Mixed business

Work has been keeping me busy, plus life, plus side projects, so this blog has suffered.  But as this week the mega corporation I work for is into phase 4 of the secret plan to grind itself into pieces, I’m considering what things I need to do to be ready for the many changes ahead.

I have been keeping somewhat busy with little things.  Unfortunately I got distracted from the python/pygame program I’d been doing.  But I did pick up 5 nano sized Arduino knockoff microcontrollers from China along with various bits and a 50 piece sleeve of 555 timer chips.  So I’m dabbling in hardware more now.  Which means robotics (using steppers and servos), blinky light arrays, and ‘musical’ instruments.  So I may have to expand my “pi” category to include Arduino also.

I even poked at Khan Academy today, while waiting for a 6+ hour install.  Their algorithms course leaves a lot to be desired. The nerds from Dartmouth who wrote it expect you to have taken a Calculus course in the last week.  Doesn’t help that I was sick that week in high school when we did logarithms so I’ve always had a weak spot there. I had to use a graphing calculator to visualize that log base 2 of (17 raised to the log base 2 n) is the same as log base 2 of (n raised to the log base 2 17).  I’ll have to play around more and see if it gets any better.