A little bit of this, a little bit of that

I've had quite a busy Friday, but it's been good!  I spent the morning trying to make sure I was organized for meeting one of my advisors, Jay, to clarify a direction to be on track for a publication in the fall.  I met with him for about 30 minutes in his office, and I found that what I had sort of converged on- the idea of looking at specific businesses as case studies with open source hardware design- was about the same thing that he had in mind.  I feel a lot better about where I am going now, the next thing to clarify is finding the right tool, process, methodology to figure out what my measurables are for this paper and part of my EngD.  I am taking my first module (course) starting on January 30 (a week from Monday) for a week on Collaborate Product Development, so I am hoping I get some good ideas out of that that will allow me to go forward to write a good paper.  The literature review I've been doing over the last few days has not shown me very much in this area of research, so I will be a pioneer of sorts, which has pros and cons.  I also got to have lunch with Jay and another post grad student, Radu Sora (check out his blog here: Inner Sparks ).  Radu is also a new student, having just started in the fall and is also working with Jay.  He is originally from Romania, but spent some time recently in Norway, working for Thomson Reuters.
After lunch, I went down to the pits to see if I could catch anyone working.  I got to see a tube get notched for the roll cage yesterday.  I was lucky to catch Ryan, getting ready to take more measurements for the timing of the KTM engine we had worked on on Tuesday.  I got out my netbook to help take data, and Ryan proceeded to measure the intake and exhaust valves of the engine.

Here is the engine, all put together, with the measurement equipment all set up to take measurements on the valves

After taking measurements, I hung out around the pits for a bit, talking with a lot of the guys on the team.  I signed up to go to a hockey game in Coventry on Monday night, so that should be an interesting time. 
I also was asked to post a picture of the car, that is in the pits.  It is technically still last year's car, that the group is taking apart and re-working.  Here is a current picture of it:

The Formula Student car.  The group is making a role cage, and also modifying the engine to run on E85 this year.  They also hope to find sustainable alternatives to carbon fiber for the frame. 

So that's what is going on with that right now.  I'm sure I'll be learning a great deal more as I continue working with the team.

In other news, I found the tastiest juice at the grocery, so I just thought I'd end with a picture of that.  :) 
Cheers!

Yum.