project is currently being funded by DARPA. So, it is being designed for military applications. Now, we can all imagine how this could easily be turned into a AT-AT walker from Star Wars. All it needs is the ability to ferry around a few tonnes of weight. Then, we just need to plant a big set of guns and some seats on it. I’m curious to know if it’s reflexes can scale well with it’s size.

Besides the obvious military advantages of having a robotic pet that can ferry huge equipment and supplies along, there are also very practical civil applications for such a robot. It could be tasked to carry disabled people around a hospital, for example. It would clearly be able to navigate the various “terrain” present within a suitable medical establishment and have enough reflexes to keep it’s balance when it is knocked around. It could also carry some obese individuals around town if we just add some seats onto it.

Well, that’s enough from me. Just watch the video and tell me that it doesn’t send creepy chills down your spine at some point.

Update: In case you didn’t realise, you need to click on the “Front Page” link above to access the main page of the blog!

Hah! I’ve finally decided to cast away the old and start anew. I have had a lot of fun, blogging, this last couple of years. However, it’s time I grew out of the cradle of a hosted service and do my own independent thing.

I am hoping to make a clean break from my old blog, which I feel, has become a little too emotional for my own good. Even the layout and design of this new blog reflects the clean and clear policy. In addition, I have not imported or brought over any of my previous mad ramblings from the old blog. I am hoping that this experiment in re-engineering myself, will work.

The result is this non-personal blog, which I will update as regularly as I can. This will hopefully become the focal point for my thoughts on various subjects viewed through my highly myopic lens of a technology romantic. I shall try my best not to make things too dull.

Previous readers who used feedburner as the feed subscription, would not need to change a thing as the feed has been transferred over. I did not want to lose all my faithful readers either. Other readers who wish to subscribe to this new blog can click on the feed subscription link at the top. Email subscription is also available via the same service.