For example, if you needed to remember “metatarsal” in a list of bones, you might conjure up a visual of yourself shaking hands with a seal that is swimming in a tar-pit. As in “met a tar seal.” Interestingly, the more senses you can attach to this image, the easier it will stick. What color is the seal? Can you smell the tarpit? Is the seal barking? Is it a hot day?

All of these senses electrically activate different areas of your brain. So, the more “hooks” you can attach to the image, the more likely you are to remember it in the future. You might only get an initial, acrid, mental whiff of tar… and suddenly the entire image springs into your consciousness. Or, maybe the seal barking is your first connection on another day. The point is, you are giving yourself a much more robust memory mechanism compared to how we were taught to memorize in high school. What were we trying to save to the old hard drive back then? An image of the word “metatarsal” as black text on a white background? You are probably only electrically tapping a single area of the brain with that. No wonder it didn’t stick.

The next logical question: What about memorizing numbers?

Numbers are inherently abstract. In my previous post on The Rhyming Peg List, I covered one way to visualize the numbers 1 through 10. But, what about a number like 3212? Turns out there are a few different mnemonic systems built for this, but one of the oldest and most popular is The Major System. It relies on a translation of numbers to phonetic sounds in order to build words… words that can then be visualized- as described with our tar-pit seal.

Here are the phonetic conversions:

• 0 – s (z)
• 1 – t (d)
• 2 – n
• 3 – m
• 4 – r
• 5 – l
• 6 – ch (sh, j, zh)
• 7 – k (g)
• 8 – f (v)
• 9 – p (b)

Actually, you’d better think of these conversions by the actual consonant sound, not the letter name:

• 0 – suh (zuh)
• 1 – tuh (duh)
• 2 – nuh
• 3 – muh
• 4 – ruh
• 5 – luh
• 6 – chuh (shuh, juh, zhuh)
• 7 – kuh (guh)
• 8 – fuh (vuh)
• 9 – puh (buh)

Take 3212, for example. You simply string together the corresponding consonant sounds:

muh nuh tuh nuh

At this point, you are free to insert vowels wherever you like in order to form a word or words.

M-ow-N-T-a-N = mountain = 3212

Or, if you are a Jersey Shore fan, maybe you convert it to

M-a-N    T-a-N = man tan = 3212

So, 3212 could be stored in your brain as a very orange “The Situation” or an iconic view of Mount Everest.

Sounds like too much work?

Yeah, that’s what I thought initially, too.

There are a few different strategies for locking in the phonetic conversions. Think of it like learning to count to ten in another language, though. Pretty quickly, “dos” immediately makes you think of “two” with no mental translation effort. My favorite approach (or rather the first one I encountered) comes from Jared Kelner’s Infinite Mind audio series. Ron White has a different method that will result in the same end goal. Yet another path can be found over at the fantastic Mnemotechnics website.

I think this system came easily to me because I minored in Russian Language back in engineering school. Russian is an extremely phonetic language. Westerners trying to learn Russian are often met with quizzical responses from native Russian speakers when asking how to spell a newly encountered word. Take the word “Девушка” (Girl) for example:

• Д = d
• е = yeh
• в = v
• у = oo
• ш = sh
• к = k
• а = ah (or uh without the stress)

So, the word is pronounced d-YEH-v-oo-sh-k-uh

If you ask a Russian how to spell that in Cyrillic, they will slowly and loudly say, “DYEH!… VOO!… SHKUH!” This is kind of like when Americans think they can just speak louder to get a foreigner to understand them

My old Russian studies also helped me with the hard and soft consonant bit of The Major System. Notice that there are a few options for some of the numbers:

• 0 – s (z)
• 1 – t (d)
• 6 – ch (sh, j, zhuh)
• 7 – k (g)
• 8 – f (v)
• 9 – p (b)

This comes from the idea that your mouth and tongue are basically held in the same position to create a family of consonants. There is only a subtle change in the shape of your tongue to produce the “suh” or “zuh” sound. Test it out right now with the consonant families above. See what I mean?

There are numerous examples of this in Russian. The one that bothers me the most shows up in our mispronunciation of Russian last names ending in “ov.” Take Yuri Andropov ( Юрий Андропов), for instance. When the  ”в” (vuh to English speakers) appears at the end of a Russian word, it takes on the hard form of the consonant family. So, most Americans will call him Androp-ov when they should be calling him Androp-off.

Anyway, once you wrap your head around the idea of consonant families based on tongue shape and mouth position, it quickly makes sense.

Yet another area of the brain tapped

I’ve made an interesting observation while mastering The Major System: when I see or think of certain numbers, my tongue and mouth often automatically start to make the shapes associated with the corresponding consonant families. This tells me I’ve created a whole new “hook” to electrically light up a new part of my brain.  A part I’ve never used for this kind of association in my almost 40 years on the planet!  Herein lies the beauty and power of mnemonics. It is quite possible to create and exercise new neural pathways even if you weren’t born an idiot savant! (1 out of 2 for me, by the way.)

How to practice

I ain’t gonna lie. It takes a little work to make these phonetic number conversions second nature. I came up with a little exercise that greatly accelerated my mastery. While driving, I would pick out street signs, house numbers, etc, and try to convert them to words and images before I actually passed them. So, the moment I saw an Interstate 95 sign, I would begin to change it to b-?-l… Bowl! Then I’d get an image of a cereal bowl in my mind as quickly as possible. Start with 2 digit numbers. Then work your way up to 3 and 4 digit groups. If your eyesight is aging, you’ll just have to be faster than the youngsters!

In practice

I’ll share a final example of how I use this technique in daily life. I have been a road warrior for many years. After a hundred hotels, they all start to look the same. It used to be impossible for me to remember my hotel room numbers. Usually the front desk lady writes your room number on the outside of your key-card envelope. I finally took to ripping that section of the envelope off and immediately sticking it in my pocket with the card.

Now, I use The Major System in combination with another system I’ll cover in a future post. I have had 100% success in my hotel stays over the last six months. In fact, I still remember the first room number I tried it on. It was room 1148. I used a black and white image of Toto (the dog from wizard of oz) standing at the peak of a roof and barking. I got there by changing 11 (T-T) to Toto and 48 (R-F) to roof. It was the first thing that popped in my mind (which is always best as it turns out).

Give this a try and let me know if it works for you!

Image by Monica’s Dad

I stumbled upon this unique system for strapping all that digital detritus down in simplified style. Check out the Grid-It! system from Cocoon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQsGiHo32BQ

Grid-It! organizers come in a variety of sizes. I use a long skinny one- fits in the front pocket of my laptop bag and holds just the stuff I need. Check it out here on Amazon.

And, here are a list of my favorite doo-dads packed into it (all pretty cheap):

• Cheap Earbud headset
• USB to earbud headset adapter
• Retractable micro-usb cable
• Retractable aux cable
• Micro-usb to iPod adapter
• Cigarette lighter USB charger
• HTC Incredible wall charger
• iPod Nano (mine’s an old 3rd generation)

If you are putting a system like this together for someone else, pay attention to what connections might be required for their bits and buy components accordingly.

My HTC Incredible cell phone uses micro-USB for charging. So does my Nook ereader. So, for me it made sense to start with the retractable USB to micro-USB cable. If I’m in a rental car, I plug that bad boy into the cigeratte lighter adapter (USB) and right into my phone (micro-USB). Note: you should buy the exact cigeratte lighter adapter I specify above. It’s the only one I found that runs enough amps to let me charge, talk, and use my phone’s GPS simultaneously.

Speaking of being in the car, I use the retractable AUX cable to connect my iPod to the AUX input on the rental car stereo.

When I get to the hotel, I switch the phone over to the wall charger.

My Nook can be charged with the same setup in either scenario… so I’m not carrying duplicate charging cables.

The nifty little micro-USB to iPod adapter lets me connect my iPod to my laptop to charge and download fresh podcasts on the go.

I really dig these cheapo Palm Pre earbuds. The mic is nice and slim (like the iPhone headset, but at a fraction of the cost), sound quality is great, and there are cool little magnets to hold the buds together when not in use. Plus, they work with my cell phone while I’m in the car (I refuse to be that guy wearing a bluetooth headset)- and work just as well for Skype on my laptop using the USB adapter listed above. I can also use them for my iPod while exercising. Buy a half dozen in case they stop making these. At $3.50 a pop, why not?

There you have it.
Go forth and blow the mind of your favorite traveling tech geek this Christmas!

I decided to change up the look and feel 0f this blog. Wanted to go for something clean and simple, so as not to distract from reading the actual content. What do you think? Did I go overboard? Like it, love it, hate it, don’t care? Please let me know.

Also, side note, thanks to my virtual assistants in India for making it happen.

Enjoy!
Jeff

It’s never been my job to deeply understand the coding behind the engineering software I represent. I took exactly 1 masters level CFD course in the mid 90s. Yikes. I was pretty much done after struggling to write my own basic, ugly, hardly useful CFD solver. Pitiful.

My job is to look at a potential customer’s design challenge, relate that to some some sort of solution [hopefully, but not always, one I actually sell], and help to uncover the real business case that [hopefully] justifies the investment in said solution.

Most of the time, all of that information has to be packaged in such a way that the holder of the purse strings can understand. I guess that’s the other thing I’m pretty good at. Usually these people don’t (or shouldn’t) care about the deep details of the solution technology.

Most drivers can’t point out an alternator under the hood. Does that mean they aren’t qualified to make a car buying decision? Of course not. Explaining the high level benefits of CAE for non-experts has always been one of the guiding goals for my blog. Now that I’m digging more deeply into the rich world of structural analysis, I think it’s time for me to create a series of posts explaining the most common aspects of CAE in the simplest terms possible. I’ll try my best to come up with good “fat man” analogies.

When I first got into engineering simulation, I struggled to explain what I do for a living to civilians- er non-engineers. I’d be at a dinner party and someone would say, “Nice to meet you, what do you do?” To which I’d say, “I’m in engineering software.”

Now, I still recommend this approach at dinner parties…. because a deep discussion of FEA or CFD usually won’t create the desired social atmosphere. But, let’s say the person bites and wants to dig in, “Oh, what does that mean?” Don’t start talking about nodes, elements, boundary conditions, stress, and the like. Say something like this instead:

“Imagine you owned a company that makes plastic chairs. Maybe you want to use thinner plastic to cut costs and make more money. In our software, you could create a 3D virtual reality model of that chair, and simulate putting a big fat man on it. It’ll tell you if the chair will break or not… all before ever trying to build and test it in real life.”

image by zorilla

Thomas Richard Waters

My dad turned 70 today. In my mind, however, he’s always been about 40. Which is odd because I’m almost 40 now… and still feel 18. If you meet my dad today, you’d peg him as at most, a vibrant 55. It’s not out of the question for you to meet him, actually. He’s constantly on the move. On any given day, he could be in Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Kentucky, New Zealand, or Rhode Island. Short guy, huge heart, boots, cowboy hat, Southern drawl, conversationalist, doesn’t believe in strangers… that’s him.

I don’t get to see my dad often. But, I still hear his voice every day. When there is hard work to be done, others are giving up, and I’m thinking about letting up, I hear a disapproving grunt and, “Ain’t nothin’ worth doin’ that’s easy.”

While other kids were couch bound, my dad had me building endless barbed wire fences, splitting wood, digging ditches, cleaning horse stalls, throwing hay bales, popping blisters, and growing callouses. He didn’t just send me off like a slave- he was always right there with me, shoulder to shoulder, leading by example.

Dad worked at a cigarette factory for 26 years. He worked long hours, and never missed a day. As supervisor of the materials section, he was under constant pressure to make sure that an incredibly high volume of production was never delayed due to paper, tobacco, filter, or chemical shortages.

My dad busted his hump… and had to manage a lot of people who didn’t have that drive. Dad used to occasionally let me tag along with him as a kid. It was so exciting to walk into this huge, bustling factory. On one visit, I remember going into the breakroom and seeing a guy leaned back with his feet up on a lunch table. A few hours later, I walked by and noticed the same guy in the same position. Near the end of the day, I saw the guy taking it easy yet again. After we walked by I asked, “Daddy, does that man work here? I only see him in the breakroom.” Dad just chuckled and mussed my hair. I think he knew at that moment that he’d done his job as a parent.

High school was easy for me. I never studied- and graduated 1^st in my class. Then, I went to a prestigious engineering college and got my ass handed to me. The classes were tough, and the competition was fierce. I had to learn how to study. I got used to all-nighters. Though I wasn’t as smart as my classmates, I did well (and often better) by simply working harder.  I’m convinced that I would have failed without those endless hours of post-hole digging in my youth.

I’ve forgotten more math than most people have learned. I’ve spent my career helping companies implement complex computer aided engineering simulation tools that my dad marginally understands- yet he’s helped me every step of the way.

I want to wish you a heartfelt happy birthday, dad…
…and thanks for giving me a gift that will serve me for life.

Sure, there will always be those jokes about the boring Engineer at a party… but when you get right down to it, Engineering is still magical to me. Will.iam still believes that. Why don’t you? The fact is, we live in a highly engineered world. Most people have no idea how the everyday products they rely on really work. Pick something “mundane” and take a closer look with this fact in mind: The next time you casually drive to a restaurant 30 miles away- seriously imagine building a vehicle from the ground up that could get you the same distance safely. Mind boggling.

Need more inspiration?
Check out this inside look at the high stakes engineering world at Boeing.

I love this line at 2:55 in the video:

“Once we decide to go to 150%…
it becomes the quietest 90 seconds on Earth in the control room.”

Can you imagine being one of those Boeing FEA analysts, holding your breath while watching the video of those physical tests? I imagine that’s just as much adrenaline as any superbowl team in the redzone  with 2 seconds on the clock.

It’s a good thing I have a billion interests outside the worlds of Design and Engineering, though- because there is a dearth of audio content serving those markets. I even set out to fix that injustice by starting my own engineering podcast… after 3 episodes, I realized that feeding my family wouldn’t mesh with the time requirements to do the program justice.

Two of my favorite engineering bloggers recently teamed up to produce a new podcast: ENGINEERvsDESIGNER. Josh Mings (SolidSmack.com) and Adam O’Hern (cadjunkie.com) have come together to create an engaging, fun, and informative show with great production value and polished performances.

First time podcasters often make the mistake of boring the piss out of the audience with stumbling, 90 minute dissertations from a single voice. The EvD team, however, sounds like it has been doing this for years… for a living. The quality of this show stands up to any commercial radio or podcast talk show. EvD is crisp, concise, and punchy (heh heh).

Please subscribe to this show through iTunes or the website. Let’s give these guys the traffic to support what they are doing and keep it going.

If so, I encourage you to take a look at these two,
exciting positions with the MSC Software team:

• Adams Product Marketing Manager
• Nastran Product Marketing Manager

As a recent hire, I can confirm that big things are happening here at MSC. There is a lot of opportunity for motivated, talented people. Come be a part of it. Even if Marketing isn’t your bag, there are lots of cool openings at MSC Software. Check them out here.