Recession Ending?

After a slow Summer (business-wise, anyway), my phone has begun ringing again. Indicators from the media suggest we have hit the bottom of the recession. Hopefully these are all signs of economic recovery...we'll see...

I've been keeping busy, improving my iPhone development skills. I hope to have an app for sale on iTunes by the end of the year, and soon after to "hang my shingle" as an iPhone developer.

On that note, you should check out the iPhone apps created by my friend and colleague, Bruce Truax (www.DLD-LLC.com). He has a unique and cool app called "Vibration" that uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to measure vibration! I have been doing some beta testing on his latest app which I think will be a big success.

Recent happenings

I recently did some work for a new customer, ASCO valve, in Aiken, SC. It was nice to visit a "local" customer, within easy driving distance ~ 2 hrs. I decided to travel there by the back roads, and it was great to see some of the out-of-the-way towns in SC, such as Barnwell and Bamberg. Its beautiful farmland and big homes in small towns. People walking down the street will just wave, random chickens roaming the streets, etc :).

Also just got done upgrading another interferometer to full phase measuring capability at Sydor Optics in Rochester, NY. The system turned out well, and they now have double capacity for measuring their parts.

Looking forward to returning home and spending the weekend at Edisto!

"The ACE Basin is not God's country, its where he spends his vacation"

Back from Optifab

Last week's Optifab show was...well...small. But, its a small world in the optical fabrication community. I was pleasantly surprised to see many faces that I had met or worked with at some point in the 18 years of my career. Wow, has it been that long? Anyway, many of these familar faces have worked for a few different companies between the one they used to work for when I met them and now. Still really good to get caught up.

I attended a few papers as well, and found a wide range of quality there. A few very good papers, a few very bad papers (or, rather, papers that described fairly routine lab metrology in great detail), and some that were blatant commercials rather than novel research. I guess you can't blame folks for trying new sales angles in this economy...

The outlook seemed to be cautious optimism, overall. Folks are worried, but hopeful.

Zygo was busy all week. Lots of interest in the new MetroPro, written in C#.NET. It is very visually appealing. I'm going to be on the team of beta testers for the new software, which I am looking forward to.

Also got to see some old friends from college who live in the Rochester area. Also great to catch up with them.

Its a cold day in Summerville today, seems like late winter instead of mid May!

Optifab Show

I'm attending the Optifab show in Rochester, NY next week. It will be good to catch up with some of my friends and clients in Rochester, and hopefully meet some new potential clients. If you are there, look me up, I'll be wandering around the exhibits and attending some of the talks on Metrology. Hope to see you there -

Leverage your Zygo Investment!

I was recently visiting a customer and was immediately aware of their interferometer operators working diligently on a labor-intensive measurement procedure. My immediate response was "you know, you can probably get that entire procedure down to a single button click". As I write this, I am working on the scripts to automate these processes.

Well, I was surprised because I have assumed that people who own Zygo's are aware of MetroScript, a scripting language that ships with MetroPro software. Folks may be aware of it, but don't really know what can be done with it.

MetroScript is not known for its user-friendliness, but it is very powerful in the hands of those with experience. You can do almost any automation task you can dream up using MetroScript, I can tell you from first-hand experience.

Here are some examples:
- Any combination of analysis steps that can be done manually
- Sending data to/from a database
- Copying, moving files across a network
- Appending data to an external file
- Driving motorized stages
- Doing external complex analysis by communicating with custom programs written in Visual Studio.NET or other programming languages
- Working with other programs like Matlab
- Etc!

Usually, the cost to write up a script has a quick return on investment in labor savings, increased productivity, and reduced human-error inconsistencies.

Alternatively, if you have a need for many scripts, we can offer you MetroScript training, which we have delivered many times to groups in the USA and internationally. This will train your own engineers to write their own scripts.

So, if you own a Zygo and you have a labor-intensive measurement task, please consider hiring Jacobian Tech to write you a MetroScript as a solution!

Upcoming Travel

The last 4 months have been awesome. I've been able to stay at the home office and work on a large LabView project and some .NET programming. I'm getting ready to install next week which means back to traveling...Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

It will be gratifying getting this project done. Its been a long road. Before now, I have not considered LabView to be a strength, and to be sure, there are many out there much better than me. But, this project has been great in that I feel pretty competent at LabView now. This project also involved IMAQ, Vision and Real-Time. Its really a good tool, but those of us conventional programmers have difficulty wrapping our brains around "data-flow" graphical programming. Like most things, its a learning curve.

The week after next, I'm back to Rochester to install another Interferometer and do a little maintenance on them. It will be great to catch up with my customers in Rochester. While there, I'm planning to see my Sister's new (to her) house and maybe some old friends.

The importance of a team

In the 9 years since I have run Jacobian Tech, I have come to realize the importance of a good team. Its so important to surround yourself with experienced professionals. The value is worth it.

In this case, I am talking about what I call my business team. I work with an outstanding team, including my Accountant, Financial Advisor and several experts in other fields that complement my skills. I am considering hiring a business coach as well.

What made me think of this is, we are nearing completion of a real-estate deal, and my team involved has been outstanding as well. The team consists of our realtor(s) and mortgage company, and lawyer.

Surround yourself with outstanding professionals. Its worth every penny.