About 90 dollars a month in a little iPhone app called TweakyBeat .. it was free for like three years, then some day I asked myself if I could change it from free to pay, and yes you can.
Thats like saying that the piano would kill all virtuosos, because all the notes are already there, as opposed to a violin where the player has to press the string on the right spot.
Just getting the pitch right is not gonna make the music, not by a long shot.
"Taking the time to author original, thought provoking and/or informative posts ..."
But maybe you should do this sort of thing just because is good for you in the first place (as opposed to good for your blog/PR). Write down and develop your thoughts on paper, just as you do with code/pseudocode. Then once you have something worthy, publish/share it.
ive heard a lot about the arduino, i think im gonna get one or build one
but i also want to be able to build my own circuits, to learn to program the microcontrollers, so i can get closer to the idea of designing the hardware for my software
i have recently been interested in microcontrollers, chips you can program, to control things like motors and leds, and to recive data from sliders / knobs (potentiometers)
i got some PIC programmer and some pic chips and started doing some experiments ... but it seems like for me, a mac os x user, the AVR is a better option
im looking to buy some AVR "kits" from smileymicros.com very soon, as soon as i get some money ;) (i live in mexico so i have to pay more to get fedex)
im into programming music apps to make my own music, and i see a lot of potential to make hardware to control music/sound
hey, if you try the smilemicros kits, let me know ;)
I usually listen to only one track in repeat (for about an hour), one that I'm very familiar with, so i don't get distracted by it (it may or not have vocals)
I've notice that by doing so i stay in the same mind frame all the time.
Also, it is good to choose a track that puts you in the right mind frame, examples: "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens puts me in an optimistic and somehow upbeat state, "A Warm Place" by Nine Inch Niles puts me in a more introverted-deep thinking state
i think it's a great book, not a "serious" book, whatever that means
as i mention in another comment, I'm willing to call it mental-masturbation, in the sense of exciting one's mind (the nerdy mind anyway), so in a way I'm probably not too far from your vision of the book
i also think this kind of excitement is the basic motivation of the nerdy minded persons, and any text/experience that can get you in that state is something to appreciate.
lastly it exposes the reader to many topics, the reader may get interested in some of those topics and make some further investigations on its own, and at least in that sense it is a science divulgation book (it's more important for science divulgation to get you interested in the topics that to give you some raw facts)
not that i understand mathematics that well, but this book gave me many ideas of how an abstract/complex thing like mathematics can evolve through history, i found that exciting
- when i was a teenager i liked a couple of books by Martin Gardner
a way to make it change direction that works for me pretty much every time: see it, then look away from it, so you see the image only with your peripheral vision (it will look like someone skating to you, or away from you), then consciously make it change direction