Calgary CTO

At Essentialtalk, we have been working on an LMS for a number of years. We have used it a little bit internally, but we are conciously going to be using it to a much bigger extent going forward. Really starting to eat our own dogfood.

Then today, I saw the ultimate eating your own dogfood story. This is awesome. Here is the original link.

“The Best Dogfooding Story Ever

The common expression for using your own software is “eating your own dogfood”.  Sometimes this term gets verbed by simply calling it “dogfooding”.

If you’ll indulge me briefly, I’d like to tell you what I think is the best dogfooding story ever.  However, it’s not a software story.  It’s a woodworking story.

The primary machine tool in any well-equipped woodshop is a table saw.  Basically, it’s a polished cast iron table with a slot through which protrudes a circular saw blade, ten inches in diameter.  Wood is cut by sliding it across the table into the spinning blade.

A table saw is an extremely dangerous tool.  My saw can cut a 2-inch thick piece of hard maple with no effort at all.  Frankly, it’s a tool which should only be used by someone who is a little bit afraid of it.  It should be obvious what would happen if a finger ever came in contact with the spinning blade.  Over 3,000 people each year lose a finger in an accident with a table saw.

A guy named Stephen Gass has come up with an amazing solution to this problem.  He is a woodworker, but he also has a PhD in physics.  His technology is called Sawstop.  It consists of two basic inventions:

* He has a sensor which can detect the difference in capacitance between a finger and a piece of wood.
* He has a way to stop a spinning table saw blade within 1/100 of a second, less than a quarter turn of rotation.

The videos of this product are amazing.  Slide a piece of wood into the spinning blade, and it cuts the board just like it should.  Slide a hot dog into the spinning blade, and it stops instantly, leaving the frankfurter with nothing more than a nick.

Here’s the spooky part:  Stephen Gass tested his product on his own finger!  This is a guy who really wanted to close the distance between him and his customers.  No matter how much I believed in my product, I think I would find it incredibly difficult to stick my finger in a spinning table saw blade.  Unbelievable!”