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A lot of what I do revolves around presentations. As an engineer and as a student. Both as presenter and as audience. At conferences, in the office, at school, practically everywhere. Even church. (I was the guest lecturer pulpit guest on Labor Day Sunday, which was basically a presentation without PowerPoint^TM.)

Powerpoint^TM. Anyone that has seen more that two PowerPoint^TM presentations has seen a bad one.

Even Edward Tufte, the legend of presenting data, has a booklet on PowerPoint^TM presentations.

But as my public service for today, in order to make (my) world a better place, I give you Death by Powerpoint^TM, an excelent tutorial on presentations. Review it while preparing your next presentation, it will make it better.

Next time you look over and your kid is licking thier cotton-candy covered fingers after the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, think about this.

There are always interesting things at the exposition halls that accompany most conferences that I have been to. IEEE and ASME meetings have vendors with really cool measurement systems, books you can’t find anywhere else, and other fun and exciting things for those with skewed interests such as me.

Working for a medical device company, I have attended shows that are meant for physicians, places like SAGES, or ACS. Those expos are full of other strange and interesting things. It took a little while to get used to the videos of surgery or some of the more heinous devices people were showing, but all in all it was cool stuff.

It was all good until I walked though the exposition hall of the annual meeting of the AAGL. (Go ahead and click the link to see who they are… I’ll wait.)

There are things I never needed to know existed. Most of them are in that room.

I’m just sayin’.

I started thinking about this one day when I watched my nephew react to having his picture taken.  He immediately ran over to the photographer (his mom) and asked to see the picture.  I have seen this behavior in my own kids since then, and it really drives home how the changes in technology are providing a completely different childhood from the one that I knew.  These kids will have no concept of sending pictures to get developed.  This might not seem like much, but there were lots of things associated with film development when I was growing up:

• Dropping the film off at the store. 
• Picking it up days or week later (maybe an hour or two if you were in a hurry).
• Sharing the pictures with everyone else when you got home.
• Taking many rolls of film with you on a trip.
• Having copies of the bad pictures as well as the good ones.

The big thing was that you had to wait.  Taking pictures and seeing the results were separated by hours to days to weeks.  You don’t have to wait anymore.

This trend continues with Tivo, or any other “on demand” TV service:  the concept of network schedules for shows is quickly becoming irrelevant.  YouTube (which was talked about previously) means most any video that I can think of from 80’s music to The Muppet Show videos are available instantly. Even using the iPod in the car.  Now that last one probably isn’t much different from having CDs or other recorded music for them to listen to, but the big difference is the scale.  There are thousands of songs on my iPod, so if there is a request from the back seat for a Sesame Street song (or Veggietales, or Disney, or …) the odds are that it is available.

Even cell phones play a role in this.  Want to talk to grandpa?  Tell mom, she can have him on the line in less than 10 seconds.  Nevermind that he isn’t even in the state, or you aren’t even at home.

Now, I don’t want you to think that the little ones are always running around demanding things (though sometimes they do), or even that we constantly give in (though sometimes we do).  There is just an unprecedented availability for people these days, and these guys have never known it any other way.

I don’t know that this is a good thing or a bad thing.  It is just different. 

Now, gall durn it!  Get off my lawn! 

All you have to do to turn a 5 year old into a fanatic for early 80’s rock music is show him the youtube video.

Seriously. You play Mr. Roboto for them once in the car, then show them the video. Now he won’t stop asking for it. Who knew that 80’s rock music was written at a 5 year old’s level? Actually, that’s what our parents were saying the whole time.

Excuse me while I go play the “Robot Song” one more time…

Halloween has come and gone. There are two ways to tell. First, there is the dehydrating Jack ‘O Lanterns. But more importantly there is the Pawn-the-Kids-Candy-Off-On-My-Coworkers-Before-I-Eat-It-All scheme. Which means for a week or two after Halloween there are bowls and baskets of candy all over this place.

After a while, it just sits there. Sad really, kind of depressing.

That’s where we are at now, or were at until today. Now it is a test media.

Ever wonder about the electrical properties of Hershey’s Chocolate? Wonder no more:

That’s right. 5.2 and 3.9 nF (nanofarads). I think we need a larger sample size to determine distribution. Then we should call Hershey and have them work on the process capability.

 Please Note:  I did not do this.  They were sitting on top of a filing cabinet already labeled.  I am not responsible for this nerd-fest.  Mostly beacuse I didn’t think of it first.

Anita Renfroe has condensed the entire collection of mommy tapes into one song.
For those who have never heard the phrase before: mommy tapes are those things that your mother said so many times that they were automatic.
Things like “Stop hitting your sister!“. Not that I ever heard that one.
So without further ado, I give you everything a mother says, set to the William Tell Overture.

You can view it here, because there is something FUBAR with Wordpress letting me embed a YouTube video.

I found out last week that one of my professors has been honored with the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering.  Dr. Amy Pruden-Bagchi taught my Biomolecular Tools for Engineers class two years ago (gasp!  has it been two years already? I need to graduate already!).  You can read the university’s announcement here.

I offer my congratulations to Dr. Pruden, I can’t think of anyone that deserves it more.