Space: the final frontier. Every new frontier has a new set of rules - things that don’t work the way they did back home. The stars are different in the southern Hemisphere, the most deadly animal in the tropics is the mosquito, and dogs are more useful than mules in... [Read More]

Discussing eddy-current actuators is hard without the word ‘actuator.’ It is clunky and reeks of jargon, but the alternatives are worse. “Tractor Beam” is evocative but misleading. “Electromagnetic force generator” is so generic it says almost nothing. “Eddy-current force generator” begins to stray into the land of sleep-inducing engineering names... [Read More]

Ever wondered how you turn position and acceleration into bits and bytes for closed-loop feedback at 4000 hz? Okay, probably not.

Of all the institutions embedded in the culture of science writing, abstracts are actually a good idea. Abstracts give the reader a broad overview of the entire document - it’s structure and arguments. Essentially ‘warning traveller!’ A good abstract is like a tree in winter - there won’t be any... [Read More]

I’m going to try an experiment. The goal? A steady stream of posts that will be like dissertation Legos. Little discrete blocks of thought that can stand on their own, but snap together to form something far more awesome. Clearly posts will always be far less polished than a complete... [Read More]