Ok, a couple of days ago, I had something of an epiphany about how I find out about things… I originally heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center from a friend via an email – and it took quite a bit of messing about but we at the office were able to watch the broadcast news on my office computer via a remote desktop to the video capture on my computer at home – it wasn’t great viewing – but we were able to see it… fast forward plenty of years and I’m sitting at my computer and checking my Twitter feed and notice in the tag cloud that there is something about a train wreck in DC… In the strangest way, before any of the ‘official news’ outlets are picking it up, I’m hearing about news that is amazingly accurate – if taken in this larger scale, it starts looking a lot like Asimov’s Psychohistory from the Foundation series

One of the guys I work with and I were discussing how this real-time access to the crowd, in this case, via Twitter, is amazing in how it can aggregate together and produce a picture that is remarkably accurate.  Of course, the flip side is – it can be totally inaccurate, too – buyer beware, I guess Harrison Ford is glad they were wrong.

So it was with a slight bit of amazement that I saw floating in the tag cloud: Jackson and Dead.  WTF?!  A couple of clicks later and I’m sitting there just a little bit stunned.

When did the 80’s start dying?  In a matter of days, three icons of my 80’s life have ceased to exist in the mortal plane (Not to mention they are STILL planning on remaking the A-Team – don’t get me started on that). 

It’s just all very unsettling some days…

So I’ve been reading all about the Arduino microcontroller board and what it can do for quite a while -- between Make Magazine, their blog and a few other sites on my daily RSS Feed rotation (Hack-a-Day, Evil Mad Scientist Labs, oomlout, and plenty of others) I have had my appetite whet for getting back into some microcontroller firmware programming again…

After uploading the LED blinking ‘hello world’ app to and then playing with that, then making the LED fade in and out using PWM instead of just blinking, I had to find a project...

I’ve seen his work done a few other times (http://vimeo.com/keithloutit) but this one is really cool and has a story in it. If you have never seen the tilt-shift photography – this is all real-life scenes, done in stop-motion with a special lens. Anyways, here it is… Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Yes, this is the chair in my office if I get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink… for that matter, if I get up to get a book off the shelf right behind me…

Demotivator - Negotiation, originally uploaded by hypno_bedhead, found on Sadalit Van Buren’s blog (here)

It seems to apply to a lot of things in my life lately – but that’s not all bad – just reminds me to keep an eye on my chair.

I’m already busy enough at work – but there is always something to learn… always.  I have a really long list of stuff that I want to learn – but I don’t get to chip away at it like I used to – because of learning stuff for work…

So, this week, I’ve added a few new bits to my bucket (in terms of trial by fire) so lets see: