ehi.. i forgot.. I’m slowlyyyyyyyyy mooovingggg to http://www.redpencilsattack.com, yes i did the big step.
The site is under construction so please, be patient.

beautiful Sparkle Labs-hack is funny!

http://kits.sparklelabs.com/

Sparkle Labs is not only a beautiful and stylish  web site, is an educational platform: in the weblog as in the learn and projects sections you can find some affordables and funny tutorials,  perfects if you are a beginner and you want make something easy and “usable”- I think I’m going to put myself to the test of the Christmas tree-  I believe that for beginner as me easy tutorials are the best choice to do not abandon hope and that’s a crucial point if you think that probabilities of abandon are higher at the start.

Sparkle Labs is also a product: paying about 50 dollars (34,88 euros) you can receive the ‘Discover Electronics kit’ good both for beginners and advanced users, with all the basic components (briefly presented) and a manual for start to work immediately on your new project.

50 dollars or 34,88 is  not a bad price so I hope that someone at my university will read this post and will order 20 kits (or at least one for me) in the name of the sacred institution of education.

Last but not least Sparkle Labs supports the DIY philosophy and of course that makes me happy, cause we need more DIY in our life, moreover I think we’re a kind  basically scared about the electronics and that’s keep  us far from the way of learning to use electricity or on approaching a part of the DIY.

I like how the Sparkle Lab communicate the funny side of hacking, to me, something taken too serious sometimes.

I want  suggest you a pair of other sites related to the topic, useful but less cool:
Open Circuits it’s a wiki about circuits, probably there you can find a solution to any doubt about circuits, it’s divided in sections  .

All About Circuits It’s a big and opened online textbook about electricity and electronics divided in six volumes.

at the Electronics Club I found something basic but extremely effective: a short explanation of Circuit Diagrams, I had some problems in reading the diagrams but now things are  more clear. but honestly the need a good web designer to move the site from web 0.1 to 2.0

Graphical Resistance Calculator a simple and visual way to calculate resistance value, chose the color and the value will appear. fast and intuitive.

that’s all.

ps.printed circuit business cards

docjax free docs and ebooks

http://www.docjax.com

I’m in the rank of those slaves to the glasses ( cough cough beautiful Persol cough cough) and that’s makes me usually not so enthusiastic about pdf, ebooks or nooks and my enthusiasm is even less when I have to sign up for the service that is going to make me blind in the attempt to read its contents or get mad in the attempt to find something useful and I don’t want to give you any names cause I know we all use Slideshare and Scribd 😛

I cannot enjoy a walking in the rain without risk my life (who is in my same situation knows what I’m talking about, the rain on your glasses is like having a windscreen without wipers) and at the same level I cannot spend hours reading a paper on a computer screen without losing my eyes.

But for you normal people docjax could be good ,’cause, is good to me too.

First of all you don’t have to sign up to  preview or download the papers or the ebooks that you’re looking for, they’re just there, just one step further the seach  box in the main page.  All the contents come directly from the web, from sites as such as Google or universities’ webpages.

what you have to do is just choose a title, look at the preview and download it.

Much more  simpler than wearing glasses.

Earth Design’s guide to Arduino, Dailyduino,Daniel Andrade,Make:

At Earth Design’s guide to Arduino you can download for free another guide for beginners to Arduino.

The handbook is simple and well illustrate with good reproduction of circuits and projects.
I don’t know exactly where it comes from and I cannot remember where I found it (damned information overload), but the illustrations reminds me the Fritzing software , good for beginners since is very basic and  low-fi.

Good starting point  for practice and anyway guides are always welcome.

You can also have a look at Dailyduino a website a step further from my level, but a good place for resources.

I just love Daniel Andrade and his blog, he is an Arduino’s amateur and in his blog you can find a good section dedicated to Arduino, but if you have the time, please check out the other posts about electrical circuits, hacking,Linux and more!
I used one of his tutorial for the code for the temperature sensor and the background of my desktop right now is the wallpaper he made, you can see it at Arduino wallpaper

And the article about Arduino on Make:.

New york City Resistors

http://www.nycresistor.com/

you can immediately image they’re cool . Not simply because they’re from Brooklyn – New York.

Not simply because they’re good guys hackers.

Not simply because they’re pro DIY philosophy.

Not simply because they call themself ‘resistors’.

But because they’re all of them PLUS a deep sense of community and the believe that only sharing our knowledge we can improve ourself and the way we live  things.

On one issue I’m really  upset about and is the access to the culture and barriers built up by laziness between “equals”.

I mean what’s makes you different from me? Basically knowledge.

I think that there are  huge holes behind the hacking: false believes, superficial virtues,terminology, accessibility.

stuff left behind.New category. T.e.c.H.

I’ve spent these latest days running behind a couple of projects,exactly as when you’re trying to fix a picture on the wall and the 5-minutes-work become a 5-hours-work, and the movements enabled are almost the same: you half-close your eyes for better see, focus your attention on a particular, incline your head now to the left, now to the right, take a deep breath and start all over again. The difference is that there’s no frame but just a computer screen in front of you.

Anyway, that’s Arduino’s fault- my new lover- to be honest are days that I don’t touch it, but I’m deep in the process to collect all the super-fast experiences-emotions-regrets-ideas-lessons of the workshop just passed and I lost myself several times in the attempt to orient myself in this jungle of kind-of- engineering knowledge.
During these endless internet journeys I’ve discovered a lot of bullshit and lot of diamonds and I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to spend words on both.

but I think that these diamonds need a new category where to stay.. let’s call it T.e.c.H. as acronym of This Empathy Calls Headache or The Electricity Can Hurt or The Educative (and) Cool Hacking or Thinker Easily Caught Hearts, all entries that could be a name for an indie Canadian band, whatever meaning you link to T.e.c.H. is just tech.

ps. The bullshit will be still publish in BlaBlaBla

Second date with Arduino

That’s the second date and I’m not still sure about my feelings for Arduino.I Don’t know what to think because I’m attracted to it but I’m scared it’s going to use me .