On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 11:22:11AM -0400, Michael wrote: > > Anyway, I need some advice. I'm coming from a straight CS background. > > I haven't hacked around with hardware that much and I must confess I > > find it a bit intimidating, but that's all right - it's fun to learn. > We sound like we're in a similar boat. My main thought is don't be afraid > to experiment. It's kind of like how I'm guessing you learned to use > computers. You wonder to yourself, what does this do? And then, click or > type it to find out. Of course, sometimes you end up trashing the hard > drive or something, but I think learning by trial and error is the best > way...just tinkering with stuff. Of course, practice on cheap stuff, > though. Hard to reformat solder. :) I'm really glad I got an iPAQ, even if it's a bit on the expensive side. Being able to easily reflash its memory and program it using the usual bag of Linux tricks has gotten me even more into wearable computing. The Mercury Project of Compaq has this really neat-looking sleeve called the BackPAQ - it has image capture, audio in/out, extra memory and even some accelerometers. I'm going to see if we can get a pair for our research lab here. It's just so much easier to debug software. Probing with an oscilloscope looks tedious, and when I broke the Assabet (oops! ouch) even the people with backgrounds in hardware couldn't debug it. Must be rather difficult to deal with such small circuits. =) Not scared of experimenting. Have broken my iPAQ before while reprogramming the bootloader, but the ultranice people at Compaq helped me out. Not scared of starting from scratch, either, and coming from a CS background might be fun. =) Sacha 8) -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org Please, *PLEASE* don't subscribe through a forward/expander/false domain
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