Othersubjects

Chapter 9 - ‘The Rest’ #

English #

Unfortunately, for those that don’t speak English as a first language, the internet has developed in such a way that English is basically the go-to language online. (1)

I’m not going to pretend to be able to teach you English - especially not in a guide that claims to be about Engineering - but I do think communicating effectively is massively important, so I’d recommend watching some of these videos and reading these links which go over some of the nuance of communication:

Don’t be Spooky (Adam Keys)

And for some fun,

What if English were Phonetically Consistent? (YouTube - Aaron Alon)

The importance of proper italicized word placement. pic.twitter.com/fQT5AuYn5W
— C.S. Ratliff (@cs_ratliff) August 5, 2021

Finance #

[TODO] because making and engineering are expensive, and you probably want to make money, and spend less money.

Music #

Music? In a chapter on Engineering? Well, yeah. Hear me out, music is a combination of math and signals.

1
2
3
4
5


EUCLID(m, k):
	if k = 0:
		return m
	else:
    	return EUCLID(k,m mod k)

The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms (Godfried Toussaint) (PDF)

As another example, the Euclidean Algorithm can be used to distribute drum hits to algorithmically make drum beats

As a really cool example, there’s also ORCΛ by 100 rabbits, which you can see in action in this video from EZBOT on YouTube:

If you get into Modular music systems, like eurorack, it’s really similar to programming too- as you connect modules as if they’re functions and operations- to make a complex musical system. Here’s an example of a Eurorack setup in action from Lightbath on YouTube:

Health #

[TODO] Mental & Physical, because nerds typically suck at this.

Vega looking longigly at Mountain Dew can

Character owned by Vega, art by Talon Creations

World Studies #

[TODO] To help with tolerance and looking at things from new perspectives.

History #

[TODO] inspiration from history and remembering past mistakes

Art, Design, UI & UX #

I know what you’re thinking, “Vega, this guide is about engineering- why should I give a damn about art?”

Because you’ll still probably need to design enclosures, make easy to read documentation, and probably make a user interface or two, and bad design usually leads to both users not being interested in the first place and a poor user experience.

So, even if you’re not super into it, give the Design Chapters a quick skim and look at the parts that seem relevant to you, you’ll want to look at Section 4 - UI/UX for sure.

If you’d like a good laugh, check out this video from Tantacrul roasting the poor design of Sibelius, a popular program for music notation

There’s also this gallery of bad volume controls: