"We are the middle children. Too late to explore the continents of Earth, too early to explore space.
I do not understand your sorrow.
My friend, we stand upon the backs of explorers whose sacrifices nurture us. We hold in our hands the keys to the garden of space in which the infinite spring of adventure pours. The fountain of youth is not one where old men go to stave off death's embrace, but it is where we send our children and their children so that they may live.
Brother, we are the Gatekeepers, the Architects, the Creators, the Bridgemen. It is our age that connects one era to another, one explorer to the next. We are not explorers, we were never really meant to be. Our children are the ones who will touch the intangible, ride asteroids around the stars; when they wake up, it will be stardust they scrape from their eyes.
Sister, our children cannot come into their own if we do not come into ours. Do not mourn a destiny that was never yours. We must make for them their future through our own sacrifices.
If you must, chug your alcohol and go to bed, but please be ready in the morning - we have work to do." - /u/bumrumble
Since I'm a skeptical nerd I started getting more and more cynical about all the anecdotal stories from friends, books, and on the web. Then I found Emily Oster's books.
Wikipedia snippets: "Emily Oster is an American economist and bestselling author. After receiving a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 2002 and 2006 respectively, Oster taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She later moved to Brown University, where she holds the rank of Professor of Economics. Her research interests span from development economics and health economics to research design and experimental methodology.... She is the author of two books, Expecting Better and Cribsheet, which discuss a data-driven approach to decision-making in pregnancy and parenting."
In short they are meta-research papers on pregnancy and parenting in the form of fun readable books.
It's already $4 with the new ESP8266-EX from WeMos!
Full WiFi stack, 11x GPIO, Analog in, SPI, I2C, 80/160Mhz, 4MB Flash, power/flashing over USB, supported by the Arduino IDE, or just use the NodeMCU Lua firmware with modules for most sensors, displays, MQTT etc. I'm having a blast with them right now.
I used the bigger NodeMCU but WeMos D1 Mini is awesome. If you want to tinker and create a custom compact unit, consider buying a few copies of the "ESP8266 WeMos shield" from OSHPark:
http://oshpark.com/shared_projects/rnk2lmmh
also
"We are the middle children. Too late to explore the continents of Earth, too early to explore space. I do not understand your sorrow. My friend, we stand upon the backs of explorers whose sacrifices nurture us. We hold in our hands the keys to the garden of space in which the infinite spring of adventure pours. The fountain of youth is not one where old men go to stave off death's embrace, but it is where we send our children and their children so that they may live.
Brother, we are the Gatekeepers, the Architects, the Creators, the Bridgemen. It is our age that connects one era to another, one explorer to the next. We are not explorers, we were never really meant to be. Our children are the ones who will touch the intangible, ride asteroids around the stars; when they wake up, it will be stardust they scrape from their eyes.
Sister, our children cannot come into their own if we do not come into ours. Do not mourn a destiny that was never yours. We must make for them their future through our own sacrifices.
If you must, chug your alcohol and go to bed, but please be ready in the morning - we have work to do." - /u/bumrumble