The Name

"Donkey Engineering" used to be "Donkey Entertainment", which was a name me and my friends put before videos we made for class projects in high school back in early 2002. I'm not quite sure who came up with the name, but I liked it, and I wasn't able to think of anything better.

However, the problem with Donkey Entertainment was that people seemed to think we make video games and entertainment related software, rather than engineering software. So I changed it to Donkey Engineering -- that way it has a little more to do with the apps, and still retains the Donkey-ness of the original name.

The original logo we put before the videos.

2006: PEMDAS (The Widget)

In 2004, I switched to Macs. When Mac OS X Tiger came out in 2005, I was thinking about making a calculator for Dashboard, mostly because all the basic calculators on Windows or Mac were pretty terrible. Since I was too lazy to just get my TI 30X-II calculator out of my backpack, in early 2006 I finally got around to starting work on PEMDAS.

I figured I'd be the only one that would use it, but I posted it to the Apple download site anyways. Since then, it's been in the Apple Staff Favorite section on their download site, has randomly showed up on news websites like TUAW, gets more downloads in a week than I thought it would have after a couple years, and in 2007 won an Apple Design Award for Best Dashboard Widget, runner up.

A bunch of people have e-mailed me with awesome suggestions on how to make it better, which is pretty sweet. So hopefully other people are liking it too.

2007: PEMDAS (The App)

In early 2007, I started work on the app version of PEMDAS. This was because every now and then I have to do more complicated stuff than the widget could handle, so I needed an app. I've used a most of the industry standard applications on Windows and Macs, and, with the semi-exception of Maple, to me it seems like the developers of those programs aren't very focused on improving the usability of the applications.

Instead, they add these odd features that I will never use, much less use on a daily basis. Meanwhile, their interfaces continue to be old and outdated. They may be powerful programs, but I wish they would be more enthusiastic about making apps that are simpler and faster to use.

That said, I don't think I'll be able to create something that fully replaces those programs. But hopefully I can make something that reduces the amount of time I have to spend in them.

2009: This Year

Not quite sure what will happen this year, but hopefully it will be better than 2008, where not too much happened.

The People

I'm Mike. I graduated college in 2007, and I'm a mechanical/aerospace engineer. I write the software and maintain the site in my spare time.

Everything else

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send me a message.