Welcome to GWizards
Michael Ashe- August 2, 2012
Welcome to GWizards, the blog on LabVIEW Wizardry at Test & Measurement World and as of early August 2012 the newest blog in the group. Thank you to all the people at Test & Measurement World and especially Martin Rowe for the opportunity to contribute to the T&MW blogging stable and to give a little back to the LabVIEW and T&M community that has given so much to me in the last twenty years.About Michael
I have been working in test and controls systems for twenty five years and LabVIEW for twenty. I started out in military (submarine weapons test) ATE applications and have had the privilege to work in many diverse industries including: Green Energy (fuel cell and alternative battery development), Astronomy (telescope / observatory / instrument control systems), Military/Aerospace (portable and multi-bay ATE systems and test executives), Biomedical (product development, image processing), Hospital Management (enterprise scale client-server / database bed management systems), cell phone and other RF applications, nuclear reactor controls and many other domains. For me, the one constant thread through all of these has been LabVIEW.
I was the first Certified LabVIEW Instructor in New England and have been using National Instruments tools and teaching others how to use them, especially LabVIEW, for about twenty years. I really love teaching, both classes and individually, and I get a lift when I see someone, “get” LabVIEW. I grew up in Washington State, lived thirty years in New England and currently reside (three years) in Scottsdale, Arizona with my wife Elise and our two children, Jennifer and Matthew. In my spare time I run, read, cook and occasionally beat on people with a large stick while wearing full medieval combat armor.
Where does a blog go with a title like, “GWizards?”
LabVIEW can be a fun and productive programming environment. It's well known for enabling new users to quickly create useful programs with little formal software background, hence the “G Whiz” factor. To get the most fun and most productivity out of LabVIEW requires a little more… more software engineering, more planning, experience, tips, tricks and practical, everyday useful techniques. I’ll occasionally cover some theory and philosophical aspects of LabVIEW, but expect this blog to focus on the practical, the things that will help you build better applications day to day. Topics will include software reuse, dialogs, custom LabVIEW test executives and sequencers, customizing the LabVIEW desktop, tools and environment, communications techniques and other practical items. Please feel free to comment and ask for a topic you are interested in. The title of the blog is not GWizard, but GWizards. Lets get to Wizard level LabVIEWing together.