I came across the EEVBlog (
http://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog) some months ago when I was bored.
He's got some great segments like Teardown Tuesdays, where he'll take apart some piece of electronics and figure out how it works. This week, he found a photocopier in a dumpster (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSxEGgrvhMM). Seeing stuff like that makes you scratch your head and think "wow...there was A LOT of engineering that went into that". There are some pretty good beginners tips as well, like on soldering (Part 1:
http://www.eevblog.com/2011/06/19/ee...-part-1-tools/ , Part 2:
http://www.eevblog.com/2011/07/02/ee...torial-part-2/ , Part 3:
http://www.eevblog.com/2011/07/18/ee...surface-mount/ ).
Anyway, just thought I'd share a pretty interesting (albeit educational
) source for how electronics engineering is done in the real world.