The company that I work for has occasional seminars for if you are interested in new technologies. Free to sign up. And if you want to actually use them for your own purposes, you can sign them out and go to town.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to learn about the Arduino system. Nominally it was to learn how to use Neopixels, but it was more learning about Arduino than anything else. Arduino is basically a way to create electronic devices. In the class we mostly controlled a strip of lights (the aforementioned Neopixels) but there are lots of things that you could use the Arduino for.
That is part of the problem. I wish I had something like this when I was a child. Back then I had an interest in electronics, but I never had an easy way to make anything. Or good ways to learn how to create anything. The Arduino would have let me experiment with things.
At this stage in my life, my creativity is shot. If I had the time to create devices, I don’t have any idea what I would want to make. If I was a child I could make completely stupid things. But right now, there is nothing electronic I need to make my life more interesting.
It’s kind of sad; to acknowledge the loss of youth. In such a geeky way.
Today though we learned about drones. It was an hour where we got an idea of how to fly a drone, what are the issues and problems, and what are the cool things you can do with them. Unfortunately it was too wet (Vancouver!) to actually take them out.
If I had the motivation, it would be awesome to have one and take video of people running an ultra marathon. The problem is that, in those cases, I’m usually busy doing the running. And I don’t think my company wants me give the drone to someone, untrained, outside the company.
And let’s be honest: I take a lot of pictures that I never do anything with. Why would video be any different. It would be cool to do, but wouldn’t go anywhere.
Next week is 3D printing, which I already have plans for how to abuse.