I (Andrey Miroshnikov) am a hobbyist, tinkerer, and engineer. After graduating with an integrated masters degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), I worked in the industry from July 2019 till December 2020.
Before that I was tinkering with electronics in my spare time, beginning from 2011 onwards. Since then I have done many projects, and as time permits, I will share them on this website. To include just a few:
My university degree covered a wide range of topics: Analogue, Digital electronics, RF (was lucky to also cover MMIC design), Mobile Communications, Programming (C/Python/Java), HDL (VHDL), semiconductor physics, soldering (surprisingly rare skill).
Outside of uni I covered a great deal (not exhaustive): PCB design (didn't have any units at uni on this), Verilog and basic formal verification using SymbiYosys (from Dan Gisselquist's introductory course, Verilog, Formal Verification and Verilator Beginner's Tutorial), programming language grammar and compiler theory (here's a fascinating free text book by Prof. Douglas Thain, Introduction to Compilers and Language Design.
Since 2019 I switched to Linux full time, and ever since used several different distributions: Arch, Artix, Debian, Devuan, Gentoo. Under the hood all use the Linux kernel, but the package management is the biggest defining feature of the major distros. In addition my NAS backup server runs FreeBSD as that has native support for ZFS.
At my previous job (Jul 2019 - Dec 2020) I worked as an intern at their PCB R&D group (where I learned a great deal about board considerations), and after moved to the FPGA and ASIC validation team. From both departments I gained very important insights:
English is my second language, with the first one being Russian. At this point my English is quite a bit better however (конечно я могу составлять предложения и даже думать на русском, но занимает это подольше чем на Английском :D)
In addition I've been studying Latin for a year and half and it has taught me more about grammar than I have ever known, as well as etymology of common words. It's from that study that my company's name, Scutum Electrum [pronounced scoo-toom electroom], came about.
Also I aim to stay fit, as a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. Back at uni I used to do ballroom dancing, now not so much.
Both free software (free as in freedom), open-source software, and open-hardware are important to me. A lot of my knowledge and skills have been gained through the use of such material, and it is not only useful for distributing knowledge, but also for security auditing. The latter point is especially important, since so much of our hardware and software is riddled with security problems (or perhaps worse, backdoors).
Personal websites are important. In the age of centralised platforms, it is almost as if everyone "rents" a piece of internet space. A personal website is like owning your own house. It has exactly what you want in it. And although it may be simple and/or small, it is individual, and allows an assortment of topics or interests to be shown.
Techne and Episteme refer to the Ancient Greek philosophical ideas of knowledge of the theoretical (episteme), while Techne refers to "craft" or practical knowledge. I'm paraphrasing quite a bit (and honestly need to do some more reading myself), but for now those definitions are sufficient. You can find out more here and here.
From these two terms we get our modern words "technology" and "epistemology" (philosophy of knowledge).
At some point I said them together without a break in between as "technepisteme" and the rest is history.