Hello from Rancho Bernardo

I'm in Rancho Bernardo -- just north of San Diego -- today through Wednesday. Rancho Bernardo is also north of Miramar, the base made famous by Top Gun. Driving across the base yesterday I saw a monster cargo plane landing, but "Maverick" has not yet buzzed my location. I don't have a lot of free time here but I did get a chance to poke around Balboa Park yesterday and got to play with my new Olympus C5060. I've posted some of the pictures here if you're interested. If you're in the neighbourhood and have similar technical interests, give me a call at my office number (905) 521-9033.


I'm down here to learn about and noodle with a new release of electrical engineering design software called EDSA Technical 2004. EDSA is like many companies that design software systems that are both complex and niche oriented. There have been a few versions of the software before this, but with the history of the package incorporating so many concepts that were formerly separate programs it is only with this version that we see some design unity, interface cohesion, real speed and innovative functionality. It's not unusual that this happens in technical niche software. Software that appeals to consumers or to larger technical constituencies normally takes less time to exploit operating system advances since there are more programmers around who want to solve those kinds of problems. Niche teams have fewer programmers working on the project and they normally solve technical problems before they solve the interface and usability issues that arise in a package. EDSA has finally hit what I call the "RUNS" point -- it's Really Useful Niche Software.


Now, electrical engineering software would not normally be considered cool but EDSA is teetering dangerously toward the cool line. They have partnered with General Atomics to develop a program called Paladin. (I'll have more to say about that in a later post.) What makes this partnership cool? General Atomics is the company behind some neat electromagnetic, sensing and nuclear instrumentation. Most of all though, they are the brains behind the Predator AV.


Needless to say, there are some very smart people in the room down here... As Scoble says, How does it feel to be the stupidest one in the room?" Inspiring."



EDSA broke the link to Paladin (above) 2 days after writing this article. I can not direct link to their pages anymore -- pity. Go to the EDSA web site and select Products/Paladin from the menu.