Technology Notes

So my laptop had a major meltdown this past week– had to reboot the operating system…  this means that not only did I lose every file (oh that was so painful) but I also had to reinstall the driver and software for the Arduino board (for my physical computing class).  Luckily I remembered to do that before class!  The night before class might be a little last minute, but still, it’s before class   Needless to say, I ran into some trouble, but after quite some time I was able to get things working, phew!!!

As I seem to be a glutton for punishment, I figured I might as well try and build some circuits– it has been a while that I’ve practiced.  I managed to get a LED to blink (yeah!!) but didn’t get multiple LEDs to work

 (cartoon from xkcd, an awesome webcomic
of romance, sarcasm, math, and language)

As I started packing things away I decided to sort out my wires and resistors because it’s getting a little crowded in my little pink box!!  Luckily I remembered I had a neat little craft box with compartments to organize everything.                                                                                                                                                          Feeling inspired, I decided to label the compartments to make things even easier to find.  Then I realized I totally forgot how to figure out the resistor strengths.  Since my class notes disappeared into the ether along with everything else on my hard drive I started with my previous post on our class message board.  Which contained a great chart… but no instructions   So I did some digging on google and found an AWESOME site that will actually calculate the resistor strength for you, cha ching!!  While as a math teacher I love working with numbers, as a very tired math teacher I totally appreciate this quick and easy shortcut   For my fellow classmate (and anyone else starting to work with basic electronics), if you’re having trouble figuring out those resistors, take a look at this site!!!  See ya later