11 ms·

https://mobile.twitter.com/grantimahara/status/1243234010215530496 https://mobile.twitter.com/grantimahara/status/1243234010215... This was his workbench. In m

https://mobile.twitter.com/grantimahara/status/1243234010215530496 https://mobile.twitter.com/grantimahara/status/1243234010215... This was his workbench. In many ways, it doesn't look much different than mine. Grant was an electrical engineer, like me. Gone suddenly before 50 from an aneurysm. I can't help but wonder if it looks like that now, filled with unfinished projects. Projects that only he understood the complexity of, and few would have the hope of picking up where he finished. Projects that will never be completed, now that their creator has died. Grant, and Myth Busters were an inspiration to me as a young engineer. He was barely my age on the show, but influenced an entire generation of future engineers. I checked his Twitter feed. Barely a bitter or angry tweet. None of the toxic outrage so prevalent in society today. The world lost a decent person, and a brilliant engineer. Nobody knows their time. That what I leave unfinished would only be personal trivialities, and not angry tweets. That I would be able to have that impact on the next generation.

slau 6y ago
It is eerie how much that looks like my workbench. I guess EEs are all the same.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  It's a neurological condition. We go to college to get a diagnosis.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    "Don't worry Timmy, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just an electrical engineer."
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      He had the knack https://youtu.be/Dx6HojLBsnw https://youtu.be/Dx6HojLBsnw
  - pradn 6y ago
    From someone who gets giddy about exciting algorithms, languages, performance numbers - I suppose we're kindred spirits, though across the pond of the hardware-software divide. Glad the world has all sorts of people in love with all sorts of things.
    - squarefoot 6y ago
      Do a search for "Jim Williams workbench", you won't be disappointed.
- zrobotics 6y ago
  If the bench is clean, that means there isn't any work happening. Sad he passed so soon, I'm sure I'm not the only one he inspired a love of electronics for.
- metalforever 6y ago
  Gave me ideas . Man I thought I was the only one that made a huge mess with electrical stuff on the desk . I was trying to emulate my lab setup from school this whole time and what I really need is just the foldout desk from the attic.
anakaine 6y ago
I see a nodemcu, some sparkfun and adafruit gear. I see the node sitting on some plug in headers over a breakout board. That looks like things I like to play with. I'm not an electrical engineer, but am an earth scientist , engineer, programmer, and electronics hobbyist. This man was inspiring. What a loss to the world his passing is.
- fullstop 6y ago
  I have the same hakko wire solder cleaner, same mess.. kind of cool to see the similarities. Poor guy.
- tyingq 6y ago
  The paper print of a pinout, on the left, is for a Teensy 3.6 MCU. I imagine many here have played a bit with those.
JohnBooty 6y ago
The world lost a decent person I know a fair number of people who knew him personally, and (long before passed) all said the same thing about him - a really great human being. They said he had one of those personalities where he made you feel special. Not through flattery; in a truly genuine way. We lost a truly good guy.
japhyr 6y ago
My father started his career as a software engineer in the 1970s. He worked at places like Raytheon and DEC and a few others. He started his career using punchcards, and ended his career building websites from a laptop. I am grateful that from a very young age he let me ask about and use anything he had in his home office, starting with a kit computer in the late 1970s which I learned BASIC on. My father died in 2011. I flew back home to be with my mother during that time. It was a really hard time, made much harder because my only son was one month old, and my father never got to meet him. In that week at home, my mother asked me to go through my father's computers and help her figure out if there was anything she should know about or do anything with. Going through his computers was a profound experience. I got to see all the projects he was working on; the ones we all knew about because they were his professional projects, the ones I knew about because we always had technical conversations, and the ones no one knew about because they were just little side projects for fun and curiosity. I spent several days going through his computers, because it was like lingering in one last conversation with him. In the end, there wasn't much to share with my mother, for the reasons the parent comment mentioned - most of the projects had too much personal context for anyone else to pick up. But that experience had a huge impact on me. I realized that if I died that day and someone went through my computer, they'd find all kinds of projects that would never see the light of day. I was a hobbyist programmer at that point, and going through my father's computer motivated me to stop working on so many different hobby projects, and pick one or two to really build out. I realized I had developed meaningful programming skills, and I could probably build something that others would find useful. Since then I have done that with a number of projects. If I die today, you could still find many little projects that won't ever see the light of day. But you'd also find some highly impactful projects, which I am really proud of. I miss my father every day, but I my life would also be on a very different trajectory if I hadn't learned what I did from his passing.
- bjt2n3904 6y ago
  I think back to some of the working men in my life. Even at an early age, I was intimidated by their workbenches. Ingenious little tools they'd cobbled together with scrap material. Probably some insanely specific purpose... but the time it saved was immeasurable. Or perhaps some little design to test a theory out, kept as a memento. Even if it was disorganized, everything had a place. If you asked for something, they knew where it was. The hours of creative thought and domain knowledge, that spark of creativity, all gone. Just bits of scrap now. It's tragic, but in a strangely bittersweet way. I think though... when you invest in people? That's something that will last much longer. Both Grant (and your father) invested in people. That's something that is much harder to forget.
nodesocket 6y ago
> Barely a bitter or angry tweet. None of the toxic outrage so prevalent in society today. It’s pretty rare you can find celebrities who are balanced, genuine and avoid taking to outrage social media. I sadly had to unfollow Adam Savage years back because his negative tone and constant angry political outlook. That was not the content I was looking for when I originally followed him.
aortega 6y ago
Shit I have the same scope.

slau 6y ago

It is eerie how much that looks like my workbench. I guess EEs are all the same.

rbanffy 6y ago
It's a neurological condition. We go to college to get a diagnosis.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  "Don't worry Timmy, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just an electrical engineer."
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    He had the knack https://youtu.be/Dx6HojLBsnw https://youtu.be/Dx6HojLBsnw
- pradn 6y ago
  From someone who gets giddy about exciting algorithms, languages, performance numbers - I suppose we're kindred spirits, though across the pond of the hardware-software divide. Glad the world has all sorts of people in love with all sorts of things.
  - squarefoot 6y ago
    Do a search for "Jim Williams workbench", you won't be disappointed.
zrobotics 6y ago
If the bench is clean, that means there isn't any work happening. Sad he passed so soon, I'm sure I'm not the only one he inspired a love of electronics for.
metalforever 6y ago
Gave me ideas . Man I thought I was the only one that made a huge mess with electrical stuff on the desk . I was trying to emulate my lab setup from school this whole time and what I really need is just the foldout desk from the attic.

anakaine 6y ago

I see a nodemcu, some sparkfun and adafruit gear. I see the node sitting on some plug in headers over a breakout board. That looks like things I like to play with. I'm not an electrical engineer, but am an earth scientist , engineer, programmer, and electronics hobbyist. This man was inspiring. What a loss to the world his passing is.

fullstop 6y ago
I have the same hakko wire solder cleaner, same mess.. kind of cool to see the similarities. Poor guy.
tyingq 6y ago
The paper print of a pinout, on the left, is for a Teensy 3.6 MCU. I imagine many here have played a bit with those.

JohnBooty 6y ago

The world lost a decent person I know a fair number of people who knew him personally, and (long before passed) all said the same thing about him - a really great human being. They said he had one of those personalities where he made you feel special. Not through flattery; in a truly genuine way. We lost a truly good guy.

japhyr 6y ago

My father started his career as a software engineer in the 1970s. He worked at places like Raytheon and DEC and a few others. He started his career using punchcards, and ended his career building websites from a laptop. I am grateful that from a very young age he let me ask about and use anything he had in his home office, starting with a kit computer in the late 1970s which I learned BASIC on. My father died in 2011. I flew back home to be with my mother during that time. It was a really hard time, made much harder because my only son was one month old, and my father never got to meet him. In that week at home, my mother asked me to go through my father's computers and help her figure out if there was anything she should know about or do anything with. Going through his computers was a profound experience. I got to see all the projects he was working on; the ones we all knew about because they were his professional projects, the ones I knew about because we always had technical conversations, and the ones no one knew about because they were just little side projects for fun and curiosity. I spent several days going through his computers, because it was like lingering in one last conversation with him. In the end, there wasn't much to share with my mother, for the reasons the parent comment mentioned - most of the projects had too much personal context for anyone else to pick up. But that experience had a huge impact on me. I realized that if I died that day and someone went through my computer, they'd find all kinds of projects that would never see the light of day. I was a hobbyist programmer at that point, and going through my father's computer motivated me to stop working on so many different hobby projects, and pick one or two to really build out. I realized I had developed meaningful programming skills, and I could probably build something that others would find useful. Since then I have done that with a number of projects. If I die today, you could still find many little projects that won't ever see the light of day. But you'd also find some highly impactful projects, which I am really proud of. I miss my father every day, but I my life would also be on a very different trajectory if I hadn't learned what I did from his passing.

bjt2n3904 6y ago
I think back to some of the working men in my life. Even at an early age, I was intimidated by their workbenches. Ingenious little tools they'd cobbled together with scrap material. Probably some insanely specific purpose... but the time it saved was immeasurable. Or perhaps some little design to test a theory out, kept as a memento. Even if it was disorganized, everything had a place. If you asked for something, they knew where it was. The hours of creative thought and domain knowledge, that spark of creativity, all gone. Just bits of scrap now. It's tragic, but in a strangely bittersweet way. I think though... when you invest in people? That's something that will last much longer. Both Grant (and your father) invested in people. That's something that is much harder to forget.

nodesocket 6y ago

> Barely a bitter or angry tweet. None of the toxic outrage so prevalent in society today. It’s pretty rare you can find celebrities who are balanced, genuine and avoid taking to outrage social media. I sadly had to unfollow Adam Savage years back because his negative tone and constant angry political outlook. That was not the content I was looking for when I originally followed him.

aortega 6y ago

Shit I have the same scope.