Topic Creep.

Here's what Michael G. posted on another thread (my italics) :

Welcome aboard, Jack

Here’s the list of available topics for you to choose from: **LINK**

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/

… ‘though you might notice that we are not very well disciplined in their use !!

MichaelG.

A respected colleague told me many years ago that the 'mainline mechanical engineering profession had determined the rotational speed limits at which slender shafts could safely be operated. Then, surprise surprise, someone looked next door and discovered that the textile industry (think spinning jennies) had been safely exceeding those RPM limits for generations!

It's worth having a look into the shop next door every so often in case they have discovered something useful that we could use.

Also, a touch of random noise can be useful - one of my Open University courses taught that the portals that transfer substances into or out of living cells depend upon Brownian Motion to get a relevant molecule properly aligned with the 'trapdoor' so that a useful transfer occurs. For 'substances', read 'information' and for 'cells' read 'threads' perhaps?

Bottom line: while topic creep does need to be limited it can often be useful/constructive in the right dose.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

P.S.: are inter-thread quotes possible here?
 

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 18/10/2022 10:34:07

Please permit me [as the ‘quotee’] to comment:

What I wrote was simply a statement … no judgement was expressed or implied.

It is just a plain fact that we are not very well disciplined in our use of the available ‘Topics’

More explicitly:

Jack wrote “I think I may be in need of some guidance where to post these projects.”

... and I tried to help him.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 18/10/2022 10:44:18

Michael,

I welcome your comment, thank you.

I was just 'thinking aloud', that's why I started a new thread.

I have to confess that some of my posts are sometimes/often/too often a little wide of the thread topic! So, perhaps, I was 'special pleading'.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Bet you don't get the last word Swarf

Regards Ian.

Ian,

I ever so don't know what you mean?!?!

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Anyone listen to the Radio 4 program this morning that talked a lot about fruit flies?

Actually not completely non-engineering. He mentioned that university biology departments never have workshops but the psychology departments do.

I work at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and we have always had workshops. Mechanical, electronic and computing. The workshops have contributed a great deal to the success of the Lab which has won 12 Nobel Prizes since 1947. The established philosophy of the Lab is that to stay ahead as a world class institution cannot be achieved without the development of new techniques and technologies and for that you need workshops. Many other institutions did get rid of their workshops but workshops are one of the reasons that the LMB has been able to stay in the forefront of the science.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 18/10/2022 11:32:40

Even the word "Workshop" has different meanings for different people.

To anyone related to an engineering discipline, a workshop is a place where materials are manipulated, soldered, welded etc.

To a purely managerial person, a workshop is what we would probably call a meeting, lecture or seminar., or even a brainstorming session.

Howard

Our workshops are real un's. Welding, CNC and manual machining, Hi Res 3D printing and the latest machine is a large EDM machine. The electronics workshop produces it's own PCB's and can design and produce pretty much anything you want.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 18/10/2022 13:51:33

Sounds like a great place to work.

I was a bit off in my post in that the speaker was referring to the 1970's and not Cambridge. Also it wasn't really topic creep more like hijack as I thought people would come back on that, not actually follow the new subject

I,m always amused to hear about people or groups holding "Workshops" about this, that, or the other.

I imagine a group of them holding up a building, while gabbering away to each other.

I regard a workshop as a place where work is performed , items are made/repaired and tools are used [and tea consumed ], but then, I have lived a very sheltered life.

I witnessed recently someone on another forum trying to micromanage everyone elses threads, so that some rigid heirarchy was adhered to at all times.

I must say, that is one very annoying individual, and reminiscent of the hall monitor guys we had in high school.

There is always some amount of drift in every topic, and so what?

Where is it written/carved in stone that there can be no drift in topics?

I read forums from a technical standpoint to gain knowledge, but I also read forums from a human interaction standpoint. Without the human part, things are very dry and mechanized.

And speaking of slide topics, it is not so much the lab as it is what is in the mind of the people in the lab.

Case study; Hewlett Packard started in a garage buy two guys.

Extremely modest garage setting; very ambitious if not genius mindset of the guys who started the lab.

But indeed they had a lab, and without labs you can't test or veryify things very well.

Edited By PatJ on 18/10/2022 17:40:15

Could be.

Like this you mean?

.

Wasn’t that an intra-thread quote. Peter ?

MichaelG.

I think I'll just sit quietly for a while and see what happens next.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Chicken !

MichaelG.

'workshop' was on the list for bullsh*t bingo, along with 'paradigm shift', 'going forward' and many others. Much of this is mellifluous claptrap to cover wooly thinking.

Are you sure you meant mellifluous, and not mendacious? None of the claptrap foisted on me at work was ever 'smooth or musical'. All of it included lies of some sort....

My immediate boss once killed a meeting with the depot manager with this:

If you're thinking of 'empowering' me to do that, I'll punch you.