Introductions - Mel

This is a project design notebook of sorts for the Distributed Engineering Design course between Strathclyde, Olin, and Stanford in the Fall of 2006. I'll be keeping my notes, sketches, updates, and generally everything else I generate here. Other team 2 folk, if you want to join the blog let me know and I'll make you an account; it's really easy to upload notes and pictures here.

By way of introduction, I'm Mel, a senior at Olin studying electrical engineering with a more softwareish bent. I'mactually interested in everything. I play piano and do vocal percussion, live in the same suite as Chandra, read in my non-copious amounts of free time, play with math, and attempt to sketch things occasionally. Engineering education is one of my more prominent obsessions. I plan on becoming an engineering professor eventually.

I am overly optimistic. If I had a superpower, I would be able to transmit and recieve electronic messages through my fingertips (so I could read/write hard drives without a laptop intervening, jack directly into ethernet ports, and such). I am hearing impaired, and rely on lipreading, which makes it hard for me to videoconference (you'll see me typing furiously in the back of the webcam instead).

I've worked on distributed teams before, so I've got a suite of favorite collaboration tools to use. They've all been software teams, though, with others experienced with distributed collaboration - it'll be an interesting learning experience doing my first distributed physical-deliverable project. I have a tendency to be mildly loud and adamant in text, but everything I say should be open to criticism, comment, and modification - I'm throwing ideas out for other people to play with. I'll modify my communication style upon request.