What did you do before ES and what's your work now?

Hey everyone who contributes to this great forum

I would really like to know this: What did you do before ES and what's your work now?

Mine story was like this:
I saw the glimpse of this forum in late 2011 and thought. O whey cool. I started to read once in a while among other interesting things and research I did. Then I started to be more active in 2012 and bought a kit, a motor in a wheel and a bottle battery. Upon receiving it I put all plugs together but to no vain. It was a broken hall sensor in my motor. I didn't know then so I just bought a lyen controller and then it worked so I was charmed and I was feeling the first happy feelings of having something I have build myself. The feeling of power and being free bicycling to work everyday for many day saving 5$ per day in the end ebiking has been a lot of experiences and no cost. Still I can get a profit if I sell my monster machine... thanks for reading please share your own story if you want or talk about work hehe

So I was working in another sector, let's say physical work as well as driving a small electric lead-acid trucks that could cary two pallets. Delivering and sorting parcels inside a terminal for throughput process was the main thing. BUT THEN IT HAPPENED: Late 2012, early 2013 I wanted a convertible, haha no I mean collapsible, a smaller ebike I could cary so I was then searching for a 20" in wheel motor. As I was walking in a nearby town I spotted a store selling ebikes so I went inside. As I told the salesman I was looking for a 20" he said he had one that was good. I said: "What if something is wrong with it?", and he said "nonono, its good take it you get it cheap!", I thought the wires might have been damaged in the normal area but I took the chance and yeah the motor was damaged and had to repair it before using it and then it worked a charm. I went by another time and he said he was interessted in employment or if I asked that I don't remember exactly. Then I started working part time there and on special occasions like events since 2014. 2017 about 50% at each of my jobs and now I work 100% with ebikes since 1 March 2018.

How was your story about Endless Sphere and how you came to know about ebikes or started working within this or a similar are of expertise. please share.

Perks of working with ebikes:
Working with what you love. Electric bikes not normal bikes hahaha.
Good pay
60-90 days off but I must say that I feel everyday as a vacation anyway
Awesome that you can build cool stuff and go from a to b for 0$

leffex said:

What did you do before ES and what's your work now?

Click to expand...

I was working for a telecom company as a power electronics engineer, working on wireless power transfer, medical implants and smart grid management systems.

I am now an . . . engineer for a telecom company working on similar things.

But in the meantime I've designed and ridden about half a dozen ebikes, from a trike with a friction drive and two 12V lead acid batteries to the current Crystalyte based direct hub bike, with a Phaserunner, a Cycle Analyst and a Lunacycle 48V battery.

When I first found ES I was working when I could in "Television," which refers to using particular types of equipment to make video, basically good enough for broadcast type work. That has blurred a bit, but we consider the GoPro less in that category than we did then. And also as a professional writer. Today, nothing has changed, work is still slow. Been awhile since I had a day at work that wasn't boring, I used to shoot professional baseball and football, mototcycle racing, ASCAP events with bands that just got recording contracts, all kinds of neat stuff. You might even have seen training and sales videos, infomercials, commercials from Good Neighbor Pharmacy and others, that I either wrote, directed, DP, etc. Been awhile, the switch to digital broadcasting played a role.

I've been over this: I bought a 350w scooter that was way too inadequate for the purpose of getting me around from a parking space in LA to wherever I really wanted to be. Thus did I begin modifying, upgrading, fixing the junk from garage sales, etc. I would call the various experiments similarly inadequate. I was also building the 'Chinagirl' moped kits of others and assembling their Currie kits on their bikes, fixing whatever motorcycle, moped, scooter etc. I could get, for awhile I was quite busy. So we're the thieves, I didn't have some of my own very long. What bugged me most was when they took one BEFORE I had a chance to work on it, junk beach cruisers are hard to come by around here. I had a thread on that one

So maybe it's time for something made with uhmw, if I'm understanding how to fabricate with that yet. It'll sure be too heavy for them to pick up and walk away with.

Paying work? just prior to joining ES?

That would be retail slave labor...which I'm still doing for the same place, though the position I hold is better now, the conditions aren't any different; retail is retail, and is never going to be any better (could get worse, though).


Non-paying "work" / hobbies?

Creating "music" http://soundclick.com/amberwolf

Rescuing dogs...lots of pics/etc here on ES (mostly here http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49550 and in my various build threads since they tend to wander into pics I'm taking)

Fixing/building "stuff"; mostly whatever kinds of things I happen to need, or that someone else needs that they'll trade me for.

Just before joining ES, I began to learn how to fix and modify the bikes I'd ridden all my life, and had started working out how to add electric assist to them http://electricle.blogspot.com .

Now I build them from scratch, and to haul much bigger things (or wigglier ones). Like the SB Cruiser http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=67833 or CrazyBike2 http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12500 etc

Nowadays, I do what I can to help out others here on ES with all the stuff I've learned here.

(though I'm often a lot less specific with the help since getting trashed and dumped on by various people here over the years; not usually worth the hours and hours of research to help that specifically so I just point where they might find it, most of the time--many people don't even respond to people trying to help them, which makes it truly pointless).

1994 - 2010: computer repair. Web design, music production, and electronics tinkering on the side as a hobby.

2010: Novice programmer and web designer working for an online math school.

2018: Skilled programmer, web designer, proofreader, linux systems administrator, front end designer, process designer for the same online math school, but now also do the linux server wrangling for endless sphere, and a handful of other clients.

2019 is very likely the year i branch off on my own and start a web development / server administration service for small businesses / small scale stuff. I just keep getting random clients referred to me, which is how i ended up with a computer repair business during my teenage years.

Been offered various ebike related jobs in the industry due to my connections and always felt hesitant to make my favorite hobby into a job. I make 25 to 100 dollars an hour depending on the client, doing programming or server administration.. and i want to retire as early as possible.. so it would be hard to take a job in the EV industry, even if it would be far more enjoyable than building or repairing invisible rube goldberg machines inside computers.

What i really want to do is frame, powertrain, and battery design.. but i do not have any credentials which would make that position landable. Maybe one day, once technology resolves my arthritis.

Hey AW, i like your music, man. The vibe is really cool. I would buy an album!
What program do you compose with?
I'm a fruityloops studio guy myself.

My style is kind of a mixture of ambient soundtracks, IDM, and hip hop.. using FL studio, circuit bent yamaha/casio keyboards, and a million mile high stack of VST plugins.



[youtube]gmKAcEK5cuQ[/youtube]

[youtube]SAAuTILCWcM[/youtube]

I never took the music anywhere other than playing a couple dozen shows. Not many people appreciate this kind of music here in the states. Maybe if i was living in the UK, i would have taken this more seriously.
The mastering is a little sketchy because this was all written from 2000-2003 when virtual synthesizers were new to the scene and i had no idea what i was doing..

neptronix said:

Hey AW, i like your music, man. The vibe is really cool. I would buy an album!

Click to expand...

Thanks--which one(s) do you like best out of what's there? (then I can look for more stuff I have like that).

I don't have any of the newer stuff in any physical form, just stuff from the mid-90s and previous (some of which is arguably better than what I do now, as I used a different method to compose than I usually do these days).

There's quite a bit of stuff on the PC in audio form that I have yet to get around to putting up on soundclick/etc.

I probably have a hundred or more hours of stuff on cassette tape, some of which is listenable, which I would like to digitize (most of the original files are long gone, or on the Amiga that I dont' think i have enough working parts for to get going again, even if the old floppies are readable).

I have a few dozen to a hundred hours of stuff on reel-to-reel, most of which is junk, though there might be a handful of things worth digitizing if the tapes haven't disintegrated.

I have at least a couple hundred hours of stuff that is on the PC that isn't recorded in as audio, just midi to send to external stuff, and a similar amount on the ASR & EPS harddisks that needs to be edited down and recorded as audio.

None of that is likely to ever happen, though; just not enough time, and too few people that would be interested in it to spend what time i have for music on it (less than I have fingers on a hand, I"m sure). I'd still ike to do it, if I had money to pay someone to go thru and do it, or didn't ahve to work and could spend a few days here and there just working on the music stuff.

What program do you compose with?

Click to expand...

There may be more info here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=72867
but basically:

Mostly Cakewalk's SONAR, v6 & 7 I think. (some things in 6 don't work right in 7, but 7 has stuff that 6 doesn't'; I also keep the even older versions around for other stuff rarely used). Wish I had v8.x, cuz that fixed a bunch of stuff, but I was under severe stress at the time between work and home, and didn't submit enough bug reports to qualify for a copy).

Sometimes Cakewalk's Project5 v2, which is sort of similar to FL. (the song called ILP was done in that, early in the beta testing of v2, to test out some functions; probably got a couple dozen bug reports out of that one).

Sometimes the step sequencer in the Ensoniq ASR88 and EPS16+, which at one time I could have used blindfolded, and is what was used for much of what I have on the Uncommon Ground CD from 1996 (which includes The Truth is Out There that's on Soundclick).

Nowadays most fo my sounds are softsynths, and a beater acoustic guitar from Thud, and a crappy electric from Goodwill, but now and then I still fire up the ASR88 ad other external synths for some of the sounds that just aren't available in softsynth form, ro simply don't sound as good. Someday I'll get the piano tuning finished and maybe record that.

One of the things that kept me from doing much with all the external synths along with softsynths was the need to reroute audio cabling every time, but now I found a Yamaha mixer at Goodwill really cheap--I just have to find a couple of cheap 18VAC ~1.5A transformers to power it with (it's like $50-$100+ for the OEM unit, and the knockoffs aren't even rated for half the power needed). Might end up taking apart something here and use the core to wind my own if I have to.




I'm afraid I'm not the target audience for your music, either. :lol:

Might be interesting to try a collaboration, though.
I have tried to get with local musicians to jam or whatever, but that has only ever happened once, with mdd0127, when he happened to be here helping me out after the housefire and I'd gotten moved back in.


Or...you take something I've already started, and clean it up / tweak it and see what comes out. (I have a hard time going back to something if I don't "finish" it when I create it--all the infinitely repeating every hour or two crap I have to hear all day every workday on the overhead speakers at work, and from all the cars around me while I ride, tends to beat my own music out of my head).