I'm kinda funny about electronics stuff. I'm a computer programmer, I own a solder gun, and I subscribe to Nuts n Volts (electronic geek mag). But I'm really not all that much of a electronics nut. I write programs on a computer and use one every day but I HATE opening up the hardware and touching anything inside. What a pain that can be. I have been known to solder a few things together but if I had to solder each component onto a circuit board it probably wouldn't work and I would be bored. I subscribe to Nuts n Volts just for the ads but I just scan the real geeky articles. I have always maintained that I am more like the Jeff Goldblum character in The Fly when asked by his girlfriend if he is a genius for inventing such a machine and he says that he works with geniuses that build the parts that he puts together. Yea, as a kid I loved electronics (my Dad worked for Bell Telephone and brought home all kinds of stuff). I had a radio shack 101 electronics experiment kit that I fiddled with. I built my own strobe light and color organ from kits. In the 80's I preferred to assemble my own PC's than buy them assembled (mainly to save money). These days most electronic components are so cheap and readily available that you don't need to build much yourself just buy the right parts and connect them together.
So, lately I have gone a little crazy with a company called EFX-TEK that sells small micro controllers and accessories for building Halloween props. A couple of years ago I had 1 of their controllers and used it to make a animated head of a grave digger. Last year I got more ambitious and bought a few more and built a complicated footstep effect for the display. I had intentions of converting the gravedigger head to a more sophisticated controller with better programming but didn't. This year my big plan is to build an animated skull using a more advanced controller. After our last
meeting with the guys the run the company in Utah I bought a few more parts to make another project that Chris wanted (those candles you light in a church). Now I have quite a collection of their controllers and accessories. I need to find projects for them all and the time to build them. Most of the interest I guess lies in the fact that the controllers are programmed in BASIC which I am VERY familiar with. Just build a cable here, connect a part there and before you know it, you have a cool effect. Well, I'm having fun at least.
So, lately I have gone a little crazy with a company called EFX-TEK that sells small micro controllers and accessories for building Halloween props. A couple of years ago I had 1 of their controllers and used it to make a animated head of a grave digger. Last year I got more ambitious and bought a few more and built a complicated footstep effect for the display. I had intentions of converting the gravedigger head to a more sophisticated controller with better programming but didn't. This year my big plan is to build an animated skull using a more advanced controller. After our last 
meeting with the guys the run the company in Utah I bought a few more parts to make another project that Chris wanted (those candles you light in a church). Now I have quite a collection of their controllers and accessories. I need to find projects for them all and the time to build them. Most of the interest I guess lies in the fact that the controllers are programmed in BASIC which I am VERY familiar with. Just build a cable here, connect a part there and before you know it, you have a cool effect. Well, I'm having fun at least.
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