The Talking Stick - Individual EEVblog member Q&A

[Halcyon]

I literally thought of this just now... No idea if this will be a failure or not (or if Dave will end up locking the thread)... But bare with me....

There are some fascinating people on here who I personally would love to get to know better.

The Rules:
The idea of this thread is to pass the "talking stick" from one member to another. The talking stick shall be represented by the icon 

- Each post must start with the talking stick icon.
- You can only post in this thread if you possess the talking stick or if you post a follow-up question
- To possess the talking stick, the previous holder (poster) of the stick will specifically mention you (by username), at that time, the stick is transferred to you, along with with "right" to respond. Previous stick holders should fall back to a silent state.
- Observers/non-stick holders who "wish" to possess the stick (and post) should already be "notable" in other threads or alternatively "Thank" the stick holder to flag their attention, nothing more. Do not ask for the stick either in other threads or via PM. Wait until you are mentioned.
- All mods reserve the right to remove posts that don't possess the stick, without justification.
- If it gets out of hand, or this ends up being a terrible idea, this thread shall be locked.
- This is not a way to communicate with Dave, ;-)
- If the stick holder nominates someone who doesn't exist or if that user doesn't respond within 24 hours, anyone can "steal" the stick, but you must answer the last question. The same applies if the stick isn't passed on.
- The stick holder should ask a question (if different from the previous).
- If you have a "follow-up" question and even though you don't possess the stick, start your post with a 

To start with:

 
@Ampera - What brought you here?


Just tell me about you. Like @Amyk, she seems so full of knowledge but I know hardly anything about her.

[Ampera]

 

It'd actually be around five years ago as of Feb 04 that I'd have been registered to this forum.

I probably found the EEVBlog similarly to most people, the YouTube equivalent of channel surfing. I really enjoyed a lot of his teardowns where he'd give pretty thorough explanations of all the different random junk he tore apart. I think the one that sticks in my mind the most (for some reason) was a particularly large office printer he found, perhaps in his ever famous dumpster room.

I've always had a fascination with electronics, with my first kit going back to when I was 3-4 and my dad bought me a set of electronic snap circuits from Radio Shack (bless its departed soul). While not experimenting myself much past a few lighting circuits, I did assemble a great deal of the different projects and designs included within it. It was around the same time I had been introduced to computers with a Commodore 64 I, being 3-4, ended up throwing to the ground (not that I remember doing so). As I grew older, and started to think what I'd want to do with my life, electronics ended up being something I thought I'd really enjoy doing.

Thus, I believe it was because I wanted to learn more, and just interact with people who also enjoyed electronics that I joined the EEVBlog forums.

In the end, I never went into electronics. Unlike computing, which was a daily part of my life (and to which I now place my professional skills), electronics was always some nebulous concept that I just wanted to get into /some day/. My lazy mind of a child was interested, but not really bothered enough to actually expand my horizons much past the occasional soldering kit that was thrown my way. Perhaps I simply didn't have enough opportunities to experiment.

Whatever the cause, I've still stuck with the EEVBlog, and have still retained a general interest in electronics of any sort. It's still a hobby I intend to be more than my present state of useless in at some point, but for now a lot of people here also share my deep interest and passion for computing, old and new. The IRC has also been a place where I could hang out on the daily, and besides work chats, is the chat I interact with the most. By all means join if you're reading this, irc.austnet.org #eevblog.

Now, I'll throw the mike to someone else.
So, simple machines decided to be simple, so the mentions sorta kinda worked. I had originally asked David Hess, but I was worried the mention didn't work, so blueskull I thought was another neat choice, as I remembered him being quite an interesting person on the forums. If DHess wants to go, Halcyon should arbitrate or something, otherwise no problem then?

[ebastler]

To start with:
 
@Ampera - What brought you here?

Just tell me about you. Like @Amyk, she seems so full of knowledge but I know hardly anything about her.

I guess you have now managed to confuse everybody... 

What's the deal with striking out the rules and the invite to Ampera, after Ampera has responded?
Could you clarify your intent for this thread please? Thanks!

[Halcyon]

I guess you have now managed to confuse everybody... 

Halcyon named Ampera, Ampera named me, which Halcyon regretted and "influenced" Ampera to name David Hess.

A good example of prejudice and hypocrisy. Now I think Halcyon just felt like he shot himself in the foot. Oops.

None of that was true (well, except for the confusing part). I tried a fun activity and it was just too hard. Basically the idea was to get to know people a bit better and pass the ball from a person to another, good idea at the time, but meh.

No hypocrisy or anything else sinister involved.

[Ampera]

Halcyon had nothing to do with me naming DHess. He was my original first pick, but I wasn't sure if the mentions system was intelligent enough to deal with a space in his name, since his forum name is David Hess. When I saw that it wasn't highlighting his username, I chose blueskull instead, as I was just as interested to hear about him.

I'd say the only fault here is the rules were confusingly explained, and eventualities weren't thought out right. SMF is just also ancient software from the PHP forum dark ages (I know, I run it on my site)

[Ian.M]

Pity.  I thought it would make a nice companion thread to https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/new-member-please-introduce-yourself/
 If you are happy to stick to Halcyon's rules please indicate your desire for him to un-strikeout his post and for us to try again, by thanking his ORIGINAL post.

The stick is up for grabs, its been 32 hours since blueskull offered it to cdev, and *I* don't want it!

I think a parallel discussion thread is needed to keep the crap out of the main talking stick thread, and I'm quite happy for this post to be moved or deleted if the stick goes live again, or to clean up my own crap by deleting it myself.

[ebastler]

I think it's simply not a format that is suited for a standard forum thread:

(a) Not everybody checks this forum every day, so the "please respond within 24 hours" expectation is bound to be missed often.

(b) You definitely want the opportunity for others to comment or ask questions in response to someone's self-introduction, which means that you will end up with multiple "sub-threads" within this thread. Which the forum software can't handle well, so it will turn into a mess of people talking over each other.

[Ed.Kloonk]

The old engineer in me saw the problem and enacted, hopefully, a different solution..

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/describe-yourself-in-three-words/

In other places in another time, the thread might have been called  describe other users with four letter words.

 

[MK14]

I think it's simply not a format that is suited for a standard forum thread:

If I understand things correctly. It would suit some other forums, but not really this one. There are some forums, where you can comment on any of the posts, and it starts a sort of new thread. But readers, can still read the whole thread, and ignore the various sub-threads. Unless they are interested in the other conversations, in which case they can click and open/read those as well, it usually tells you how many replies, each sub-thread has.

E.g. (Not a forum as such), but Youtube comments, allow you to reply to each post, without affecting the main thread. But you can click it, if you are interested in the sub-topic.
"I really liked the new IC they showed"
====="View 19 replies".
"Thanks Dave, for such a great Video"
====="View 199 replies".
Etc.

[Halcyon]

The old engineer in me saw the problem and enacted, hopefully, a different solution..

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/describe-yourself-in-three-words/

In other places in another time, the thread might have been called  describe other users with four letter words.

 

I think that works much better. It has boundaries, but is open for everyone to post at their leisure. I like it.

[Ed.Kloonk]

The old engineer in me saw the problem and enacted, hopefully, a different solution..

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/describe-yourself-in-three-words/

 

I think that works much better. It has boundaries, but is open for everyone to post at their leisure. I like it.

Borrowed from comedian Jimmy Carr. During a bit about messing around with employment applications.

[tautech]

I'll do it if asked however a member I've had a bit to do with since he joined up which wasn't long ago has had an extremely interesting career: mawyatt