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I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

leblancfg.com

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Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#51

Post by sco1 »

FinnKuhn wrote: post #29
engineer_22 wrote: post #5

I'm 13 years into my career and I haven't taken more than 5 days off in a row. That's usually a family reunion. I think 4-8 weeks to recharge and reset would be helpful. What's the research say?

Minimum vacation days here in Germany are 20 with many companies offering 30 so the idea that you can't take of at least a couple of weeks for a vacation is just crazy to me. How do you travel and see the world like that?

> How do you travel and see the world like that?

Wait until we're old enough to retire and then can maybe afford it.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#52

Post by webnrrd2k »

I'd think that electronic drum heads would provide a good prototype. I really know nothing about it, so I could easily be wrong, but the basics are all there... They are percussive, and the sound varies by how hard they are hit, so there has to be something like a power meter going on.

Maybe someone else knows more?

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#53

Post by mrandish »

zeristor wrote: post #24

Lovely idea, always nice to put something together and scratch that itch. What you need is a small weight or something that rises up a pole depending on how hard you hit it, a great visualisation. You could even have a bell at the top, so if this small weight hits it with enough voom it could making a resounding ding sound, so life affirming. Perhaps you could charge a 'apenny a go, and give a prize for those that ca…

Based on the headline, this is the first thing I thought of.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#54

Post by svnt »

jrflo wrote: post #35

So how does the power meter itself actually work? How do you know the output is accurate? How much power is lost from the measurement due to dampening? How do you know it will hold up to cycling in such an aggressive environment? That's kind of the interesting thing here, but there's no mention of it in the article.

Well “I badgered claude code for a month and got something that seems to work but I don’t remember how or why” doesn’t make for very compelling reading.

We are seeing the rift between actual hacking and vibe-building opening in real time. People always wanted to do this and get the attention. Now they can do it but it isn’t worth the attention.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#55

Post by netrap »

MisterTea wrote: post #18
wdrw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in North America (and the author seems to be from Canada), having a company give you any sabbatical at all is pretty rare, and 6+ months is pure fantasy:) And not everyone likes travel, the post actually explains his reasoning pretty well.

> and 6+ months is pure fantasy:) I've seen this before. Had a vendor become helpless after their only engineer took a 6 month sabbatical. Had to cancel orders and switch vendors because they stated "Until the engineer returns, we can not quote a delivery time." Imagine being that company...

Intel at one time did 6 month sabbatical if you worked 10 years.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#56

Post by digitallogic »

This is pretty cool! Your note about cycling power meters changing the way you perceive effort matches my experience as well. One other bit from my experience: I'm a runner and a cyclist, and I've always lusted after having cycling style data and prescribed workouts for my running. When Stryd launched I was all in, but... all it gave me was power numbers. It didn't have the tribal knowledge that came with my cycling power meter. Eg - lots of online content about zones, free and paid workouts / plans to target different goals (eg sprinting vs long endurance). It almost seems like any discussion of serious training on a bike comes back to watts.

But with the Stryd, all I got was power numbers, and the option to signup for a monthly paid subscription with some training plans that were pretty bare bones. It seems like running power meters just haven't been adopted widely enough for that critical mass of information to emerge. My realization from this is the data is useless without the tribal knowledge of how to use it. So my Stryd sits in a drawer somewhere, and I'm back to running by heart rate.

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#58

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

AntiUSAbah wrote: post #27
ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost 17 years in and there's been a few times where I had more than 10 days off in a row, and I recently had a four week sabbatical. Anecdotally, it was great and reminded me that retirement has always been the goal.

A sabbatical is half a year or a year in germany. NO one would ever say this nonsense of 'four week sabbatical'.

Sabbaticals, paid or not, seem to only be somewhat common in western Europe. I'm glad that you're able to able to experience this but recognize it's quite a privilege globally. It's not just the USA that has this "nonsense"

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#59

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

ambicapter wrote: post #17
ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lives don't exist in vacuums. If I could uproot my close friends and family and we all moved to the same place then I would, but that's not possible. I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people

What does uprooting your friends and family have to do with taking a month off once in your life?

This was mostly in response to "You can also be a 10x engineer while drinking a martini in the balkans." and is likely a bit of an overreaction to the amount of "just move if you don't like it!" things I've seen. Mobility is a luxury

Uprooting family and friends has little to do with taking a month off, but if things don't fall right then one runs the risk of spending their month off mostly by themselves which may or may not be attractive. I've known single teachers complain about this that they have June-August off but no one to spend it with because most of their friends are not teachers

Re: I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers

#60

Post by hex4def6 »

leblancfg wrote: post #45

Aye, author here. Pleased it's getting visibility ofc, but ABSOLUTELY not expecting to get traction this early. Please pardon the AI-generated placeholder images and some of the text at https://intensity.systems , I'm still very actively working on that.

I'm curious about the units -- watts doesn't really seem right.

It seems like joules would make more sense, right?

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