The Engineer of What?

Episode 19: Life of an Audio Engineer

Episode  |  September 24th, 2018  |  36 mins 22 secs

audio, bids, engineering, honeymoon, interns, mixing, music, production, road, stage, tips, traveling, vacation

While Ricky is away having fun on his honeymoon, Nathan and a special guest get to have an audio only episode! Listen as they talk about adventures on the road along with some tips and tricks of being an audio engineer.

Episode 18: On the Road

Episode  |  September 10th, 2018  |  35 mins 31 secs

airport, coins, cryptocurrency, debugging, ducks, engineer, programming, road, travel, wedding

Nathan got stuck in an airport, but that doesn't stop us here! Join us as Rick and Nathan talk about the awesome wedding that took place along with a few updates in cryptocurrency and a programming hint that Rick has never heard of.

Episode 17: Like Father, Like Son

Episode  |  August 27th, 2018  |  30 mins 53 secs

chemical, civil, engineer, engineering, experience, field, field work, fire water, mechanic, petro chemical, petroleum, technology, travel

While Nathan might not be in the same field as engineering, both he and his father are engineers. This is a special episode where he gets to interview his father about his 30+ years of experience in the field as an engineer. You aren't going to miss this interview as we talk about what someone might expect and how engineering has changed with technology over the years.

Episode 16: The Earth is Round?

Episode  |  August 13th, 2018  |  34 mins 58 secs

android, audio, coffee, earth, engineer, essential, google, kickstarter, maps, music, pie, pixel, soulfest

Nathan just got back off the road from taking a break from programming and working as an audio engineer all week. Hear about his fun stories from his time on the road along with other things that are new including an important stance google maps is taking on the earth, android giving the whole world some pie, and something we all love, coffee.

Episode 15: Problem Solved

Episode  |  July 30th, 2018  |  44 mins 29 secs

apple, audio, gis, ios, ipad, mac, microsoft, music, prime day, problems, processor, slack, solving, spatial, teams

GIS problems? Solved. 16 bit audio problems? Solved. New intel processor problems? Solved. Prime day? Solved. Listen this week as Nathan and Rick talk all about the problems that have came up and the solutions that happened to overcome them.

Episode 14: Recap

Episode  |  July 16th, 2018  |  41 mins 34 secs

apple, beer, clues, elon, esri, food, games, hardware, macbook pro, microsoft, musk, new york, puzzles, recap, surface go, surface pro, tech, tesla, travel

This week, Nathan and Ricky discuss all of the shenanigans that occurred during Ricky's visit to New York. Listen in as we talk good food, great beer, as well as all of the new developments in tech for this week.

Episode 13: Level 2

Episode  |  July 2nd, 2018  |  45 mins 41 secs

azure, clients, esri, issues, it, level 2, location, microsoft, release, sharepoint, story boarding, support, updates

Client issues are a real thing in the software word and probably anywhere were you deliver a final product. How do Nathan and Ricky handle these "Level 2" issues? Is there another staff that handles them first or are we working right on the front lines. Join us as we discuss this and so much more with this weeks tips, tricks, and updates.

Episode 12: Open Source

Episode  |  June 18th, 2018  |  42 mins 37 secs

esri, mapbox, open source, security, traveling

Ricky's co-worker thinks just because code is open source, it's what?! Listen Nathan just go off on a rant talking about why open source is amazing and they way things are going.

Episode 11: Quick! How do I go "cloud"?

Episode  |  June 4th, 2018  |  50 mins 42 secs

ai, azure, blob storage, cloud, coding, cosmosdb, esri, functions, machine learning, serverless, vision

Get ready for a packed episode as Ricky has a challenge at work. He needs to deal with tons of data in relation to points on a map. How does he store this data? How do we process it? Can we use AI? How does it link to ESRI? Listen as he tells Nathan the challenge and together they come up with a possible solution.

Episode 10: Goat Poop

Episode  |  May 21st, 2018  |  45 mins 21 secs

agile, development, engineering, goats, ibm, open source, software, water, z/os

We hit double digits with Episode #10! Be ready for some fun stuff and even a guest! We don't want to give too much away, so start listening!

Episode 9: What's even going on

Episode  |  May 7th, 2018  |  44 mins 38 secs

assistants, beer, burgers, busy, calendars, conferences, ftp, ide, lists, planning

Ever have those weeks where you can't remember what you did an hour ago? Listen to Nathan and Ricky talk about how they handle this level of being busy. You also don't want to miss hearing about the best burger ever and Ricky making Nathan cringe over how he update websites.

Episode 8: Locked Out!

Episode  |  April 23rd, 2018  |  52 mins 13 secs

beer, desk, locked out, stickers, swag, water tower, windows

Nathan gets locked of his machine for a few days. Ricky gets to stand around and watch a team fix a $250,000 mistake and gets a sweet package in the mail? What else exciting has happened this week?

Introduction to Mobile UI Automation Testing with Appium

Article  |  April 11th, 2018
By Nathan Westfall
appium, automation, mobile, qa, testing, ui, xamarin

As a developer unit tests are easy. We write logic all the time so writing more logic to test it comes natural. What happens though as a mobile developer when I need to test my UI on actual devices across many form factors? How do you write UI tests? Why write UI tests? Which framework do I need to use? How do I automate my UI tests on physical devices?
Appium (http://appium.io/) is an open source test automation framework to use with native, hybrid, and mobile web apps that will work on iOS, Android and Windows. It doesn't matter if you are writing native swift/java or using Xamarin Forms. You can use the same UI automation framework.

Episode 7: Ricky goes into IT

Episode  |  April 9th, 2018  |  55 mins 3 secs

acugis, appium, ar, beer, geonode, geoserver, gis, hosting, it, ui testing

Join us this week are we cover a whole bunch of topics. We go over GIS hosting, UI Testing, beer, user group meetings, and new app ideas! We also cover Ricky "moving into IT" for a new project he's working on.

Episode 6: Watered Down Water

Episode  |  March 26th, 2018  |  48 mins 40 secs

android, big news, break, mead, philly, st patricks day

After a small break, we are back! Big things happening in both our lives in and out of state. Listen to as we discuss what we have missed and hear about a philly thing that is "watered down water".

Episode 5: Going to the Dark Side

Episode  |  February 26th, 2018  |  49 mins 51 secs

android, beer, busy, chromebook, ios, work

Not only has this week been a busy week, but Nathan decided it was time for a change. Listen to Rick ask him what he thoughts are as he makes this switch and talk about the technology behind it.