Collaborate Disseminate
For a lot of us, there’s a bright line separating the books we enjoyed as children from the “real” books of our more mature years. We all eventually age out …read more Continue reading Books You Should Read: David Macaulay’s Architecture Series
Martin Hench really likes playing on the Red team — on the attack. He’s a financial geek, understands cryptocurrency, understands how money is moved around to keep it hidden, and …read more Continue reading Books You Should Read: Red Team Blues
People with long commutes usually come up with tricks to stay focused and alert and avoid the dangerous tendency to zone out during the drive. One trick I used to …read more Continue reading Books You Should Read: Why Buildings Fall Down
It’s been an exciting few weeks for me personally on the clacking front. I got a couple of new-to-me keyboards including my first one with ALPS switches, an old TI/99A …read more Continue reading Keebin’ with Kristina: the One Where Shift Happens
With everything from APIs to Raspberry Pis making it even easier for us to create and share objects shaped by personal whim, it’s high time that Don Norman’s sage design advice falls on not just the design student, but the hardware hacker and DIY enthusiast too. Grab yourself a coffee …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: The Design of Everyday Things
For many of us, our passion for electronics and science originated with curiosity about some device, a computer, radio, or even a car. The subject of this book has just such an origin. However, how many of us made this discovery and pursued this path during times of hunger or …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
If you’ve been into electronics for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly run across the practical bible in the field, The Art of Electronics, commonly abbreviated AoE. Any fan of the book will certainly want to consider obtaining the latest release, The Art of Electronics: The x-Chapters, …read more
Continue reading The Truth is in There: The Art of Electronics, the x-Chapters
Surely, if you’re reading this website you’ve teased the thought of building your own 3D printer. I certainly did. But from my years of repeated rebuilds of my homebrew laser cutter, I learned one thing: machine design is hard, and parts cost money. Rather than jump the gun and start …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: Exact Constraint: Machine Design Using Kinematic Principles
These days, budget CNC builds are mainstream. Homebrew 3D printers and even laser cutters are old hats. Now I find myself constantly asking: “where’s it all going?” In the book, Designing Reality, Prof Neil Gershenfeld and his two brothers, Alan and Joel, team up to answer that question. In 250 pages, they forecast a future where digital fabrication tools become accessible to everyone on the planet, a planet where people now thrive in networked communities focused on learning and making.
Designing Reality asks us to look forward to the next implications of the word “digital”. On its surface, digital …read more
The most computationally intense part of an Apollo mission was the moon landing itself, requiring both real-time control and navigation of the Lunar Module (LM) through a sequence of programs known as the P60’s. Data from radar, inertial navigation, and optical data sighted-off by the LM commander himself were fed into the computer in what we’d call today ‘data fusion.’
The guy who wrote that code is Don Eyles and the next best thing to actually hanging out with Don is to read his book. Don’s book reads as if you are at a bar sitting across the table listening …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: Sunburst and Luminary, an Apollo Memoir