Mark Tilden's 600 foot workbench

Being in Canada, October is practically the doorstep of winter. Some places get a full three months of autumn, but for us it's one big multicolored blur before everything gets covered in white. Sure, that means that winter takes up half the year. But do you know what it also means? Thanksgiving comes almost a […]

Tis the official “Talk Like a Pirate Day” this fine Septembarrrr the 19th. For all ye landlubberrrrs, thatÂ’s this Tuesday September the 19th. If ye be an unbeliever, check out the official site here. In celebrrration of this fine tradition, we be offerrring a special deal. Everyone knows that every good Pirate needs a swashbucklin-Solarrrr-Speederrrr […]

The Googles tell us that 'synapse' is defined as "a junction between two nerve cells, consisting of a minute gap across which impulses pass by diffusion of a neurotransmitter." This, however, is one of the rare instances where The Googles are wrong, because what Synapse actually is (according to Jeremie, our tech guy) are RF engines […]

Unlike Sparkfun, who actually manage to find fake Atmel ICs, we just get strange batches. The Atmel ATMega328 is the power behind the Arduino/Freeduino/*duino, and we have to set up a programming system to burn the venerable Arduino Bootloader into these chips. We normally use an AVR STK500 in HVSP (high voltage serial programming) mode, […]