We had a chance to interview [Grant Imahara] at the 2014 Electronica conference in Munich, Germany. If you don’t recognize [Grant’s] name you’ll probably recognize his face. He’s been on the cast of the television show Mythbusters for about 10 years now. We heard recently that he was leaving the show and that’s how we crossed paths with him.
[Grant] has signed on with Mouser Electronics to promote their Empowering Innovation Together program. They hosted him on a press junket at their booth and since we have a good relationship with Mouser they offered Hackaday an interview slot.
We had a lot of fun talking to [Grant]. Unfortunately the wireless microphones the Mouser videographer was using were picking up a lot of interference. This didn’t directly affect our recording setup as we were using a handheld voice recorder, but we kept getting interrupted as they tried to figure out the problem. Still, as you can see from the video below, we managed to get all the way through a few questions about [Grant’s] introduction to electronics at a young age, his first job out of school working for Industrial Light and Magic, and his advice to others who want to get into electronics and specifically robots. He mentions his early learning was guided by the books of Forrest Mims and that these days learning about electronics is no more than a keyword search away.
He sounds.. tired.
noticed the same, being “tired” is an acronym?
good work mike, this and in general!
I just think first that probably there had been some alcohol serving in conference :) But naturally it can be also just jet lag.
So that’s how you pronounce “Szczys”!
Like “stitch”, the thing you do with needles and thread.
There are videos where Mike introduces himself as “psychs” and “seeks”, though. I’m betting either witness relocation program or running from the feds in plain sight.
Or maybe he hasn’t had a straight answer from his parents ;)
I lost all faith in Grant when he started shilling for McDonalds.
This. :(
Pink slime is bad for you? Myth….. busted?
*throws up*
From the CNN article, it seems that McDonalds claims there is no pink slime anymore, and told Grant the same. Apparently they phased it out in 2011
Yes indeed.
For that matter, ive never thought a whole lot of him, so he worked at an electronics company, and participated in robogames, big whoop?
Wasn’t he a pizza delivery guy in the first season of Supernatural?
I had to look up those McDonalds commercials on Youtube to see why people hated them so much. I mean, he’s an engineer, not an artist. I understand now. Dude must have really had to make his boat payments to agree to those.
doesn’t really explain what he’s going to do with mouser, just a spokesman?
that page says he’ll be making videos, lets hope they’re better than the make/radioshack videos and not a total ad campaign. Maybe something more like the ben heck show where it’s sponsored by a company but it’s not like they’re trying to tell you to buy all this stuff from it.
now digikey just needs to hire someone to make cool videos too…and a bunch of other electronics websites
How about an electronics marketing company who throws money to keep a broad hacking community going, who don’t push their presence to said community?
Now, wouldn’t that be a great dream. ;-)
I had so much respect for the man without knowing much about him, beyond his
electronics and mechanical skills. I separated him from Mythbusters in my mind, and just
looked at what he actually did on the show- the guy is good.
I just couldn’t come up with any reason he should have taken the McDonalds ads, other than
straight money. It just wasn’t a smart move. He lost some respect from a lot of people with
those, but when you’re not Brad Pitt 1st tier celebrity, I get that you make money where you can.
I’m not here to judge him, I have a lot of respect for his skill, and he seems like a decent human
being, from all the interviews I’ve seen of him. I’m really happy he gave Hackaday an interview,
and I was happy to watch it. He does seem to have a bit of a twitch and slowness- I’m betting he
was a bit tipsy or something. It was Germany, after all- can’t blame him if he went out for a few
awesome german beers :)
Also, never knew the TH from THX was a person’s initials. That guy must be a sound god or
something.
it’s more an homage to THX1138 which supposedly was a george lucas’s phone number
hmmmm..means his slot is open in mythbusters!
You didn’t hear? They dumped the build team and went back to it being just Jamie and Adam doing the show. Tory and Kari got let go too
noooooooooooooooooooo! WHY!!???
because DSC is f*king stupid…
As a supposed man of science, he knows McDonalds is bad. Pink slime or not.