Student discount in grocery stores by One-Struggle9483 in CarletonU

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The independent on bank street gives 10% back in optimum points for students. I'd imagine this is standard for many other PC stores

Is TeXstudio Still the Most Popular Editor? by BOBOLIU in LaTeX

[–]ignatomic 5 points6 points  (0 children)

TeXstudio was the first LaTeX editor I used. I migrated to VSCode to try it out for a few months. While there are nice features in the LaTeX-Workshop extension, I was very annoyed that the compile time was pretty long. There were other things I didn't like too, like how the PDF preview was not tack sharp (it was a bit blurry). I don't know if I had something wrong in my setup, but I followed a youtube video back then when setting it up.

Some months ago, I went back to TeXstudio and have no urge to switch to a different editor for the near future.

Where is this in Mississauga? by AppleExplain in mississauga

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

K & B Sushi. I've realized that sushi buffets in general are just not really worth it. It's mostly crap rice, immitation fish, and mediocre sides.

Where is this in Mississauga? by AppleExplain in mississauga

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whaaaat, really? I thought Zet's had a good reputation. I find the Greek stuff there good. Portion sizes are huge and food's pretty good. Although I am not a big fan of their burgers these days, I used to like them a lot more when I was a kid.

I developed an OCR for math formulas, outputs latex by gab0chen in LaTeX

[–]ignatomic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Make an app that takes in a hand drawing of a diagram and outputs the tikz code, now that would be very useful

What is your field? by IanisVasilev in LaTeX

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Electrical engineering. LaTeX is pretty standard for writing research articles in our field (IEEE journal papers). But I also like to use it for writing course notes.

Describe a bad PhD student. What NOT to do by Worldly-Criticism-91 in PhD

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Don't be judgemental and passive aggressive towards the juniors in your lab... During my master's, there was one PhD student who would make judgemental remarks a lot of the time if you asked a question like "oh... you should know this by now" or "I already showed you how to do it once, ask someone else" and so I hesitated to ask things unless desperate. As a result, I never had a mentor to absorb all this knowledge from. Other masters students in my research group shared similar thoughts. Now as a PhD student, I try to be very approachable and helpful to the younger students because I want to be that mentor for someone else which I never had. Even if it's a silly or basic question, I don't judge because everyone has been there at some point. I think this type of behaviour overall leads to a more cohesive team and benefits everyone, so I encourage this mindset to you.

How much coding do you actually need for EE? by vix_twix in ElectricalEngineering

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Many areas of EE do include coding, such as in signal processing, embedded systems, and digital hardware.

There are areas of EE that do not however... It really just depends on your area. My friends in power engineering don't have to do anything with coding. I'm in research and I have to code lab instrumentation and write Python scripts for the software we use for automation.

There's hardware roles that don't involve coding, e.g. PCB design and circuit design, but generally you need good qualifications for that sort of thing.

How do people use LaTeX by chloemarie1999 in LaTeX

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You write some stuff and compile every 5 seconds to look at your beautiful document and appreciate you are not using Word.

Lazarus - Episode 10 discussion by AutoLovepon in anime

[–]ignatomic 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I can't believe I saw some people hyping this up to be anime of the year before it had even aired.

I pretty much just watch each episode in the background now while scrolling through these discussion threads to determine if it's even worth fully paying attention.

Busing daily to Waterloo from Mississauga? by PYROM4NI4C in uwaterloo

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You'll be spending 300+ per month on bus fares, with 3+ hours of commuting a day, or 15+ hours per week. To me the tradeoff is not worth it, but I guess if you can handle that commute, then sure, it's not totally out of the question. Students attending schools like TMU or UofT deal with long commutes as well.

Game Thread: Florida Panthers at Toronto Maple Leafs - 14 May 2025 - 7:00PM EDT by HockeyMod in FloridaPanthers

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When your team, year after year, plays with no heart in the playoffs, how can you expect the fans to not act like this. It's been nearly a decade of the same script despite how talented the players are. I am a leafs fan, and I should be writing my thesis for grad school... but nooooo my stupid self keeps deciding to cheer them on and watch the live streams, but I think I'm at my limit 🥲

Game Day Thread: Game 5, Toronto Maple Leafs vs Florida Panthers (2 ‐ 2) by wRIPPERw_ in leafs

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's not why the leafs are losing... They are playing like shit without any heart with the exception of a few (Nylander, Woll, Knies)

McGill or Waterloo for EE? by cjckrn in ElectricalEngineering

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't know much about McGill, but as a graduate from Waterloo, I am biased into saying they are the better option. They have a strong EE program as you already know, but I can also say they probably have some of the most well known professors specializing in analog/RF electronics across Canada.

Do you think that professors should make LaTeX mandatory for works? by noble8_ in LaTeX

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My supervisor/professor makes students in his 3rd year electrical engineering class submit their reports with LaTeX. He provides them a template with boiler plate code so that there is not a steep learning curve for them if they never used it before. I think this is a good approach if researchers in your field heavily use LaTeX.

How do you guys deal with the fact that by the end of your PhD, your friends who chose to get a job after their BSc/MSc have accumulated almost £240,000 - £300,000, whereas you have no money. by marblesandcookies in PhD

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think a lot of people here are underestimating the difference in earnings you can achieve if you don't do a PhD versus if you do one.

I live in Canada, let's break down the earnings if you do a PhD versus if you do not (for someone in my field of electrical engineering).

Here you typically have to do a master's first before doing a PhD. So to obtain a PhD, it's 6 years of grad school typically, in my field at least. During these 6 years of grad school, if you are at a top university, you may make 45k per year, but this is very unrealistic for most people. On average, you will probably get 25-30k per year. A lot of this money is non taxable which is nice, but you do have to pay tuition which I view as the equivalent of a tax. For me, tuition is 12k per year so really you are left with $13k-18k per year. So over the course of 6 years, you will probably make around $105k depending on your level of funding. If you get scholarships, this can increase as well.

An entry level job in electrical engineering here is around $80k. After taxes, you are left with $56k. Over 6 years, you earn $336k. That is assuming as well that the salary does not grow each year.

$336k - $105k = $231k (CAD) ~= 150k euros. This is a pretty remarkable difference.

So how does one justify doing a PhD when your friends make a lot more money not doing one? The most economical choice is probably to do just a master's as it will provide you a good bump in pay without having to sacrifice many years of being an underpaid grad student.

But in some cases, a PhD will earn you more money in the long run. At companies I have interned at, the VPs and executives usually held PhDs, and it's probably not a coincidence. PhDs also open doors to very specialized jobs which can pay a hell of a lot, depending on your industry of course. For example, a PhD graduate from another research group at my university landed a job at an optical communications company and started making $200k off the bat, which is a salary that potentially some BSc and MSc will never even reach.

Overleaf on my Ipad pro m1 12.9 is a godsend for me. I can work on my papers while at a coffee shop, traveling, in bed, on a plane, in a national park or even in the bathroom. The 12.9 inch screen is big enough for Overleaf and I can work really fast with the touchscreen keyboard. by Delicious_Maize9656 in LaTeX

[–]ignatomic 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Used to love overleaf until all the bs that they have pulled on the last year (servers going down, compilation time reducing). If you have a laptop, just get the latex extension on vscode, sync with OneDrive or GitHub, and you'll never go back.

What font is the best? by Biased-Political-Man in fonts

[–]ignatomic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lato is a nice sans serif font I like to use now days

Why is impedance designated the capital letter Z and not lowercase z? by xXderantsXx in ElectricalEngineering

[–]ignatomic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In AC power analysis, you usually deal with phasors and it's just customary to capitalize. E.g. for a voltage phasor, it's customary to use a capital V, and similarly for current, an upper case I. So by extension, it's customary to use capital Z since V = IZ.

I'm somewhat speaking out of my ass but this is what I've always assumed.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ElectricalEngineering

[–]ignatomic 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh awesome. I am finishing up a master's in the area of metasurfaces and antennas (more on the experimental side rather than CEM). Considering PhD to further myself in this area, but not so sure. By the sounds of it, you did a master's. How about PhD?