The other day someone sent a note from a Danish newspaper claiming Bill Gates to be the inventor of the personal computer. Trying to find a source machine is very difficult (Gates was strongly inspired by the MITS Altair as printed in Popular Electronics) and it is fairly easy to supply candidates. While not a good history on the subject, this site has some nice images of bygone machines that will stimulate memories in folks of a certain age. Remember the Minivac 601? And to think that I nearly spent a Summer's worth of yardwork money on one.
http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml
A good feature of earlier times (and I don't think there were many) was the closer connection between a hobbiest and atoms. You could easily kill yourself dabbling in electronics and repairing an engine was within the reach of a 12 year old. Most people only have a vague idea of how anything they own works and it seems wrong that kids are abstracted into symbolic manipulations (not that such things are bad - it just seems unbalanced).
Of course there are things like stamps and legos. Stamps are particularly interesting - they are cheap enough for a teenager and simple enough that a beginner can reason with them and coerce interesting behavior.
http://www.parallaxinc.com/
Of course this could lead to places like MIT.
Teddy Borg ... " Because we have the vain hope that it will attract women"
http://draco.mit.edu/teddyborg/
For whatever reason I felt motivated to fly a kite today. The lunacy of this in 95 degree weather was compounded by the zephyr -ish breeze. Much of my life has been spent in windy areas and kites have ranged from hobby to passion along the way. While multi-line kites are fun (two and four line), I tend to prefer watching beautiful sculpture flying in the sky.
A few years ago I attended a performance of indoor kite flying by GuildWorks. These guys are extraordinary craftspeople and performers and I found myself lusting after several of their creations. I filed their business card for later use and managed to loose it until today when a ferret brought it to me (ferrets are wonderful serendipity generators). Check out their site
http://www.guildworks.com/products.htm
My notes tell me that I need to master a Synergy Zero-Wind Deca and any of the Tetrafoils at some point in life. Some of their pieces rank as fine art and they will do special commissions.
If you want something between a GuildWorks sky sculpture and what the local toy store offers, get thee to Into the Wind. They give fine service, good prices and have kites for nearly every taste.
http://www.intothewind.com/
Kite aerial photography is reasonably fun. As a teenager I tried a bit with a Kodak brownie and a sail relay to trip the shutter. The images were mostly awful (when it worked), but with cheap RC you can do much better these days.
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/kaptoc.html
The reason for noting this particular site is a strangeness about the author - he trades aerial photography for slide rules.
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/background/kapoffer.html
I have a few - well - about a dozen, and still regularly use my 1968 Picket N4-ES (there are times when a good slide rule blows away Maple and Mathematica). A few of you know where this is leading...
Dave Kormann fell for slide rules in a big way. I don't want to accept any responsibility, but will claim to be very impressed by the enterprise.
http://foraker.research.att.com/~davek/slide/
steve waves to dave
2:47:02 PM 
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