RF Circuit Design - Chris Bowick

rote:

eject the bad ones fast.

was officially called "reading the literature critically", which in practi ce meant meant recognising the incompetent rubbish rapidly, and only readin g enough of the pot-boilers to recognise that they didn't have anything new or interesting to say.

ng after incompetent rubbish, and I've published more critical comments in the peer-reviewed literature than original contributions - but I'm not too bad.

Here is a philosophical question?

Which is worse?

1. Looking for flattery from others
2. Constantly bragging about your skills in public

reject the bad ones fast.

it was officially called "reading the literature critically", which in prac tice meant meant recognising the incompetent rubbish rapidly, and only read ing enough of the pot-boilers to recognise that they didn't have anything n ew or interesting to say.

oing after incompetent rubbish, and I've published more critical comments i n the peer-reviewed literature than original contributions - but I'm not to o bad.

Bragging about your skills is doing the flattery yourself.

"excessively proud and boastful talk about one's achievements or possession s."

Pointing up defects in other people work as a device for showing off it pre tty unpleasant, but leaving errors unremarked is a trifle irresponsible.

The scientific literature is published to help people tackle similar proble ms in the future, and if the advice is incomplete or misleading, it's not a s helpful as it might be.

There's no flattering way of saying that somebody has got something wrong, and being diplomatic about it frequently means that the message doesn't get through.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Get a larger tablet (one that can display a page at "100%" and install JUST the books/reader on the tablet.

I also use a smaller tablet for "paperbacks" (novels) as its screen is more in line with that of a "pocket book". (I reduced 80 copying paper cartons of paperbacks to just a microSD card, in this way!)

That's only true of "true PDFs" -- and, to a lesser extent, "searchable" PDFs. *Scanned* PDFs need to be post-processed (OCR) if you want access to the text. Often that has dubious results (depends on the image being of high enough quality and the OCR software being smart enough to recognize text flows without assistance/intervention).

Sadly, may downloadable PDFs appear to just be scanned as the original materials were left at the typesetter's bench many years earlier! :<

This is greatly compounded when you start adding research papers to the "collection". It becomes a problem similar to sorting photographs; it's rarely convenient to just put a document in one "place" that you'll hopefully recollect at a later date!

[I have all of my files indexed in a large database. In addition to telling me where a file/document resides (and verify it's contents are intact), I can tag each with keywords that may be more memorable to me. It's hard to remember what C66789f.pdf addresses!]

Virtual desktops just changed the amount of clutter you can tolerate by reducing the physical limitation of a REAL desktop!

True, but none of that stuff is of any interest to me. I'd much sooner experiment with some old toobs I have here; see what they're capable of. As a hobbyist, I'm not pressured by advances in technology. They can cheerfully pass me by AFAIC.

One of my old books that still have and the PDF version is the Radiotron Designers Book... That is one of the hardback books I just have to keep.

Good idea to take one at random and look though. I just might try that !

People stop growing at an age where they're comfortable. If you found life among the tubes, discrete parts, hand wiring, non-computerized, simplistic communication schemes, and such to be easier to deal with, you probably just stopped there. No need to learn anything new or follow the advances in the technology. Just work with what you know, maybe learn a little more about such things, repair electronic archeological artifacts, and generally live in the past. There's nothing wrong with doing this. I've seen people who work on the latest technology during their daytime job, collect the old radios and old technology of their youth. One former engineer, who spent his days running a semiconductor company, spent his spare time maintaining a very impressive collection of antique mechanical clocks. I'm guilty of a little of that by collecting and repairing older HP calculators and old technical books.

The problem I see here, is all the aforementioned people were comfortable in both the old and new technologies, and could function equally well in both. You seem to be stuck in the past and not moving forward. I see this as the wrong approach. Learning your basic RF theory from a 23 year old book will teach you nothing of today's (and possibly future) technology. Doing so from a more current book, will give you both the old and the new technology.

It's difficult to see where you're going when you walk facing backwards.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

On Tuesday, November 24, 2020 at 12:03:28 PM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wr ote:

i could almost write a book in response to your comments above. I agree wit h most of what you wrote, however, the fundamentals of RF engineering today (excluding modulation---I/Q stuff) have not changed much over the last 30 years. Matching, understanding smith chart, filter theory, Gain and Noise analysis, antenna design......it is all remarkably the same. Then add in L O control with PLLs. One might argue that this fundamental theory is what makes an RF engineer. I do see your point in a sense. for instance ,it is probably a bad idea to read about FORTH and Perl if you are just starting o ut in computer science. But the RF stuff is still comprised of the same ba sic set of fundamentals today as it is 30 years ago.

We are kind of cursed in this field. We really cannot find a moment in tim e and lock ourselves into that and stay good and relevant without having to constantly updating our skills and abandoning the stuff we did and were su ccessful at to move on.

As I approach retirement, I am more drawn to learning things that I did not fully understand earlier in my career but the things that do not change. Specifically I am trying to really understand E-M theory and Linear Algebra . Oddly, engineers can accomplish an awful lot in a narrow field even if t hey do not properly comprehend some of the underlying theory. Or , in my ca se, It was more pressing to understand control loop theory before going bac k and understanding E/M. Then it was important to grasp noise, then matchi ng, then measurement.....So you are constantly having to figure out lots of aspects of your trade but can leave the even more foundational stuff behin d.

Also, as we expand our technology there are too many things. I sense that

70 years ago most EEs were good at EM theory. Heck they seemed to understa nd waveguide theory and all the various modes. I think they generally unde rstood differential equations better. Today I think you will find few engi neers who can really explain differential equations , transient, SS convolu tion , time vs frequency notions. Too many more things to chase....more sh iny objects.

I previously used an Amazon Kindle DX Graphite (2nd gen) tablet for the purpose: Each Kindle has a dedicated email address on kindle.com. I can email a PDF to the Kindle as needed. Very handy, but with limitations. It's slow, has limited storage, difficult to read in a darkened room (no back lighting), and no way to display on a projector. So, I retired my Kindle DX and switched to using an Acer Chromebook 14 CB3-431.

I previously used my Google Nexus 7 for the purpose. The problem is that it doesn't take an SD card, but does work with a flash drive plugged into a USB OTG adapter. Great for reading in bed. That was replaced by an Acer C720 11" screen laptop, and now with an Acer Chromebook 14. (Hint: I have about 7 Chromebooks).

Yep. I get plenty of PDF's that need to be fed to an OCR (optical character recognition) reader to make the text searchable. For that purpose, I use the free version of PDF-XChange Editor. The OCR include with the free version works for most documents. However, the optional add-on works better with italics, weird formatting, misaligned scans, and NOT scanning photos:

Worse. Many are sloppy rushed scans, such as the HP/Agilent collection of old manuals. Almost all of them are scanned in 1 bit b&w "color" resulting in unreadable graphs, photos and illustrations. A great many were scanned at odd angles. I found one that looked much like it had been pre-processed by a paper shredder. Others have scanned fold out schematics that required an origami expert to reassemble.

For a time, I was rather spoiled. The law offices of one of my customers was blessed with a Canon ImageRunner 5000 copier, which scanned double sided pages at about 3 seconds per double sided page: I used it mostly to scan rare manuals, such as those for radios I helped design in the distant past. However, after using a guillotine paper cutter to remove the bindings from several TEK manuals, I decided I didn't want to destroy any more manuals and limited my scanning to easily disassembled manuals.

My partial solution to that problem is to use search software. For search by title, I use Everything: For search by content, I use Agent Ransack Search: For finding duplicates, I use Auslogics Duplicate File Finder: Everything is blindingly fast, but assumes that the title makes some sense. Agent Ransack Search takes forever to index a giant directory tree of documents, but is quite fast searching the index. However, I plan to slooooowly switch the archives to Linux, which means all these tools will need to be replaced.

True, but if you search by content, you don't really care what the document title might be.

For every improvement in workspace efficiency, there is always someone who finds a way to abuse it: That's from 2013. The present version is more of the same, on 4 virtual desktops, and three functional machines: Two are running Linux Mint. The rest are running Win 10. The various laptops and Chromebooks are elsewhere.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

You need smaller icons

That would mean yet another pair of prescription glasses (from Zenni Optical). A larger monitor would also block my view of the forest outside. I now have 2ea 24" (1920 x 1200) monitors in front of me, and two 19" (1600 x 900) monitors to the side. The 2nd 24" monitor is switchable between a 2nd monitor for the main computer (where I place my lightly used icons), and my Linux box. Unfortunately, the main monitor, where I store most of my icons, is running in 1680 x 1050 because of a firmware bug in the monitor. When this is eventually fixed or replaced, I'll have room for 2 more rows of icons. At this time, there are 190 icons on the main monitor, and about 100 more on the 2nd monitor with room for about 200 more. When that fills up, I'll need to decide if I should clean up the mess, or just add another monitor. I did this for a customer, who rather likes the idea. I could probably fit 4 such "portrait mode" monitors on my desk. Maybe add another monitor over the bed, hanging from the ceiling.

Incidentally, I'm just about ready to build or possibly design my own KVM (keyboard video monitor) switch. I have several and they all suck in various ways.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I looked into using 24" monitors in portait mode on either end of my dual 30s. But, found that its too narrow (even if only psychologically) and doesn't find use for anything beyond desktop widgets (clock, network monitor, etc.). And, losing that much bench-top space means there has to be a REAL benefit, for me (YMMV).

Tell me about it! I finally settled on the internal "source select" capabilities of the monitors (this is a blessing and a curse; annoying if you want ALL of the monitors to switch to workstation #2 but a blessing if you only want to move one or two of them over to a second machine).

Of course, if you want to be able to split the monitors between machines, you can't "share" the keyboard. This requires a fair bit of skill to remember WHICH keyboard to type on when wanting to cause an action on a particular monitor! :>

KVMs also only address part of the problem. You can find some that will also handle audio (mic & out). But, will they let you share a digitizing tablet, motion controller, scanner, etc.? What about different keyboard/mouse protocols (e.g., I have Sun workstations alongside my PCs)

[attrs elided]

That really only makes sense if you are a theoretician. If you are charged with actually BUILDING something -- reifying concept -- you find that a "dated" education leaves you essentially ignorant.

But, isn't that the whole appeal of engineering? That you KEEP learning and don't "settle" for an (obsolescent) understanding/skillset?

I've a colleague who made his first million before we were out of college. But, he's not done anything other than rehash that same "win", over and over again. Yeah, I'm sure he's very "comfortable", but he also feels sorely outdated when we gather to share RECENT experiences.

[I find that engineers tend to lose their creativity/imagination as they become wed to particular techologies/application domains. I wonder if this is also the case with other sciences?]

I'm more interested in exploring different application domains -- how technologies can be applied in ways that hadn't previously been possible due to cost, available tools, etc. E.g., I'm not digging into SDR to get a feel for how much I could do with "how little".

As Kipling said, "Not so, but far otherwise." It's the folks who were trained on the fad of the month with no theoretical underpinnings who get obsolete.

I get asked for advice by a fair number of students, and I always tell them to concentrate on learning the stuff that's hard to pick up on your own, and to pay really close attention to getting the fundamental concepts down perfectly. Otherwise their education is built on sand.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

I'm blessed to have no interest in new technology (in the electronics sphere at any rate). You suggested in an earlier post I should get acquainted with GANfets and such like. How would I even begin? I have absolutely no test equipment suitable for experimenting with such devices. My fastest scope is only 350Mhz; my fastest VNA is only 3Ghz and whilst my fastest spectrum analyser goes to 22Ghz on its upper range, that range isn't working and repairing it is not on my to-do list because I get along just fine with the lower range. I'm thankful I have no interest in the faster stuff as it costs big $$$$$$$$$$ I don't want to spend. Plus the parts for those kind of frequencies are typically tiny SMDs and I don't have the eyesight or steady hands for assembling them. I'm very happy the stuff I like to goof around with usually has through-hole components visible to the naked eye. I very much like that. The last thing I need is some grain of sand-sized chip that flies away into the universe next door if I so much as breath on it! I'm entirely comfortable in my obsolescence. I'll cheerfully leave all the super-fast sub-min stuff to the Larkins of this world.

Sorry, Jeff, that's just not how I see it.

Absolutely. The sight of Maxwell's equations would give 'em a seizure.

Doesn't everyone have a T-shirt to that effect?

He got into it late, and doesn't seem to have got all that far into it.

When your head is a far up your own behind as Cursitor Doom's is, you don't see much of anything.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

t 70 years ago most EEs were good at EM theory. Heck they seemed to underst and waveguide theory and all the various modes. I think they generally unde rstood differential equations better. Today I think you will find few engin eers who can really explain differential equations , transient, SS convolut ion , time vs frequency notions. Too many more things to chase....more shin y objects.

Not something I've seen happen. These days Maxwell's equations tend to show up embedded in fancy field-plotting software, so the chance that anybody w ould recognise them if they saw them is remote.

--
Bill Sloman,  Sydney

Of course, paper books last a great deal longer than electronic devices. Most SED denizens may not be expecting to outlast their latest e-reader gizmo, but it's worth mentioning. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com