Is amphour officially dead?

[mwsoft]

In short words - in my opinion it only worked when both Dave and Chris interviewed guests.

Now there is only Chris with his startup/maker/hacker/conference/meetup/arduino/iot/artist/hackaday buddies.

Long gone are days of real industry/academia guests

Maybe it's my impression, but maybe Dave is also tired of speaking over and over with Chris's people from maker/hacker community, so he only occasionally pops up for no-guest episodes?

Anyways - I'm sad - my favorite podcast is going downhill...

[sokoloff]

It's still my #1 podcast to listen to in the car and on airplanes. I discovered it perhaps only 6 months ago and while I definitely prefer the Dave and Chris interviews of guests over the Chris-only ones, I still very much enjoy the Chris-only ones. (The 397.xxx series was not especially good, IMO, but 401 was OK, 402 was great, 403 good and I'm in the middle of 405 which is good; all of those were Chris-only.)

Some of the older episodes had really great guests for sure. I think the recent few episodes are also still well worth listening too (397.xx was not my cup of tea, admittedly).

I'm going to continue to "Keep Current"...

[ataradov]

"Chris-Dave" is good for chat.
"Chris alone" is good for interviews. But not the recent barrage of random people with noise in the background.

[sokoloff]

But not the recent barrage of random people with noise in the background.

To be fair to Chris, he did label the 397.xx all as one episode number and gave fair warning that they'd be different and have worse audio and if we wanted to skip them, to do so. In retrospect, I probably should have, but that I didn't is my own choice, not CG's fault.

[wilfred]

Anyways - I'm sad - my favorite podcast is going downhill...

Maybe you're changing too and your expectations are diverging. I know that for a time I thought the EEVBlog was going downhill in spite of Dave's data to show he was doing what he always did. But now I realise I have changed a bit. Not personally, but in response to much more diverse and abundant content available.

You might have the same experience. You might be more busy for example and less tolerant of topics and guests not finely attuned to your specific interests.

[mwsoft]

Anyways - I'm sad - my favorite podcast is going downhill...

Maybe you're changing too and your expectations are diverging.

Hmm - I dare to say, that maybe type of audience shifted, not my expectations.

I have two main points:
1) Interviews without Dave. These guys are like yin and yang, Chris is often flying in clouds, while Dave is more down to earth. They balance each other pretty well.
2) For the last 50-100 episodes, most of the guests are from Chris's tight social circle. He interviews his "buddies" instead of using networking to find people from real industry, not only maker/hacker/startup community. In my perception that was "the old way" the amphour worked.

I try to listen to every episode, but many times I ask myself - why do I care about this micropython or ESP8266, or some conference badge.... Maybe I'm getting older, and most of audience is still composed of college/uni students in their 20s, so they are really interested in this maker/startup stuff...

[jonovid]

Anyways - I'm sad - my favorite podcast is going downhill...

Maybe you're changing too and your expectations are diverging.

Hmm - I dare to say, that maybe type of audience shifted, not my expectations.

I have two main points:
1) Interviews without Dave. These guys are like yin and yang, Chris is often flying in clouds, while Dave is more down to earth. They balance each other pretty well.
2) For the last 50-100 episodes, most of the guests are from Chris's tight social circle. He interviews his "buddies" instead of using networking to find people from real industry, not only maker/hacker/startup community. In my perception that was "the old way" the amphour worked.

I try to listen to every episode, but many times I ask myself - why do I care about this micropython or ESP8266, or some conference badge.... Maybe I'm getting older, and most of audience is still composed of college/uni students in their 20s, so they are really interested in this maker/startup stuff...

eventually millennials will kill everything. 

[gildasd]

Episode 409 is gold.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Every time I hear about I-we made a badge that has blinking lights ...
I reach for my 3 pound sledge hammer.

[travLTTL]

love the AmpHour, but there are some other good podcasts in the industry. Personally Macrofab has taken over my fav atm!

[ve7xen]

Funny, I've never liked the Dave+Chris interviews. Dave interrupts the guests far too much, and often derails the guest about to make an interesting point by going off on a tired rant, or telling the guest what he's assumed they're about to say, and we never get back to the interesting bits.

I agree I'm not big on the maker community interviews, but I don't feel there's really been a dearth of industry guests lately. I've quite enjoyed some of the recent industry guests.

I totally skip the chat episodes.

[EEVblog]

Maybe you're changing too and your expectations are diverging. I know that for a time I thought the EEVBlog was going downhill in spite of Dave's data to show he was doing what he always did. But now I realise I have changed a bit. Not personally, but in response to much more diverse and abundant content available.

Good to know my argument helped someone realise! 

[EEVblog]

In short words - in my opinion it only worked when both Dave and Chris interviewed guests.
Now there is only Chris with his startup/maker/hacker/conference/meetup/arduino/iot/artist/hackaday buddies.
Long gone are days of real industry/academia guests
Maybe it's my impression, but maybe Dave is also tired of speaking over and over with Chris's people from maker/hacker community, so he only occasionally pops up for no-guest episodes?
Anyways - I'm sad - my favorite podcast is going downhill...

It's not officially dead.
I'm taking to Shahriar from the Signal Path today (by myself)
Yes I am not a regular any more for the interviews for a few reasons:

- I'm just busy, and the show is smack in the middle of the day when I need to get other work done. And given the show does not help pay my bills in any way, or otherwise contribute to that effort, it's hard to justify. So we dropped back to a fortnightly appearance that works better for me.

- Yes, Chris tends to have a lot of his networking buddies on which I almost have never heard of and wouldn't really be keen to interview (no offence). Well, it's not that I wouldn't find them or their topics interesting, but it feels more like just having them on for the sake of keeping the interview part of the show going. Chris (I'm assuming) will usually have some sort of agenda talking to them (because he's met them at some meetup and he loves networking etc) and I feel like I'd just be a third wheel. And given my next point, you'll see why I'm not that keep on those interviews.
Chris also often interviews them at meetups and shows and its just logistically hard and unproductive to have two people live, with a third person remote, it's just pointless, so it's sensible that it be Chris only.

- I've come to think that 3 person interviews just don't work as well as a good 2 person one. And as someone mentioned, Chris has his style and types of questions and I have mine. That balance can work , but I think more often than not it's a bit of a hindrance. I find the 4 way shows pretty frustrating. And you really have to try and do this to understand how difficult it is to have three people on opposite sides of the planet not being able to see each other trying to hold a decent conversation. This is why we might often talk over each other, because there are no visual clues and there is very slight audio delays that don't help.

"Officially" it's me and Chris every 2nd week, alternating with a guest show inbetween. But given that Chris is always travelling and at shows and meetups etc, the schedule gets all mixed up.
I took a 3 week family holiday in Jan, and I have a family whilst Chris doesn't, so my time demands are higher.
And whilst the AmpHour was my idea and I founded it, Chris has been running the show for almost the entire time. The was always keener to edit it, find and schedule guests etc, he just loves doing that. And given the AmpHour is a his main publicity outlet, whereas I have the EEVblog, it seems natural that he'd be more keen to keep it all running than I would be. Chris has a much more vested interest in keep it running regularly than I do.

[gildasd]

This week’s Amphour, #429, was very good.
Most of them are, i’ve only FFWD a single episode so far.
You two are doing a great job.

[EEVblog]

Today's episode with The Signal Path is all about leading edge 5G technology development and is very interesting!

[EEVblog]

Rumors of the death of the Amp Hour have been greatly exaggerated 

https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/

[Hugoneus]

Rumors of the death of the Amp Hour have been greatly exaggerated 

https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/

It was very fun recording this. Thank you!

[EEVblog]

Rumors of the death of the Amp Hour have been greatly exaggerated 
https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/

It was very fun recording this. Thank you!

Yep, I enjoyed it a lot, thanks for coming on again!
As usual, our "press record and see where it goes" approach works a treat.

[timgiles]

Great episode Dave. I live in Umeå Sweden and our city has been chosen to be the first roll out here in Sweden. Colleagues on my swedish wife at Umeå University are losing their heads over 5G, that it will cook our brains  Been trying to explain that the stories about birds being roasted whilst flying past an antenna are fake news but now I can refer to this interview.

It is great you two have a good way of interacting in interviews that comes across as natural, interested and both parties have their expertise in different parts of the industry which occasionally can cross over.

[sbehnke]

Rumors of the death of the Amp Hour have been greatly exaggerated 

https://theamphour.com/430-shahriar-discusses-5g/

That was a fascinating episode too! I know squat about RF in general and still found it very interesting and could follow most of what was discussed.

[ChrisGammell]

Long gone are days of real industry/academia guests

Always love having suggestions here: https://theamphour.com/suggestions-2/guest-suggestions/

[thinkfat]

I think the quality of Chris' interviews has improved mightily since he works freelance.

[VR46Jedi]

I recently found this podcast after watching some of Dave's YouTube videos then coming here to EEVBlog.  It's great to have something to listen to on my commute that gets me interested in tinkering in electronics again and learning new things about what's going on in different tech areas.  I'm just now listening to the 5G episode.  Thanks for making these podcasts guys!

With respect to cutting off people in conversation I can appreciate the logistics issues and the audio delays that could hamper the flow of the episodes.  Sometimes you can sense it but there isn't much that can be done about it.  Everyone just needs to realize it isn't on a tv talkshow budget or CNN satellite feed system.

Anyone have any particular episodes you'd recommend I listen too in the past 400 shows?!

[EEVblog]

Anyone have any particular episodes you'd recommend I listen too in the past 400 shows?!

Welcome to the forum.
We just did a big survey but forgot to include a question about people's favourite episode 
Depends on what you are into really, but usually the ones with the "old timers" are generally considered favourites by many. e.g. Forrest Mimms, Henry Ott, Howard Johnson, Jack Ganssle, Chuck Peddle etc.

[james_s]

I had no idea there was one with Forrest Mims, I wore out my first copy of one of his books when I was a kid. I think it was Getting Started With Electronics?

[BBBbbb]

Last (I think) Jeri's appearance with Dave and Chris was awesome. Absolute roller coaster. A friend of mine, who's pure SW guy, was driving with me and was forced to listen to it, and he to found it pretty awesome. He gave Amphour a try few times after it, but it was too much electronics for him.

[VR46Jedi]

Thanks Dave!  Excellent I'll look for those to add to my list.  I did fill out the survey too.  I think you may get some people mentioning their favourite episodes in their responses anyways.

The 5G Shahriar episode was great.  Interesting problem to make it function in the real world.  Ted Yapo was also a good one.  Lots more that I've heard in the recent ones.  I think the first one I listened too was 462 Boat Anchors which covered a lot of different things.  Has there been one on Software Defined Radio?  I just discovered SDR recently.  Looks like a revolution in RF equipment.

I feel like I hijacked the thread a bit.

[sokoloff]

Check out 352 for a Mike Ossman (HackRF) interview. He’s been on a few times, but that I think is the one I recall really enjoying.

[IanJ]

I still think that the almost impossible to attain interview with Dave, Chris and the Woz would be awesome.......
Perhaps we should send emails to the address at the foot of his webpage here - http://www.woz.org/

My fav Amphour episodes are with Dave and Chris just rambling.......usually when I am in my workshop soldering away........MAGIC!

Ian.

[EEVblog]

I still think that the almost impossible to attain interview with Dave, Chris and the Woz would be awesome.......

We got as far as the Woz's wife (who is also his manager) but he's too busy.

[donmr]

Today https://theamphour.com/ is returning a page that says "Error establishing a database connection".

[sokoloff]

Today https://theamphour.com/ is returning a page that says "Error establishing a database connection".

Working fine for me at the moment.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

A local nearby Psychic could probably get a hold of Steve Jobs quicker.

[wilfred]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/linux-code-of-conduct-claims-a-victim/25/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/linux-code-of-conduct-claims-a-victim/msg3208508/#msg3208508
This is just something that piqued my curiosity. Didn't seem worth a new thread. Can someone tell me what Dave meant by this. I'm a bit out of touch these days.

"
FYI, anyone who comes complaining to me about something someone is/said/done outside of this forum will be politely told to piss off and grow up 

This sort of crap almost destroyed The AmpHour BTW."

The cancelled thread didn't seem all that out of the ordinary for the forum hence I'm curious how "this sort of crap" would impact the Amphour.

[EEVblog]

This is just something that piqued my curiosity. Didn't seem worth a new thread. Can someone tell me what Dave meant by this. I'm a bit out of touch these days.

Just a bunch of outraged SJW's on twitter who don't care about context. No need for details, and bringing it up again could just inflame the whole stupid thing again.
And if you aren't on twitter, then stay that way, it's a toxic cesspool of outrage culture.
Don't worry, the AmpHour survived.

[Howardlong]

And if you aren't on twitter, then stay that way, it's a toxic cesspool of outrage culture.

That's what I find so bizarre about Twitter, it's just not representative of the populous as whole.

I've only know one person who lives and breathes confected outrage and self-righteousness, the partner of a friend of mine. But she couldn't wait to scoff down a plate of pan fried foie gras at a 2* Michelin restaurant when out paths last crossed, a food item even I avoid over animal welfare concerns. It's a religion so full of contradictions.

Even my sister, who's a right-on education university academic, probably one of the most infected areas, is sick of it.

Twitter is a hot bed to breed tribal self-confirming bubbles.

[tggzzz]

And if you aren't on twitter, then stay that way, it's a toxic cesspool of outrage culture.

Tonight's homework: compare and contrast Twatter with Farcebook.