Thought Leadership

OFF-TOPIC: Things I learned

A while ago, my wife and I started a project to record things that we had learned. It started with the thought that it is a sad day when you fail to learn anything new. But it is easy to forget this new knowledge. I would like to share a few recent examples:

  • Police call a vehicle’s registration its “index”
  • An astronaut has to learn survival skills as an emergency landing could put them down anywhere and they might need to wait 3 days for rescue
  • For >150 years, up to 1751, dates were different in Britain and other European countries
  • Buckingham Palace is 15X the size of the White House
  • Joe Biden’s wife is Jill. His previous wife was killed in a road accident
  • A pattern-maker’s measure is not standard units; everything is a bit bigger to allow for shrinkage of a cast item
  • Eels have no gender
  • Hinton-in-the-Hedges is an actual place
  • You are 12X more likely to die in a car journey than by rail
  • On iPhone/iPad, 3-finger left swipe is undo

There may be more …

Colin Walls

I have over thirty years experience in the electronics industry, largely dedicated to embedded software. A frequent presenter at conferences and seminars and author of numerous technical articles and two books on embedded software, I am a member of the marketing team of the Mentor Graphics Embedded Systems Division, and am based in the UK. Away from work, I have a wide range of interests including photography and trying to point my two daughters in the right direction in life. Learn more about Colin, including his go-to karaoke song and the best parts of being British: http://go.mentor.com/3_acv

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.stage.sw.siemens.com/embedded-software/2020/10/22/off_topic-things-i-learned/