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Let’s talk politics!

Vote No!

It’s that time of year… Let’s talk politics. You choose one side, and I’ll choose the other. It’ll be fun. (But not really…)

I read a post yesterday about how someone was amazed by how they could feel so different from their friends, neighbors and co-workers on certain issues, and how the divide in US politics seems to have widened more and more in recent years.

To some degree, I blame the Internet for this (supposed) widening of the gap. By that I mean, I think people being able to freely and easily post (to a worldwide audience) their beliefs has made these divisions more apparent.

Ten years ago you’d probably have to go to a specific political forum on the Internet to get into politics, and maybe five years ago it was political blogging that let people spew their beliefs freely, but now, with the recent rise of things like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and other sharing tools, it’s way to easy to determine someone’s beliefs. In some cases a single photo, or even a post of less than 140 characters, is all it takes to determine the political affiliations a co-worker or acquaintance has. Are posts the new bumper stickers and yard signs?

Times were, you didn’t discuss politics at work… and while that may still hold true in many places (and I think it should in many places) it’s become fairly easy to determine the beliefs of others by what they say online, unless they say nothing, or are selective in what they say… which for some of us, is pretty damn hard.

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Subscription Options

RSS

Sir Scribe-A-Lot says… “Let 1,000 RSS feeds bloom!” But then, he’s a little on the nutty side…

Not counting the comment feeds, I don’t think I have 1,000 feeds for this site… I think it’s closer to 800. Still, that’s a lot, and it should allow you to choose what you get.

We still have a good 9 years of content to go through, but we’ve been working on the tagging process for months now, and you can see the results on the tags page.

You only want posts about Mozilla, or Web414, or maybe you like a good accident story, or a nice drawing is more your style. Creative Commons? We got that too!

So for each tag there is a page, and an associated feed on that page that you can subscribe to.

If you want it all, just subscribe to everything, and enjoy the ride.

Thanks for subscribing!

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Captcha the Resistance!

OK, I have to admit, I thought the Photojojo captcha was cute, clever, and fun, but if you’re not into photography, and are more of an electronics nerd… I have just the captcha for you!

captcharesisty

I saw this one over on the Adafruit Blog and then found this post about it. And if you’re running WordPress, you can install the plugin and use it on your own site.

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Fun with the Arduino

Arduino Uno
Photo by adafruit – Published under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa License

The Arduino is a microcontroller, but it’s better described as “an open source electronics prototyping platform.”

And what does that mean?

The term “open source” is usually applied to software, and in that context it refers to software that is free. Not just free to download, but free to modify as you wish. (There’s some distinction between “open source software” and “free software” but I won’t get into that here. It’s safe to say that both of them give you the rights to make changes to the software.)

As for the “electronics prototyping platform” part of it… That’s what it is. A platform for building things with electronics. If you’ve built your own microcontrollers in the past, the Arduino may not be very exciting, but for beginners, or people looking for a platform to build upon, it’s a good thing. (And the open source part makes it even better.)

So what can you do with an Arduino? Here’s a few ideas…

Those are just a few of the interesting projects I came across in the last week. There’s also a nice long list of Arduino user projects in the Playground, and I’ve started to collect Arduino links.

Where can you get one? Adafruit Industries is one place, Maker Shed is another, and SparkFun is another. (See the SparkFun Buying Guide.) If you’re just getting started, I’d recommend the Arduino Uno (which was just released in fall 2010.) Since the Arduino is “open source” hardware, there are also clones you can buy, and each has strengths and weaknesses… but if you just want to start playing, get the Arduino Uno.

Right now I’m just working through a lot of tutorials, writing test code, having a bit of fun, and thinking up some interesting project ideas… How about you?

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Fritzing – Breadboard Illustrations

Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics…

Since I’m a n00b who can’t read schematics, the breadboard view is good for me… Lady Ada uses it in some of her tutorials.

So if you’re just getting into Arduino hacking and can’t read/write schematics, give Fritzing a try… you may get something like this:

breadboard

Here’s my first attempt at a breadboard illustration. This is for a sketch that reads data from the photocell, and lights up the LED if it’s too dark in the room. Oh, and if it’s too bright in the room, it makes the piezo buzz. Pretty darn simple. I’m not 100% pleased with my illustration, but it was my first time, and since I’ve built this more than once, I guess it should be considered a success.

The Fritzing site has a list of projects and the application (and web site) encourage you to share your creations (under a Creative Commons license even!)

Oh yeah, as for calling myself a n00b, I took a number of electronics classes when I was in school (which was a long, long time ago) but I’m finally getting back into this stuff, and it’s exciting. More updates to come!