Friday, November 20, 2009

Any enthusiast's dream?

Being old sometimes makes us forget small little details of our childhood. For instance, a 'normal' adult might say "Oh sh*t, it's raining! And sh*t i'm wet!!"...

How could he or she forget, that when they were still a kid, rain means: playing time!!!, or "ujan-ujan-an" as we Javanese call it :D

Kids love rain.

Well, maybe not everyone.

But what I actually want to point out in this stupid blog update is that I should have been much much much more thankful for what is provided for me in my current Electronics Lab here in UGM.

There are so many items in this lab that should be like what a rain is to a child... (or "toys", in kids language). Here's the list:
- Complete (though simple) PCB prototyping workshop, including several LCD monitor computers, a laser printer, an iron, cutting tools, grinder, electrical drills, and small bowl to do chemical etching...
- soldering iron
- abundant supply of common electronics components: resistors, capacitors, transistors...
- adequate adjustable power supplies with overload protection --> there's no need to make one
- 4 channel 100MHz oscilloscopes and <2MHz function generators --> troubleshooting pal
- lots of breadboards
- Development boards!!! Two Altera Cyclone II FPGA boards, a box-full of ARM development boards (milik pak Eka, dititipkan di sini hehehe), three ARM Single-board computers. A Schneider Twido PLC, and several Atmel AVR USB programmer cables.

Not to mention, a very great atmosphere. Pak Parman, the laboratory technician here is a very nice man. He even bought me gado2 for lunch today!

Now the problem is, me being here for quite a while apparently haven't resulted in anything 'substantial'. Well, early this year we did get involved in a business project, producing not less than 150 controller boards, which unfortunately did not perform well in the hands of the customers. Academically, no important research has been finished during this nearly 2 years of me being here, other than some pretty good students final year projects that I supervise. Some final year projects went out very well, like Agni's one (he presented his paper in our department's national seminar), and just recently, a department-funded research was completed in this lab, despite its lack of awesomeness (and lack of students involvement not to mention... -_-).

I need a performance boost. But how?? :-/
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu