Looks like he learns, pretty much the same way I do. It seems to be common.
One of the nice things about being retired, is that I don’t have to retire. I just direct my own work, instead of having knuckleheads trying to steer the boat. Since I like learning, I look to do stuff I don’t already know how to do[0].
I don’t think he’s retired, but he seems to be in a place, where he’s free to follow his own muse.
[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
Why wouldn't you? I'm not retired, and I still pick up new skills and hobbies all the time, too. It's the spice of life.
55 isn't particularly old either. My mother's partner is pushing 75 and in the middle of diving from scratch into SDR and building out a little mesh network.
You'll also find that people who excel in FOSS communities are typically great self-directed learners and good at picking goals. It's survivorship bias in the sense that FOSS communities are bad at task assignment, so you more or less have to bring motivation and picking-directions skills.
It's why I like to hire from the FOSS community (with some caveats). If you are able to provide and environment where they can stroll around your codebase/product and improve things, instead of staying in their lane, they generally will.
I retired at 55. I’m 63, now, and learn new stuff, every day.
I think one of the reasons that I learn as quickly as I do, is because I have an enormous baseline of experience on which to draw.
I probably don’t pick up new stuff as quickly as I did when I was younger, but my baseline means that I already have a great deal of background to apply to new stuff, so I don’t need to re-learn a lot.
TL;DR: I probably could “start from scratch,” a lot more easily, when I was younger, but I can “extend my knowledge,” a lot faster, these days.
https://gist.github.com/jftuga/2e4cf463dc0cdd9640c5f3da06b69...
For things you use a lot of (1k/10k resistors, 1uF/0.1uF caps etc) buy reels, they're surprisingly cheap <$10 from Digikey (if you visit Shenzhen you can pick them up for $2, I bought a complete set years ago for under $100).
I've largely standardised on 0603 parts for hand assembly, I'm older and have older vision, I need a binocular microscope to work - they're worth the investment if you're doing more than a tiny amount of SMD work.
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-0608-capacitor-kit.ht...
Also, Small Signal Audio Design by Douglas Self is really good, but probably not as a first EE textbook, and you have to really want to go into the weeds, as an electrical engineer would. But there is an entire chapter (chapter 12) on just electric guitars (pickup, preamps, effects, direct injection, etc.)
Microphones, amplifiers, filters speaker crossovers and so on - all explained failry nicely. The site has two main areas, projects and articles.
I used the sun as a UV source for the photoresist exposure, boiled iron chloride in my mom's Pyrex containers, stained bunch of her towels permanently yellow in the process. And the circuit didn't work. It is still a sore point from my youth that I remember occasionally.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44120903 :
> BespokeSynth is an open source "software modular synth" DAW that can host LV2 and VST3 plugins like Guitarix, which can also add signal transforms like guitar effects pedals. Tried searching for an apparently exotic 1A universal power supply. Apparently also exotic: A board of guitar pedals with IDK one USB-A and a USB-C adapter with OSC and MIDI support; USB MIDI trololo pedals
From "Python notebooks for fundamentals of music processing" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40555387
> Additional Open Source Music and Sound Production tools:
Brandon's Semiconductor Simulator lists what all is not yet modeled. "Basic equations of semiconductor device physics [pdf]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44723304 :
> Notes re: "Brandon's circuit simulator", which doesn't claim to model vortices in superconductors or the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect, for example; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43942279#43948096
electronics.stackexchange has CircuitLab built-in; TinkerCAD has circuit assembly and Python on Arduino in a free WebUI, but it's not open source. Wokwi and Pybricks (MicroPython on LEGO smart hubs over web bluetooth) are open core.
LPub3D is an open source LDraw editor for LEGO style digital building instructions. LeoCAD works with the LDraw parts library.
"WebUSB Support for RP2040" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38007967 :
> USB 2x20 pin (IDE cable) GPIO
FWIU Fuzix and picoRTOS will actually run on a RP2040/2350W. 2350W have both ARM-Cortex and RISC cores, but something like an STM can work for months on a few batteries.
pengaru•4mo ago