Noise articles

Always a constant problem and easy to get confused about the real cause.  This article might help:

http://www.industrialcontroldesignline.com/howto/212500754

Online science stuff

I’m always looking for material for star party presentations. Two sites that I need to explore more:
http://www.freesciencelectures.com/
and
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/index.htm (also has a lot of EE stuff)

Whither EETIMES?

Out of all of the industry trade-rags, the weekly EETIMES was the one to read cover to cover to see what was going on. Last week and this week it’s down to 48 pages, and this is in its new smaller magazine format vs. the old tabloid one.

The arguments about reading on-line are full of it…dead trees are still the best way to convey the “printed” word.

Engineering kits for kids

Article by Jon Titus over at ECN. Links to various manufacturers.
http://www.ecnmag.com/Embedded-Systems-Kits-for-Kids.aspx?menuid=548

Mentor PADS

techonline is recycling old articles, they just emailed a really old (2005) Mentor release as ‘new’. I only use CAD tools to view other people’s work. I can only say that PADS Logic and PADS layout are one of the most obtuse pieces of software ever written.  Nothing is intuitive and they conform to no obvious ‘normal’ standard for doing things.  Maybe they’re OK for doing actual deisgn work, but seems unlikely if just trying to navigate a schematic or layout is so painful. Oh, and like a lot of software these days, the manuals are useless.