What is a mechatronics technician, anyway?
"When Keith Campbell muses about industrial education, his thoughts go back to his
uncle Ralph. After graduating first in his high-school class, Ralph got a job
as a machinist. He spent a long and satisfying career working in factories with
no regrets.
The question that bugs
"Ralph probably have gone to a four-year college and, if he was lucky,
eventually run a McDonald’s," Campbell shrugs.. . "
from "What’s a mechatronics technician?" by Leland Teschler, Editor in Machine Design, 6/21/07. See the article here.
–by the staff
Stormtrooper bike helmet
If you have asthma and want to look like a Imperial Storm Trooper,
here is the helmet for you.
The helmet, called Breathe Air, was created by 22-year-old
industrial design and technology student Luke Pannell. The helmet has a built-in air filter. It covers the cyclist’s nose and mouth with a
shield behind which the filtered air circulates.
–by the staff
Annalee Newitz on steampunk
Annalee Newitz, on AlterNet,discusses steampunk:
We live in a time
when no single human being can fully comprehend the Windows operating system.
No wonder we’re nostalgic for the days when beachcombers could be naturalists and
tinkerers could invent the telephone.
I think the popularity of steampunk also expresses our collective yearning
for an era when information technology was in its infancy and could have gone
anywhere. In 1880 we hadn’t yet laid the cables for a telephone network, and
computer programming was just an idea in Ada Lovelace’s head.
Nineteenth-century technology was often operated by factory laborers, and it
meant backbreaking work and the ruination of healthy bodies. Information
technology, to the 19th-century mind, would be something that set us free from
brutal assembly lines.
One hundred years later, I wish it were so. Information technology has its
own brutal assembly lines, mind-numbing data work that cripples our fingers
with repetitive strain injuries and mangles our backs with the hunched postures
required to work at a computer all day long. Seen from this perspective,
steampunk is an aesthetic that tells the truth about us. We are no better off
than our Victorian ancestors, bumbling into the future with crude technologies
whose implications we barely understand. But let’s make our devices pretty, at
least. Let’s remember the days when the machines that now cage us promised
liberation.
–by the staff
3D Navigation tools from 3Dconnexion: Review
Desktop Engineering is currently featuring a review of the full line of 3Dconnexion 3D navigation devices.
3Dconnexion’s line of 3D navigation devices allow you to fly through
three dimensional worlds or manipulate 3D objects with an agility
and precision unachievable with a mouse and keyboard. Simultaneously
pan, zoom and rotate 3D images without repeatedly stopping to change directions.
We offer the full line of tools.
See them here.
–by the staff