Yang's ENG198 Archives

synthesis…

pshoom — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:46:39 +0000

what have I learned this semester?

walks around the internet

pshoom — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:56:42 +0000

Here’s another interesting website and idea that I ran across in my travels around the world wide web. Bid from the Heart is a website that mixes eBay with The Price is Right with some charity work.

It is an auction website, they’ll have a few auctions listed each day (they tend to be popular items like game systems and gift cards) and users can bid on them. This is where things get interesting, you don’t bid the amount that you’re willing to pay. Instead, each auction has a mininum and maximum bid amount and a maximum number of bids. The bids are really like guesses, you buy a bid and enter some dollar amount and at the end of the auction the person with the highest unique bid wins the item. It’s sort of like buying a raffle ticket. At least 25% of the bid fees go to a charity such as the Make a Wish Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters etc. http://www.bidfromtheheart.com/

dream a little

pshoom — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:41:53 +0000

In the face of new challenges and barriers, it doesn’t hurt to stop, take a gander around, evaluate all the options (even the ones that you’d normally immediately dismiss) and then proceed.

As the year winds down and I hand in my last assignments and projects I can feel the desire to spend a glorious month doing absolutely nothing. However, it would appear that I actually will have to accomplish something this summer. The first thing I’d like to do is look back and figure out what I actually managed to learn in my 4 years of higher education. At present I like to say nothing, as it seems that throughout most of my technical curriculum I skipped class and just looked the stuff up in books/wikipedia before the exams. Secondly, figure out where I’m going to attempt to make a contribution for the next few years, be it industry or academia. And here is where things start requiring a little creativity. I was academically trained to be a theoretical engineering science monkey, and extracurricularly trained to actually get things done. In the very rigid structures of engineering graduate school how would one get around the arcane methodologies and mentalities that are grounded in tradition? Also, your boss is going to be a PhD and most likely not a newly minted one which means he’s going be from the ‘old school’ which in a field that’s suppose to be constantly innovating generally means death by boredom.

so how does one change an institution that hasn’t changed in forever and a day and where those in power don’t want the change as it will most likely mean they lose their power and influence? A bloody revolution would be nice, however engineers are even worse fighters than they are lovers. Something to ponder and work on in the lazy days of summer.

goal setting

pshoom — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:41:45 +0000

I recently created an account on www.43things.com, it is a site where you can make a list of goals and post updates. You can also see all the people that have the same goals, their posts and if they’ve completed that goal you can see how they did it and how long it took.

it takes the paradigm of support groups that are generally formed with the purpose of combatting something bad and mixes it with the idea of online forum/blog/colloquium community popularized by blogspot, facebook and myspace.

They had short personality quiz that’s based on things that you have done and I am apparently a “Healthy Lifelong Learning Jokester”

synthesize!

pshoom — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:16:25 +0000

It has come to the part of the semester where we are suppose to ‘synthesize’ everything we have learned into a coherent ball of skills and knowledge.

This, like all things, should start at the beginning. so what have we studied?

The definitions of creativity, asking questions, the creative process, various creative people and creative ideas, personality type and work styles, group dynamics, entreprenuerialship and a few other bits and pieces.

But how to ball all of this up? That is the last question.

implementation

pshoom — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:20:49 +0000

We have been working on our V2R projects for a few weeks now and its about time I recorded a few details regarding what we’re up to.

Filming is almost done, we’re just grabbing a bit more footage to round out what we have. There have been some interesting trends, most guys immediately choose Jack and the Beanstalk, very few remember what happens at the beginning of Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin has produced very random re-tellings and no one remembers the morals.

People definitely do better when they are paired or grouped with others. Some have gotten so excited that they proceed to tell other stories.

Go forth

pshoom — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:09:27 +0000

A few examples of entrepreneurial endeavors of our classroom peers were presented today. They ranged from modifiying jeeps to finanacial planning workshops. One thing that stuck out was something called Midnight Oil, from what I gathered it is an organization of advertising majors who design publicity materials for local businesses and RSOs in order to gain experience in the field. I can see a few areas where certain organizations I have worked with can enlist their help, however finding them has proven to be more difficult than expected.

Or perhaps the same concept can be applied to engineering students. The only problem that comes to mind is that in order to perform engineering services one must be licensed, and licensure for engineers requires a few years of experience after graduation. So perhaps we’ll spin this off as a design consultancy and just leave the word ‘engineering’ out of it.

Another round of CCRs

pshoom — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:57:55 +0000

The last round of ccrs was presented a few days ago.

Carl D. presented his experiences with making a duct-tape wallet

Ebony W. showed a redesign of the campus parking meters

Kari P. presented the book compiled by the Olsen twins titled Influence

Emmanuel T. talked about the Tesla Roadster

Jesus C. did Thomas Edison

Taryn ?. presented on Andy Warhol

I presented on hacking.

Biological copycat

pshoom — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:38:03 +0000

Class on April 8th was a presentation by M. Alleyne on bio-mimicry and looking for inspiration in living things (specifically insects). Some of the examples she illustrated were termite mounds, army ants, compound eyes, decentralized nervous systems and spider silk.

For an assignment we are to find some bio-inspiration for our own projects. I looked around and saw yogurt cultures.

A return to scribbling

pshoom — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:23:07 +0000

Since the time of the last writing, much has taken place.

First, Engineering Open House 2009 – Unlocking Potential took place on March 13th and 14th. We had over 170 student exhibits along with corporate exhibits, design contests, performance groups, visitations and a special presentation by Grant Imahara of Mythbusters. Still wrapping up details to that.

Secondly, Spring break. Nothing was accomplished and it was glorious.

Thirdly, Engineering Council elections. I am now no longer affliated with Engineering Council and my last official task is to charge my sucessor tonight.

Fourthly, NAESC National Conference. 3 days in San Luis Obispo and Pismo Beach, Califorina. Other than horrendous travel experiences both ways, it was interesting/sunny/did I mention we were at a beach?

In ENG 198 we’ve done some CCR presentations, and some stuff with MBTI. I am apparently an ENTJ (here’s what wikipedia has to say about it) and according to Levesques my archetypes are The Pilot (analytical strategy) and secondarily The Visionary (Far-reaching insights). As with any personality test thing some of it seems like it would apply to everyone but it does give indication of where you like to lean and what ‘talents’ you’re most comfortable with.