There are a variety of websites and blogs that I check out on a daily basis, Tekzilla has joined the line up…

They have two types of episodes, daily and weekly. The daily episode is super short and has a single windows, firefox, or mac tip. The weekly episode is a half an hour long and the two hosts give reviews on various products and tools as well as answer letters from viewers. There is also an archive for both formats so you can catch up with previous episodes. You can pick up some really great and easy tips in no time flat!

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