I’ve been looking for the least expensive Arduino clone, and that is probably the Ardweeny which claims “only 7 parts plus pins & PCB!” and is intended for breadboard use. Other inexpensive clones are the DC Boarduino and the USB Boarduino. The least expensive place I’ve found for the Arduino Mega is at liquidware.com.
The pictures show the electronic components from sparkfun.com. The last picture shows the assembled shield attached to the Arduino. The video shows the “Hello World” of the Arduino world—a simple blinking light.
Several years ago, on February 2, 2005, I attended a presentation by Edward Keenan during a meeting of the Chicago Chapter of the ACM. The title of the presentation was “Game Development: Real-World Skills Needed to Excel in this Industry”. From the summary:
This presentation will shed light on several key misconceptions about software development in the video game industry. Examples will provide insights on the difficulties of developing software for software programmers.
Trends, tools and work environments for the next generation of game consoles such as the XBox-360 and PS3 will be discussed. A roadmap to transform students as well as seasoned software developers to build these critical skills necessary to enter this exciting field will be presented.
The presentation was very informative for someone wanting to go into video game development. At the end, Mr. Keenan distributed sheets with a list of computer book titles divided in three aspects of programming, as shown below. The list is an excellent library for the novice or practicing programmer. Given the video game bias, the “Language” area is for C++, but the books in the other two areas can be read independent of programming language. Below I’ve also included a scan of the original sheet.
At the end of the presentation someone asked Mr. Keenan if he had any more book recommendations and he replied that this list should provide years of reading material (or something to that effect). Despite that, I’d like to add two helpful books to the “Practice” area: The Practice of Programming and The Art of Unix Programming. And although, this last one has UNIX in its title, it has information that is applicable more generally outside the UNIX tradition.
The books on the “Language” area assume the mastery of at least the fundamentals of C++. If this is not the case, I would recommend the following books:
Recently someone pointed me to Librosweb which has several books on HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX. You can read them online or download them as PDFs. The only catch is that they are written in Spanish.
These books are complemented with several books on Symfony (a PHP web framework). So together, they should provide a good foundation for a webmaster, or a front-end or back-end web developer. There is also a book on advanced CSS (CSS avanzado) and a CSS reference book (Referencia de CSS 2.1).
Although similar free resources must exist in English, I like this website because they have all of the information in one place, and the books provide just enough information which should allow you to do a multitude of web-related projects.
A similar “curriculum” in English, would probably go like this:
You can almost never go wrong with O’Reilly, which consistently publishes high-quality books. The “Definitive Guide” books will be more comprehensive references than the Spanish books but also much longer.
I had created a cast of a foot some time ago. Casts are great for drawing because you can pose them at different angles and light conditions and you know it isn’t going to move like a person would. They never get tired.
This week, I decided to create a cast of my hand and bought a Make-a-Mold kit from Dick Blick, which is the same product I had used for the foot. You can buy the mold and casting material separately but this kit has everything you need. It contains two bags, one with alginate powder which is used to create the mold and another with plaster powder used for the cast. They come in a container designed to be used with these materials. The instructions included in the kit are very detailed and if you follow them carefully you should end up with a very detailed cast which can even replicate fingerprints.
Each powder is mixed with water to create a liquid version. The alginate mold sets very quickly so it is important to insert the object or body part right after you have reached a liquid consistency. After about two minutes you can take it out when the mold has achieved a solid gelatinous consistency. The plaster solidifies more slowly. But with both materials the temperature of the water determines how quickly they set. They will harden more slowly the lower the temperature of the water is, so you want to work with water colder than room temperature, otherwise you have to work quickly. I added a couple of ice cubes to the water to get it well below 72° F (22° C) for both mixtures. When mixing, it helps to use an electric hand mixer but some vigorous use of a wire whisk should do the job.
The plaster takes about 2 hours to set. At that point, you can flip the container and slowly begin to loosen the mold by tapping on the container. Then, you can remove the mold in pieces with your hand to reveal the plaster cast. But this time, I decided to carefully remove the mold in two pieces with a knife to see if I could retain the mold for another cast. I had to do this slowly to prevent cutting and damaging the cast. You can see the images of the two halves of the mold above.
Below there are photos of several casts: the foot I created some time ago, the newer hand cast next to an open hand that didn’t come out well, and the two casts of the hand created from the newest mold. The first hand of the last picture is the cast that was created after the mold was cut in half. You can notice the “mold line” similar to that found in mold-injected plastic objects. This “line” can be removed with a knife and sanding it.
I picked up an electronic kit at Fry’s. Most of the kits seemed pretty useless, but I thought that the “Sound-to-light” kit could have some utility. I was thinking it could be used as a sound-sensitive alarm or a music-to-light device. But even as it is, the kit is pretty amusing—you clap your hands or snap your fingers and the LEDs light up. If you play some music next to its small mic, the lights “dance” to the rythm of the music.
The kit basically consists of a small microphone, a potentiometer which acts as a dimmer, four LEDs, a battery holder, and various capacitors, resistors, and transistors. The kit is by Velleman, which sells many other products including other kits. The instructions are easy to follow. You basically match a component to a label on the circuit board and then solder its leads on the back.
This was my first attempt at soldering, which I found is like a craft. It requires a steady hand and developing a good technique. You can find many soldering tutorials online, but ladyada.net has useful links to tutorials and videos. My first solders were pretty bad and I was afraid I was going to short the circuit by creating a path between two unrelated holes. But after a few dozen holes I think I could solder more precisely than an SMT machine
The last picture is blurry as I couldn’t use the flash in order to showcase the lighted LEDs.
