Hi there, I'm Stefan, and in this first article, I will outline what this blog will be about.

You can expect me to write about all sorts of technical challenges that I'm facing - I might not be an expert in all of those fields, but most of the time, I somehow get the job done, and in the process, I learn a thing or two. Writing short articles serves as quick documentation for myself, and if I can help others along the way, the better!

Because of the nature of this blog (quick documentation), the articles' style might be dry, but over time - with some more experience in writing - I hope I can add a bit of fluff to make them easier to read.

Now some things about me!

Early work

My original background is in sound engineering - I fell in love with this field when I was tasked with setting up and mixing a concert for a Japanese folk band at a festival when no one else was around to do the job. In my opinion, what makes sound engineering a great field to work in is the community's extreme focus on customer (or artist) success. Everyone is helping out each other to achieve the best possible outcome, even across different companies. For me, it's incredibly satisfying to see an artist getting back to me after a successful performance, having beaming eyes, expressing their gratitude for my work.

After completing a formal education in sound engineering, I was set to max out my musical skills in singing, but the slow decline in job opportunities in the field made me realize that I should be looking for another field that would provide me with a better outlook...

Recent 9 years

After some back and forth, I started an education as an electrical engineer at ETH Zürich, from which I just recently graduated. During Covid, I focused more on working at a company that I worked with during my sound engineer career, but this time as a database engineer and internal tools developer. There I learned to create FileMaker solutions, tried out a software project's lead, and coordinated between lots of people involved with a myriad of internal projects.

Back at university, in my Master's project, I then could finally delve into the full stack of an electrical engineering project. This involved adding analog circuitry to an existing prototype, designing a bunch of miniature PCBs, assembling them, writing a bare metal sensor node firmware in C, and finally assessing data compression algorithms as part of the research part. Now I'm wrapping things up by taking care of the sensor nodes until they get used in an animal study. That involves cleaning up the project, finalizing the firmware, helping with the final assembly of a small series, and testing and calibrating all hardware.

So much for now, see you around!