Thursday, July 31, 2014

Nginrng!

Welcome to Nginrng! (read "engineering"), a blog about science and engineering. I created this blog because I often find myself doing research and improving upon other people's engineering, but I haven't really had any place to coherently collect my thoughts about it.

This isn't particularly a blog about reviewing the latest tech toys or games, since I have little interest in that sort of thing and since there are plenty of sites devoted to that already. From time to time I might refer to a popular brand or product, but only as a point of comparison to my own engineering (or ethical) standards, and not because I intend to endorse anything.

Unlike many other people who write about technical subjects, I do not intend to burden my writing with too much technical jargon. Overuse of jargon typically indicates that a person wishes to appear smarter than they really are by obfuscating the actual point they're making, if any. While admittedly engineering can sometimes involve specialized math or concepts that can be difficult to understand, they can still generally be explained in plain english as long as you do understand them. Note that doesn't mean I won't ever use jargon, just when it is clearer/more convenient, and only after explaining what it means. I may also invent my own jargon in cases where established terms are too cumbersome or imprecise.

Finally, I'll probably end up writing much more about engineering than about science, since the latter moves more slowly and the former has much more practical significance. Also, I'm not particularly biased towards any given type of engineering (specialization is for insects), so you can expect all kinds of random, cool and little-known or appreciated things (and links to scientific papers, which I generally enjoy reading).