Receiving your comment left me wondering if the site was experiencing some technical difficulties. I didn't recall the original content I made my post against. It appears the snow was on the ground and the temperature well below zero when my vote was cast.
Time is the dime I have plenty of since retiring. I exhibit considerable restraint in my spending them not because they are in short supply but I value them more.
I think we all go down some kind of check list based on what we perceive as value, enjoyment, and/or education. Often though time trumps all choices. Luckily, rscasny does a fantastic time finding and running these road tests. Of course he has many others in the background doing work like getting the packages out and assisting( unsung heroes in my book).
After some reflection I’m not sure now if the selection I made is the most appropriate. It is not any one thing that attracts me to a RoadTest but rather a thought process to arrive at the point of creating an application.
First thought is, do I have the knowledge or can I learn what I need to undertake the review. Secondly, does the product have sufficient appeal for me to do a review. Third, can I produce a review that meets a standard that I am comfortable with. An finally, can I complete the review to a schedule.
I think I would be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge that product appeal does have a higher weighting in making the decision. That being said, I have turned aside reviews (i.e. antenna) only because it don't have access to the tools to adequately test it. Hopefully with seventeen years experience working with RF I learned something that is worth sharing.
I usually apply for most of roadtests (if i have time) because i think that can know about new hardware and be updated with the ongoing trend, and updates to the things.
Fear of failure and especially exposing it to the world is surely a factor in some cases. Even the fear that one's work won't be very good is a factor. Many people consider an incomplete project to be a failure as well.
There are vast amounts of information I don't know, but I have enough confidence in what I do know that I don't mind people watching me have trouble pushing the boundaries of my ignorance back a bit.
I decide if the product is of interest to me. Then I try and determine what I can I provide to the product vendor from my evaluation (i.e. RoadTest).
I look at the evaluation exercise as a contract job, requiring output to Element14. Now it would be nice if Element14 could tell me what the output should contain. That being said, Element14 is looking for my freelancer insight. Telling me how to evaluate something reduces that.
I still feel the program could do with some templates to assist would be RoadTesters through a framework. I do like Randal, listings types of RoadTest. Template for RoadTests based on types of RoadTest would narrow down use cases I would need to develop. Creating use cases is a struggle. Providing a starting point with templates would help.
If you were evaluating a solder extractor (sucker). I suspect a vendor would appreciate a review from both an experienced evaluator and a review from someone with very little experience. The vendor is the one that decides the target market for their product. A poor review from an inexperienced evaluator is not a bad thing for a vendor. Maybe some changes based on feedback from the inexperienced evaluator, gives insight into a new market for the product.
I have withdrawn from RoadTests because after further evaluation, I felt I could not deliver reasonable review material Element14 needed to provide to the vendor. I struggle with what constitutes a reasonable review. I would love to evaluate an Oscilloscope! Just unboxing the unit turning it on and trying to find something to display would be a challenge. I have a conflict of interest in wanting to work with the cool stuff verses delivering results. If I damn the results, I would apply on all cool tech stuff. I don't feel that is what my employer (i.e. Element14) is looking for.
My work ethic continues to remind me, nothing is free. There is a cost to grabbing he fun from free stuff, especially tech stuff. Be cool to have a job that has you evaluate cool tech. Oh I just retired, I don't want a job. Here is an Oscilloscope, go find something to do with it and let us know about it.
Agree it is more a wish than reality on older posts. And on some of the code I wrote early on when getting started in electronics I cringe just thinking about revisiting.
I like doing that too, because then the reader hopefully doesn't mind f there were originally errors, because they can see (even after several years sometimes) that the author is standing by their write-up, and still maintaining it when needed. I must admit it gets very hard for some extremely old posts (e.g. some software related ones like Pi/Beaglebone many years later) where my testbed has changed over the years and it is no longer easy to re-test and support the very ancient blog posts as well as desired.
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