#include <stdio.h>
void main(void)
{
printf(“Hello, World.\n”);
}

Greetings, and welcome to TheGoodDoc.net and please forgive the lame starting geek code “joke”.

First off, I’m a bit of a mad scientist, and a mad engineer. Not stark raving mad—at least not so far. Perhaps a better choice would be irritable, or at least irritated. But, for now, it’s not Festivus, so we’ll save the Airing of the Grievances for another time.

I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life as a research scientist and engineer, working on robotics, automation, and Mechatronics. More about all of that in a later post.

This blog will provide useful (hopefully, and let me know!) tech tips, tutorials, and similar, in software, technology, tools, and other areas that may help you get your work done more efficiently, or at least with a bit of fun and flair. I’ll also chime in on the occasional productivity topic, along the lines of David Allen’s outstanding Getting Things Done (GTD), and the always entertaining and helpful 43 Folders by the ubiquitous and hilarious Merlin Mann. For a quick tip right off the bat, I strongly recommend you get David Allen’s book Getting
Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, and I also highly recommend Thomas Limoncelli’s Time Management for System Administrators. These two are a bit contradictory, but for anyone working in the tech field, they both offer great tools and advice to get moving and keep going.

Per the tagline, you’ll find the occasional rantings and ravings, as well as some digressions on modern culture or lack thereof.

Since this is my start in the blogging world, I’ll also include some reflections on getting going with blogging and related issues. As I run into problems and find solutions, I’ll provide the info, or, more likely, the links. For most of what I have needed to know to get started, I’ve been able to find information online, e.g. at Bob Walsh’s ClearBlogging. I also would recommend that anyone getting started in blogging (yes, I know I’m late to the party!) read Bob’s excellent book, Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them.

You’ll also find scintillating reviews of books, software, gadgets, and technology. I think you’ll find a lot of this quite useful. And, to be honest, it’s where the monetization concept of this comes in. I’m not doing this strictly for my health. My sanity, perhaps, but not my health.

I may provide some more technical posts related to engineering, robotics, automation, and
Mechatronics. Feel free to skip these, but please don’t let them scare you away forever! You may be surprised, some of
this stuff is quite fascinating. You wouldn’t be able to tell that from the typical research paper (including mine!), but that’s just another motivator for talking about this stuff in a more informal setting. Some possible topics:

• Sensors
• Actuators / Motors
• Robotics
• Programming
• GPS and GIS
• Google Earth

I will definitely delve into tools I use to get my day-job done, including:

• Gnu/Linux (Ubuntu if it matters)
• LaTeX (no, not the rubber stuff)
• and emacs.

I’ll also talk about Microsoft Office and Windows, and this won’t be all bad raps! I’m a big fan of Linux, even on the desktop, but I also know it’s not for everyone. I used Microsoft products for years, and they really are great for getting the job done. I still use them now, just by way of a virtual machine using VMware. More about that, another day.

Well, enough blather for now. Please do check back if any of this is of interest to you, and I hope to really provide you some info that improves your skill set and ability to get your job done, so you can move past that and work on getting a life!

A few notes:

I’m sure I will be tweaking look and feel, theme, etc., of the blog over the next month or so. We ask that you please bear with us. Thanks!

The goal will be at least one post per week. We’ll see, I may get roped in! If my OCD nature kicks in, this could become my new compulsion, and you folks won’t be able to get rid of me!

Finally, for the title of the blog, and in the interest of full disclosure, I am a doctor (Ph.D.), but I’m not an M.D.. Please don’t come looking for medical advice! I’ll likely talk a bit more about M.D. vs. Ph.D. some day. Let me just summarize this by quoting my Mom’s last words to me: “You know, there’s still time, you could become a real doctor.” Can you feel my pain?