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Lots of people have been working in this field. The most impressive results are achieved by the astronomy community. link It is possible to produce a home made spectrometer that gets useful results. Some of these are capable of resolution sufficient to identify chemicals. These are sophisticated and often use a peltier cell to cool the CCD in order to reduce noise. link

I did a project whose aim was to produce a cheap spectrometer to match paint colors. link The problems I found were:

1. Cheap webcams are quite noisy
2. Cheap webcams are not at all linear
3. For dark colors, sensitivity is a big problem
4. The spectrum of the light source varies depending on which angle you view it from.
5. Organizing the data is perhaps the biggest problem of all

My own engineering trade-off was sensitivity vs. resolution. To get spectra for dark colored paints, I widened the slit which reduced resolution. That, as far as I could tell, was reasonable because I wasn't trying to identify chemicals and the spectra from paints weren't particularly sharp.

The folks in TFA have a site where people can upload spectra. That's fine but a huge database of spectra is not too useful. The spectra have to be organized somehow. Here's an example. In fact the problem can be quite daunting

The parent is absolutely right. You need practice. Actually, you need what Anders Ericcson calls 'deliberate practice'. Solve every example in the book as follows:

Write down the problem. Close the book and try to solve the problem. If you got it right, go on to the next problem. If you didn't get it, look at how the example is solved. Close the book and try again until you get it right. Repeat until you have solved every example in the text.

Check out this article: http://www.conestogac.on.ca/~bcoons/readings.html

BTW, Jamie Escalante, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante, just died. He was the real life teacher who proved that you can teach calculus to just about anybody. They made the movie 'Stand and Deliver' about his life. Ability is highly over-rated. Most people can, as Escalante proved, learn math to quite a high level of accomplishment.

Most people think math is some magic thing that some people just can't get. They are wrong. Almost everyone is wired to learn math. If you are missing some important skills, go back to the level where you were good and start from there. John Mighton points out that most people discover that they have no math ability the same year they have a bad math teacher. ;-)

If you want, you can learn math as long as you practice, practice, practice.

If I am going to process a signal, it doesn't much matter how I implement the program as long as the program does the right thing. For instance, I can implement a filter (IIR, FIR, you name it) on a mainframe, in a spreadsheet http://www.conestogac.on.ca/eet/courses/d-com1/lab1/lab1.html , on a DSP chip, even on a fairly anemic microcontroller. Every implementation will do the same thing, albeit at different speeds.

In the case of the Matlab 802.11 model, every part of the protocol is implemented. That means you can look at the guts of the whole thing. Not only that but the channel is modeled for a fading channel. You can look at the eye diagram and watch the eye close as the s/n ratio deteriorates. You can also watch the constellation deteriorate from 64 tight dots to two blobs.

As a teaching tool, the model is amazing. In theory it could be done in any language (just about) or on any hardware (as long as speed doesn't matter). In practice, it was created in Matlab.

This looks like an early EULA (End User License Agreement)

It's the text from the bottom of the radio above.

RCA Radiola 33

model AR-784-A

NOTICE

In connection with devices it sells, Radio Corporation of America has rights under patents having claims (A) on the devices themselves and (B) on combinations of the devices with other devices or elements, as for example, in various circuits and hook-ups. The sale of this device carries a license under the patent claims of (A). but only for, (1) talking machine uses, (2) radio amateur uses, (3) radio experimental uses and (4) radio broadcast reception: and only where no business features are involved. The sale does not carry a license under patent claims of (B) except only (1) for legitimate renewals and repairs in apparatus and systems already licensed for use under such patent claims on combinations, (2) for assembling by amateurs and experimenters, and not by others, with other licensed parts or devices or with parts or devices made by themselves, but only for their own amatuer and experimental radio uses where no business features are involved, and not for sale to or for use by others and ???or use with licensed talking machines and licensed radio broadcast receiving devices, and only where no business features are involved.

The RCA Radiola line appears to have been manufactured between 1921 and 1930.

The local community college trains all kinds of programmers and they seem to get jobs:

A program aimed at business types. Their projects seem mostly to be Visual Basic front ends on various databases. http://www.conestogac.on.ca/jsp/programs/schooleng it/it/computerproganalyst.jsp

A program aimed at writing code for existing devices. It's pretty low level but they don't build their own hardware. www.conestogac.on.ca/set

A program where they build and program their own hardware. www.conestogac.on.ca/eet/careers

The vast majority of the grads in these programs get jobs. A couple of them had 100% placement last year. So, there are jobs out there.

A few years ago the college where I work was looking at what new programs we should offer. We spent a lot of time talking to the local employers. They told us that they needed people who can operate across disciplines. In other words, they needed someone who can talk to the engineering and manufacturing and marketing.

Employees who don't think beyond their own specialty are a problem. For instance, engineers will come up with a solution for any problem you give them. Often though, the solution produced isn't economic. Designers who are familiar with manufacturing and business processes will usually produce designs that are economic. As well, there is the problem that an MBA and an engineer don't speak the same language and that can cause all kinds of interesting problems.

http://www.conestogac.on.ca/jsp/programs/schooleng it/degree/applieddegree.jsp

Lightning is a very fast pulse. Therefore, it is actually a form of RF energy.
https://ewhdbks.mugu.navy.mil/wavelet.pdf
http://lists.contesting.com/pipermail/tentec/2003- December/040019.html
RF would much rather travel on the surface of an object than internally.
http://www.conestogac.on.ca/eet/courses/microwave_ techniques/skin_effect.html
So, yes, the skin effect applies.

For your requirements, a CP/A grad is not what you would be looking for. It's also not a job I would apply for. For that type of work, you may legitamately need someone with a lot of math experience and computer theory, which a UW grad is taught. You probably want to consider someone from the Computer Engineering Technology course as well, since that course gets into the really technical aspects of programming. I wasn't taught any of the points you mentioned, although we did learn best practices in programming, i.e. the differences in efficiency between certain routines. Most of what I was taught concerned building full systems from the ground up based on information gathered in the initial stages of a project. For example, I can walk into any retail business and be able to build them a point-of-sale system, including inventory tracking, etc. Or, as I did for my final year project, walk into a police station and build a complete scheduling system in 4 months where 2 professional companies had failed in the past. I won't argue that in some situations my skills are not desired. But many companies don't understand where my skills are desired, and simply dismiss me because I'm not a university grad.

Try explaining that to the numerous companies in and around Canada's "Tech Triangle" (which happens to include Waterloo, Ontario, the home of the supposedly famous University of Waterloo's CS program). I went to Conestoga College, which has a very good, very relevent Computer Programmer/Analyst course. While it's a programming course and gives you a very good basis, it also relates it to the business aspect of the world. I came out knowing how to program complete systems end-to-end regardless of the language, and can pick up most languages fairly quickly. Even the evil RPG . And I've had extreme difficulties getting a programming position outside of insurance companies.

The one incident that really burned me was at a job fair. I walked up to a booth for Business Objects, a company that creates add-on tools for other software. From what I saw, they used VB. I thought to myself, "I think I could do really well here". So I went up to the guy. The *FIRST THING* he asks..."Where did you go to school?" I say "Conestoga College" proudly. He says "Sorry, we don't take college students. University only." I spent the next 5 minutes pointing out all the experience I had creating software relevent to his company. He simply dismissed it. There are many other examples of the bias towards university students, but that was the one that pissed me off the most. Most companies, even software companies, have the idea the if you went to university, them you simply *MUST* be better then a lowly college grad.

Highlights of Skills

Develop computer solutions in a variety of computer languages and data base management systems, including: Word, Excel, Visual Basic, RPG, COBOL, Access, Oracle, C++, SQL and Windows applications development systems

ALL of Conestoga College computers in EVERY computer lab will be running WinXP by the start of this semester. why? nobody I have been able to talk to knows, the instructors aren't really happy, the IT people sure aren't happy (some still stuck on Novell). They are building a brand new building though... ;)

At my College we still learn RPG and COBOL in computer programming, languages very much based on punch cards. We are "lucky" enough, though, to have an AS/400 minicomputer to log into that supports 5250 emulation, so we only have to live with the effects of programming in a punch card language.

Unfortunately I've never actually been shown a punch card, making RPGs very strange limitations and stringent requirements all that much more frustrating.

>why would they need ms windows?

Because their college requires them to take a few Access, VB, and Office 2k courses, along with their other programming content, like mine. And don't forget RPG and Cobol... I've been looking for something to compile those for Linux properly, but its rough going.