Complete Beginner Guide to Arduino
If you’re interested, conceptually, in hacking together your own electronics (to participate in potentially one of the most rewarding sectors of the economy), here’s a book (PDF) to get you going. Kudos to Mike McRoberts.
The booklet has been written presuming that you have no prior knowledge of electronics, the Arduino hardware, software environment or of computer programming. At no time will we get too deep into electronics or programming in C. There are many other resources available for free that will enable you to learn a lot more about this subject if you wish to go further.
The best possible way to learn the Arduino, after using this kit of course, is to join the Arduino Forum on the Arduino website and to check out the code and hardware examples in the ?Playground? section of the Arduino website too.
The Next Industrial Revolution
Chris Anderson has a pretty decent article on the topic. In it he outlines the intermediate step between true decentralized manufacturing and now.
It would be better if he weren’t stuck on China.
Military Minus $$$$
Zen is right. The entire debate is predicated on a perpetual excessive budget. A culture that has, for a generation, had the resources to debate whether to spend billions on fighter jets or reconstruction will quickly find itself unable to cope when it can afford neither.
Of course, constraints drive innovation, and we’ll see a new wave of officers that understand and operate from that perspective, and it will be those guys that take on the COIN crowd (and win). But that’s a reactive approach.
If you want to get ahead of the curve on this one, there is something you can do, and it centers on the acquisition system. I’m not talking about a top-down epic, four-star-involved overhaul, but rather a simple purchasing philosophy.
Don’t buy something expensive you’re not going to see until it is finished in a couple years. Instead, buy cheap, useful stuff that you can get, play with, customize and deploy pretty quickly. Think weeks and months rather than years and decades. Find and utilize processes that enable you to do this often, and in a way that lets you toss/abort what isn’t working without much wasted resources.
On R.N Vaidya
My father’s father passed away at 80. He’s of that generation that built the world we live in, but is all-too-rarely, if ever, written about on the internet. Hence this.
Ram Narayan Vaidya. 1929-2010.
This is a quick overview of his story. It’s inspiring, particularly in these uncertain times.
His father died when he was young, leaving him in charge of two little brothers and a mother. He knew his task was existential, which built up an unwavering discipline that lasted his entire life, through college and law school. He instilled it in others. As a result, him and his brothers and his sons were ‘toppers’ – the number one students in their classes and all-important exams; two of his three sons graduated from the hardest technology school in the world (IIT), one joined the elite civil service, and one went on to the equally rigorous IIM. My grandfather also read voraciously and went on to write several books on everything from mathematics to religion, in two languages. (They’re now stocked at most major public college libraries throughout the world.)
The success of those around him was always important. While he was away at school, his little brother dropped out to work in the inhumane conditions of a beedi factory. My grandfather got wind, transferred schools, and took on a job of his own to support the family while his brother returned to school. As a result, he was unable to afford tuition, but a teacher, believing in his potential, actually asked for the funds to be garnished from his own wages. In India. In the 1940’s.
Without him, my family would still be, without doubt, subsistence farmers in rural central India. Instead, we’ve had the good fortune of raising two generations of doctors, scientists, military officers, government officials, technologists, entrepreneurs, and teachers. It’s why a LOT of people, many unrelated, called him “Daddy.”
Despite the role that poverty played in his life, Daddy never chased the all mighty rupee. In fact, after law school, he turned down a highly rewarding job offer from the then-infant Indian Oil Company (as general counsel) in order to serve as an officer in the Indian Administrative Service.
He was a key part of that generation of civil service officers who built governance platforms, provided services, addressed conflict, and essentially ran mini-states. He was a brevet two-star general while the country faced its most pressing security challenges. All while maintaining a firm stance against corruption, for a 30 year career. (A rare feat in any part of the world, particularly that.)
Once, when the bureaucracy was too cumbersome, he tried to retire early. Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, personally requested he stay. And, out of a sense of civic duty, he did. Later, at the pinnacle of his career (he served as a Collector, Commissioner, and Joint Secretary as well as Chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission, among other positions) he turned down a position as a director of the Reserve Bank of India where, in his words “our lives would have been set,” to work on local-level youth affairs.
It stems from the simple fact that he knew his success was a result of goodwill, so he always went out of his way to help anyone that he could, at his own expense. He treated his nuclear family, his home, and his position as a platform. His brothers, their children, my grandmother’s family, my mother’s family, were all tutored, mentored, cared for, sometimes clothed and fed, and married off by him. He cared for the entire family as his own, and then some.
Even in his passing, he continued to do “the most for the mostest,” by donating his body for medical research so that progress could be made on Addison’s Disease, something he suffered from for most of his life.
Thanks for reading.
S