Iteration 16
As of today, I am legally 16 years old. Traditionally, I would have gotten a car for my birthday, and had a nice Sweet 16 montage of me driving around town picking up all the lady-types.
But why would I want that? Driving montages are SO 80’s! This year, I’m gettin’ me a microcontroller!
“But Your Excellency, what in your kingdom is a microcontroller?”, you may ask me.
Well, my lowly subject, a microcontroller is a little thing that does stuff. There’s one in the microwave in the kitchen, one in the alarm clock that alerts you to get out of bed at 3 in the morning, and even one in your robot skull.
Yes, because my parents are wicked-awesome like that, they got me an Arduino. It is probably the most fun item that sits in my room at this moment. Here is a picture of it:
Although mine seems to be a different version than what is pictured, but it’s basically the same. Definitely a weekend-filler
To go along with it, my parents got me this book:
That is, making things talk to each other, not like, audibly talking in English… but that would be pretty sick too.
For example, you could, by using instructions from the book, make a networked Pong game using Birthday present #1 as a controller of sorts.
I hope to learn a lot from my gifts. Whether I do or not, I’ll certainly have fun!