Ladyada interview with Paul Horowitz - The Art of Electronics

[SeanB]

Video conferencing really does suck 

Anybody who watches TWIT knows that is not true.  Even internationally.

They did a lot of work to get it that good, and even then it will barf in them on air. Especially on those who are calling in on a non VPN connection where the ISP is doing throttling on VOIP calls.

[jolshefsky]

I'm not sure what I expected from an interview—after all, the part I find interesting is in hundreds of pages sitting on my desk (and, shamelessly bought from Adafruit.) It was interesting to hear the history of how the book came to be. In all, as an interview, I didn't think it was that bad ... I've seen much better interviewers, but that's not Lady Ada's forté anyhow.

What I did find a little distracting was that I perceived a bit of, for lack of a better word, flirtation—on both sides. Not like blatant 16-year-old kind of flirtation, or the kind of smitten flirtation, but more of a "gee I think you're swell but there's no way this can work" kind of thing. She had a kind of "I admire your work and desire acknowledgement from you but I'm going to try not to be an ass" and he had a kind of "if I had met an attractive, techie, intelligent woman like you 40 years ago I would have been so tongue-tied, but I'm old enough to just smile and enjoy the thought now".

Since this technical field is currently male-dominated, it's usually men interviewing other men, and without any underlying physical or sexual attraction, so everything is entirely academic. But I know how I am, and I would (and do) find it very difficult to hide my attraction if I were to interview an attractive, techie, intelligent woman. Put another way, no amount of editing could make me look anything but flirtatious if I were to interview Fried herself.

[zapta]

Video conferencing really does suck 

Anybody who watches TWIT knows that is not true.  Even internationally.

Delay is good, more time to speak before the interruption ;-)

[Howardlong]

The Wavebubble she designed and built for her Masters thesis is especially cool IMO.

... with the help of an RF dude, which is interesting, because fundamentally this is an RF project. It does also resonate (!) with her apparent difficulty in understanding the termination thing in the video.

Having said that I thought that the transmission line termination part of the video was probably one of the most educating parts, explaining that that 200pF capacitance (apparently) disappears when terminated with the characteristic impedance. If I am to be picky, when LA starts talking about "bounce" I really don't think she has a clue what Horowitz was saying when he originally used the term, confusing the reflection "bounce" of the signal with the constructive and destructive wave effects when the frequency is changed.

The other bit that was really good, and at this point she had me shouting at the monitor, was about the amount of power used from a satellite compared to doing a terrestrial transmission. Then she was talking about the power in the receive antenna. Maybe that was a setup, I don't know.

The disposal of the databooks reminded me of what I did about a year or so ago. I dumped 85% of my paper library, pretty much a history of my career, but realistically, I hardly ever used them, it's all online now, and/or on my iPad.

So, pros and cons, and definitely a net plus. I just wish she'd have used those oft quoted MIT bachelors and masters degrees of hers and think before spouting, that's all.

[monksod]

Christ some of you guys are harsh! I watched the interview & thought it flowed along just fine! The two of them bounced off each other quite naturally, it was a good little interview! Sheesh!

[rx8pilot]

I have shot lots and lots of on-camera interviews. It is a long learned talent. Limor has probably not done many of these, and I suspect she will easily learn to guide the conversation in a more polished way. Yapping about it here does not help much.

[EEVblog]

Video conferencing really does suck 

Anybody who watches TWIT knows that is not true.  Even internationally.

It's only as good as the gear and connection people have at both ends.
It's even hard to do with just audio on the Amp Hour.

[Delta]

What an annoying woman.

[george graves]

It's only as good as the gear and connection people have at both ends.
It's even hard to do with just audio on the Amp Hour.

It was - 1-2 years ago.  But you might want to keep that as a tool in your mental tool box - cause many people are doing it now.  Damn near seamlessly too.  For example - one I say recently does a split screen - Andrew at Mixergy.com - he  make it so, so seamless (not really my cup of tea, it's more of serial entrepreneur kind of stuff - but it's a good example.)

PS.....I don't care about any of that - I want an update on the PNP machine! 

[JoeO]

Christ some of you guys are harsh! I watched the interview & thought it flowed along just fine! The two of them bounced off each other quite naturally, it was a good little interview! Sheesh!

Let's be honest here.  You are Dr Simon Monk who writes for Lady Ada's website.

[Bud]

I stopped watching after may be 10 minutes. I did not see her showing the guest respect. To me this had nothing to do with directing the dialog, it just looked plain erratic. I think anyone jumping in the host chair to interview people should first learn how to do it. Watching some of Larry King may help.

[Richard Crowley]

I stopped watching after may be 10 minutes. I did not see her showing the guest respect.

Same here.  Perhaps she plays better for New Yorkers than people out here thousands of miles away, but it was just too annoying. And the "signal to noise ratio" of the content seemed very low.

[zapta]

I stopped watching after may be 10 minutes.

Same here, I stopped when he was trying to explain his favorite graph and she kept interrupting him.

[miguelvp]

I stopped watching after may be 10 minutes.

Same here, I stopped when he was trying to explain his favorite graph and she kept interrupting him.

Then I guess you'll have to read all hundred plus pages of chapter 8 instead of just using the graph.

Maybe it's me, but I don't let the little things bother me from content that I won't be able to get otherwise. But then again I never did walk out of a meeting pissed, Actually I don't think I've ever been pissed at work for anything even if people are screaming at me for whatever reason.

[marshallh]

Had to close it after a while. Mr Horowitz has the patience of a saint.

What an annoying woman.

[con-f-use]

Its amazing how many different opinions aggregate here. This should be a lesson in subjectiveness for all of us. However, the negative opinions on Limor seem to be more numerous.

[Richard Crowley]

Dave does a much better job of interviewing people.  For example, I thought the series on microphones with Doug Ford was great.
And the factory tour with the SMD assembly plant, etc.

It seems pretty clear that Dave's EEVblog audience is more technically savvy and sophisticated than LadyAda's audience.
So maybe she was trying to "dumb it down" for her presumed audience?  Just trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

[T3sl4co1l]

Just to interject some Devil's Advocate here...

I wonder what peoples' opinions would be like if a man did the interview, using the exact same lines and delivery.

Aaaand, go tumbl yourselves...

Tim

[Richard Crowley]

I wonder what peoples' opinions would be like if a man did the interview, using the exact same lines and delivery.

Why would it be any less annoying?  I guess I don't see your attempted point?

[zapta]

Then I guess you'll have to read all hundred plus pages of chapter 8 instead of just using the graph.

No, I don't. I don't have the book and I don't do low noise analog stuff, and she didn't let him explaining it anyway.

Maybe it's me, but I don't let the little things bother me from content that I won't be able to get otherwise. But then again I never did walk out of a meeting pissed, Actually I don't think I've ever been pissed at work for anything even if people are screaming at me for whatever reason.

I was not pissed and it's not a meeting or work for me. It became content not worth watching, like many other internet videos.

Just to interject some Devil's Advocate here...

I wonder what peoples' opinions would be like if a man did the interview, using the exact same lines and delivery.

And I wonder what peoples' opinions would be like if a Chiwawa did the interview, using the exact same lines and delivery.  ;-)

[timofonic]

Then I guess you'll have to read all hundred plus pages of chapter 8 instead of just using the graph.

No, I don't. I don't have the book and I don't do low noise analog stuff, and she didn't let him explaining it anyway.

Maybe it's me, but I don't let the little things bother me from content that I won't be able to get otherwise. But then again I never did walk out of a meeting pissed, Actually I don't think I've ever been pissed at work for anything even if people are screaming at me for whatever reason.

I was not pissed and it's not a meeting or work for me. It became content not worth watching, like many other internet videos.

Just to interject some Devil's Advocate here...

I wonder what peoples' opinions would be like if a man did the interview, using the exact same lines and delivery.

And I wonder what peoples' opinions would be like if a Chiwawa did the interview, using the exact same lines and delivery.  ;-)

This Chiwawa?


Or this one?

[AndreasF]

Its amazing how many different opinions aggregate here. This should be a lesson in subjectiveness for all of us. However, the negative opinions on Limor seem to be more numerous.

... or simply more vocal.

I had seen this thread before watching the video - after watching it I couldn't quite understand what the fuss was all about.

[retrolefty]

Its amazing how many different opinions aggregate here. This should be a lesson in subjectiveness for all of us. However, the negative opinions on Limor seem to be more numerous.

... or simply more vocal.

I had seen this thread before watching the video - after watching it I couldn't quite understand what the fuss was all about.

 I basically agreed with that and felt the video was well worth watching. However Limor's seemingly ignorance of how a coax cable's rated impedance is maintained (and why you want that) only when properly terminated seemed very strange for a MIT grad.  Maybe she was just zoning out on the subject, it happens. 

[jancumps]

...
I had seen this thread before watching the video - after watching it I couldn't quite understand what the fuss was all about.

The same here.
I watched after reading a few pages into this thread, and feared for the worst.

What I saw was a nice and interesting interview. Both of them dragged me into the conversation from start to end.

It's strange how we all experience the same thing very different, isn't it

[jucole]

very enjoyable video,  thanks for posting!