3D Printed Minibus Hits the Road

3D Printed Minibus Hits the Road 3D Printed Minibus Hits the Road People in National Harbor, MD, were given a treat when a self-driving minibus was offering rides. Its unusual enough to see a bus without a driver, but then this one also involves a significant number of 3D printed partes.The minibus has been designed by the Phoenix-based startup Local Motors, known for its 3D printed Strati. We remain committed as a company to pursuing solving peoples transportation problems and making a difference in the world through hardware, so one of the themes were very focused on is trying to address the issue of mobility in an urban environment, says Alex Fiechter, head of product development at Local Motors.The Local Motors kollektiv launched a co-created challenge, says Fiechter. The public was let in on the conversation, and everything up to and including a bike-sharing system was considered. But, ultimately, a minibus, named Olli, was selected.Since the companys philosophy includes micro-m anufacturing, focusing on a niche with low- to mid-count runs of vehicles, Olli would appear to fit right in.Inside the Olli. Image Local MotorsThe 3D printed parts for the minibus, which was created to carry about 12 people, included below the belt line, small-scale structural components and more. For example, one 3D printed part functions not just as aesthetic trim around the wheel wells, but also as a weather barrier for the inside of the vehicle, similar to a liner. The liner is structural and holds panels of exterior glass on the lower side and mount for some of the components in the system, he says.The smaller components include some of the mounting points,interface points between the internal structure and the outer body.Using 3D printing they built a mount for holding sensors for functions such as lidar and radar. We have sensors on one hand used for localization, the other is for obstacle protection, Fiechter explains.Running on electric power, Olli has advantages for noise and being more environment-friendly. With the thought of sometimes being used for 24 hours a day down the road, it can switch to a power storage methodology. Its capable of going faster but its eyed for traveling on average at roughly 20 miles per hour.Thats part of the reason why National Harbor was seen as a good setting for a trial, says Fiechter.Toughparking combined with a planned casino nearby was the environmentthey thought could benefit from this type of vehicle.The reaction, he says, was positive, with people finding it a friendly means of transportation.But with only two Ollis currently in existence, it means the one used at National Harbor cant constantly be in use, as improvements continue to be made. Among these are creating interactive components inside the vehicle. The hope is to make the experience as fun in the journey as in reaching the destination.Eric Butterman is an independent writer. For Further Discussion We remain committed as a company to really trying to pursue solving peoples transportation problems and making a difference in the world through hardware.Alex Fiechter, Local Motors

What to Do When You Make a Mistake at Work

What to Do When You Make a Mistake at WorkWhat to Do When You Make a Mistake at WorkAs they say, everyone makes mistakes. In many situations, you can correct your error or just forget about it and move on. Making a mistake at work, however, is more serious. It can have a dire effect on your employer. It may, for example, endanger a relationship with a client, cause a legal problem, or put peoples health or safety at risk. Repercussions will ultimately trickle down to you. Simply correcting your error and moving on may notlage be an option. When you make a mistake at work, your career may depend on what you do next. Here are the steps you can take Admit Your Mistake As soon as you discover that something went awry, immediately tell your boss. The only exception is, of course, if you make an insignificant error that will not affect anyone or if you can fix it before it does. Otherwise, dont try to hide your mistake. If you do that, you can end up looking a lot worse, and others co uld even accuse you of a coverup. Being upfront about it will demonstrate professionalism, a trait most employers greatly value. Present Your Boss With a Plan to Correct the Error You will need to come up with a plan to rectify your mistake and present it to your boss. Hopefully, you will be able to put something together before you first approach her, but dont waste time if you cant.Reassure her that you are working on a solution. Then, once you know what you need to do, present it.Be very clear about what you think you should do and what you expect the results to be. Tell your boss how long it will take to implement and about any associated costs. Make sure to have a Plan B ready, in case your boss shoots down Plan A. While making a mistake is never a good thing, dont miss the opportunity to demonstrate your problem-solving skills. Dont Point Fingers at Anyone Else In a team-oriented environment, there is a good option other people were also responsible for the error. Whil e people are typically thrilled to take credit for successes, they are reluctant to own mistakes. If you can, get everyone to approach your boss together to alert her that something has gone wrong. Unfortunately, you might not be able to make that happen. There are going to be some people who say its not my fault. It wont help you to point fingers at others, even if they do share responsibility for the mistake. In the end, hopefully, each person will be held accountable for his or her own actions. Apologize, but Dont Beat Yourself Up Theres a big difference between taking responsibility and beating yourself up. Admit your mistake but dont berate yourself for making it, especially in public. If you keep calling attention to your error, that is what will stick in peoples minds. You want your boss to focus on your actions after you made the mistake, not on the fact that it happened in the first place. Be careful about tooting your own horn, though. Bragging about how you fixed thin gs will not only call attention to your original blunder, it could raise suspicions that you made a mistake so you could swoop in to save the day. If Possible, Correct the Mistake on Your Own Time If you are exempt from earning overtime pay, get to work early, stay late and spend your lunch hour at your desk for as long as it takes to correct your mistake. This wont be possible if you are a non-exempt worker since your boss will have to pay you overtime- 1 1/2 times your regular hourly wage- for each hour you work over 40 hours per week. You certainly dont want to stir up more trouble by causing him to violate that requirement. Get your bosss permission if you have to work longer hours.

The Different Types of Mystery Novels

The Different Types of Mystery NovelsThe Different Types of Mystery NovelsMysteries for adult readers nearly all involve a murder - or (in the case of thrillers and suspense) at least the imminent threat of one. However, theres a wide range of sub-genres and other categorizing features in the mystery genre. Do you aspire to be the next Agatha Christie and write a mystery novel? Authors who are pitching literary agents should understand where their manuscripts fit onto the (literary or virtual) mystery bookstore shelves. First, do your research about the mystery genre in general. Then, read on to learn about the of the major types of mystery novels, below.Why? Because then yourewriting a query letterfor a mystery book to an agent, it helps to know where a bookseller will shelve itand to know the titles to compare it to.Withinthe major mystery book sub-genres of Hard-Boiled, Cozy, Procedural and Thriller / Suspense,theres a wide range of organizing features or sub-genres that booksell ers use. And, when youre trying to get books discovered online using SEO, metadata and optimizedkeywords or discovered on bricks and mortar store shelves, ansicht categories and sub-genres are critical to helpingmystery readers find your book. Hard-Boiled and Soft-Boiled Hard-boiled mysteries and crime fiction generally feature a professional detective as the main character, and the protagonists are often struggling with their own, estimable demons which haunt them as they solve the case. Murder and crime happen in gritty settings, and the violence is often graphically described. Hard-boiled detectives harken from the noir days of Dashiell Hammett. Present day protagonists include Michael Connellys Police Detective Harry Bosch, who works the current-day streets of Los Angeles, and James Lee Burkes Dave Robicheaux who plies his investigative trade on the Louisiana bayou. A subset of detective fiction that is lighter in tone or with less explicit violence or sex is sometimes refer red to as soft-boiled, though this is less a less common term. An example would be Sara Paretskys series featuring female P.I. V. I. Warshawski or Sue Graftons alphabet series (A Is for Alibi, etc.), featuring Kinsey Millhone. Cozy Mysteries or Cozies Whats cozy about these books is usually the setting. The murder takes place in an intimate environment, such as a small town, a neighborhood, or an all-girls private school. With the exception of the fact that somebody has been bumped off, the cozy tends to be light in tone that is, it is crafted so as bedrngnis to offend delicate sensibilities. So while the subject matter can include all manner of transgression, the actual doing (such as murder, other violence, kinky sex, etc.) are not described in graphic detail. The sleuth who solves the mystery is often an amateur, like Agatha Christies elderly spinster Miss Marple or Karen MacInerneys stay-at-home mom, Margie Peterson. But not always - Alexander McCall Smiths No. 1 Ladies Det ective Agency, protagonist Precious Ramotswe, is a consummate professional. Malice Domestic is an organization dedicated to the cozy genre. Each year, the organization hosts an annual conference, produces an anthology and honors its best practitioners with Agatha, Lifetime Achievement and Poirot Awards. Each year the Mystery Writers of America bestows the Mary Higgins Clark Award to what can generally be deemed a cozy (with a few other criteria). Procedurals A procedural mystery has as its key factor a blow-by-blow, thoroughly researched and specifically described analysis of how the crime is solved, by whatever means is the specialty of the main character. It may be authentically-researched detective legwork (as in a police procedural, such as in the novels of Joseph Wambaugh) or a scientific investigation of the evidence (such as in Patricia Cornwells books featuring the medical examiner Kay Scarpetta or Kathy Reichs series with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan). Thrillers/Suspense Thrillers and Suspense have different novelistic conventions than other mystery novels, but most booksellers shelve them in or near the Mystery area. In a mystery novel, the protagonists role is usually to find the killer. While his or her motive to solve the case may involve a personal element, physical threat to the protagonist generally towards the end of the story, as he/she gets close to solving the crime. Thrillers and suspense novels, in contrast, start out with very high stakes for the protagonist. The plot may or may not involve a murder at the outset, but the threat of danger is palpable from the get-go, and the plot builds and twists from there. In Thrillers - whether the stakes are personal (a man spots and pursues his fathers killer years after the murder) patriotic (a bomb has been hidden somewhere in the White House), or international (a deadly virus will be released on a plane of 200 passengers heading from Hong Kong to Paris), the clock is ticki ng and the action and the pace are non-stop. An example is Alan Folsoms The Day After Tomorrow.In Suspense - the protagonist is generally the one being pursued and must discover the whys and wherefores - again, upping the stakes from the beginning. But here the tension builds more subtly, often more psychologically - as in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, or in Gillian Flynns Gone Girl. Types of Mystery Novel Sub-Genres Now that youve learned about the main types learn about the sub-genres used to categorize mystery novels. Capers - Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich are two authors who specialize in these novels that involve humor and/or humorous criminal escapades.Classics - Include writers like Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Daphne du Maurier, Dashiell Hammett, Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Patricia Highsmith.Derivative - Some authors re-imagine historic or fictional characters as sleuths, often to appeal to existing fans o f the author or period, as P. D. James did withJane Austens charactersinDeath Comes to Pemberley. Domestic s include Craig Johnsons Longmire series set in Wyoming, Greg Iles often sets his books in his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, Alexander McCall Smiths detective in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and Phoebe Atwood Taylors Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery series. Local interest- Also location-based, hyper-local mysteries are often set in beloved destination locales, doing double-duty as a preview and/or souvenir of a trip or a back home reminder for people whove moved away. For example, Deb Bakers sleuth Gertie Johnson is a Yooper - from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan Ellen Crosby writes wine country mysteries. Booksellers generally support local books.Locked Room - These mysteries involve a crime that seems physically impossible the name comes from a crime where the murder victim is in a room completely locked from the inside with seemingly no point of egress. Many authors ( Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie) have penned a locked room mystery or two, but writers who specialized in them include John Dickson Carr and Edward D. Hoch. Historic s are Grace Edwards Mali Anderson novels set in Harlem and Tony Hillerman, whose books were involved in Native American lands and issues. Noir - Think dames with gams to kill for, Private Eyes who brood in trench coats, the reflection of neon strip joint signs reflecting in the windows. Gritty, dark, moody, the term fits the classics like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett but also can be applied to modern-day works, like Walter Mosleys Easy Rawlins series.Romantic Suspense - A mash-up of romance and murder, one esteemed practitioner is Nora Roberts, who created the pseudonym J. D. Robb for writing in this sub-genre.Note that theRomance Writers of Americabestow an annualRITA awardin this category. Sherlock Holmes - Some stores, likeMysterious Bookshopin New York City, dedicate a section to Sherlockania - ori ginal works, derivatives, scholarly studies, etc.Supernatural / Paranormal / Fantasy - Many of these have mystery elements but, since the conventions of these genres tend to dominate, these books are generally shelved in those respective areas where fans can better find them.True Crime- Before the Investigation ID Channel, we had to read non-fiction accounts of notorious murders. Truman Capote set the literary bar withIn Cold BloodAnn Rule is a long-time master of the genre. Vocational - procedurals and thrillers often have protagonists with a special career or vocational arena, such as legal (by John Grisham and Scott Turow), forensic (Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs), medical (Robin Cook), psychology (Jonathan Kellerman),political (Vince Flynn), military (Tom Clancy), sports (Dick Francis). Note that many (if not most) mystery novels contain elements of more than one sub-genre. For example, the South African Rennie Airths protagonist Inspector John Madden is a World War I veteran and the mysteries take place in the early part of the 20thcentury. It can be shelved (physically or virtually) in Historical or British Detectives or even International Crime. And book publishing also follows trends and trends change. For example, imported and translatedScandinavianmysteries - around since Peter HoegsSmillas Sense of Snow- became wildly trendy afterThe Girl With the Dragon ttowierungby Stieg Larsson became a runaway bestseller. The popularity of any one genre may ebb and flow on the strength of the marketplace.