Projects

Whenever I get excited about a project, it basically consumes my life for a little while. Last week, I decided to put together a Dr. Horrible costume for Halloween. This required sewing a special style of lab coat — my first sewing project ever. I started on Tuesday night, and basically worked on it every free minute I had until Friday. It was worth it, though. I learned a new skill, and had the best Dr. Horrible costume in probably at least a hundred mile radius.


(Sub-mini-blog: Of course, most people didn't know who I was, but I didn't care. I am not a crowd pleaser. Doing the same thing as everyone else bores me out of my mind. I do the things that I want to do, and when I find other people who share my interests, it's an instantaneous connection. Every time someone came up and said, "Oh my god! It's Dr. Horrible!", it was an awesome little surprise.)

After the construction was complete, my room looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Tissue and newspaper patterns, shreds of white twill, electronic parts, and cardboard scraps littered the floor. I should have taken a picture of that, too.

Soon after I cleaned up the mess, I stumbled across my new project: the Arduino.


On the nerd scale, this project rates pretty high, but I'm super stoked for it. The arduino is a "physical computing platform"; basically a microprocessor that you can program from your computer over a USB cable, then use it to control various electronic gadgets that you build: robots, lights, games, audio equipment... anything you can imagine, really. Someone made a Tetris game out of one:



It's on backorder right now, but in a week or two, when it arrives along with the 1,107 various electronic parts I ordered, I am going to spend days locked in my room, inventing, programming, and playing with new electronic gadgets. I can't wait. If you have any brilliant (and relatively simple) gadget ideas, please send them my way.