Upcoming: 100th Post Giveaway!

My first post was 12/07/2010, almost two years ago. It was a slow start, but things really picked up this year after the Maker Faire. Over the past two years I have gone from the basic Arduino starter kit to building Robots and programming weekly. I have learned more about electronics than I thought I ever would which has me wanting to completely change my major and my career. All because of the simple Arduino Kit I picked up at Fry's. Every new project has me pushing my limits and expanding my knowledge, keeping my brain hungry for more. Now the Raspberry Pi has me becoming more proficient with Linux and venturing into other languages like Python. Thanks to the idea of starting a blog early on, I have been able to document my progress while giving me an avenue to share my work and meet other makers. It has been the motivating factor to put myself out there in the maker community and be apart of the open source movement. As well as work on new projects to share. As this blog grows along with my knowledge and experience, I strive to evenutally do something like LadyAda at Adafruit.com or Ian at Dangerousprototypes.com: make this a full time career.

To celebrate this milestone, I want to do a little giveaway. This post marks the 95th post. At post 100, I will post the official giveaway. It will probably be later this month as I already have a few posts in draft form. Plus, the Thursday Wishlist posts.

I plan to continue this blog as long as possible while hoping for growth and expansion  This year the number of daily visitors has grown and I hope that my readers enjoy it as much as I do. I do have one challenge for my readers and that is to provide feedback in the comments. I really look forward to comments. Especially to know if my readers are finding my projects interesting and or helpful. I also enjoy hearing about any related projects.

You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or subscribe via E-mail to be notified of the giveaway and the new project. I will post in small parts until I reveal the entire scope of the project. I also use Twitter to tweet cool things I find around the interwebs. Also don't forget I am on IRC on freenode in channel #MobileWill.

I want to thank the following companies: Arduino, Adafruit, Dangerous Prototypes, Sparkfun\BatchPCB, Pololu, DSS Circuits, DFRobot, Seeedstudio, and others who have enabled the hobbyist like myself to have access to hardware. Especially breakout boards which help have access to ICs what would be hard to use otherwise. Some of these companies also provide the best tutorials which really help us who don't have an EE background, yet. These companies have helped make the Open Source movement what it is today and inspired many to push their limits. I'd also like to thank my good friend and engineering whiz, Warren, for filling in the gaps. If you haven't started making, pick up a kit from one these companies and get started! That is all it takes to open a whole new world regardless of age or expertise.

Here are some kits to get you started:

The MintyBoost Kit from Adafruit

SparkFun's Inventor Kit for Arduino

Thanks for taking the time to follow along with me here! I have a major project that will be posted soon and it's with this project that I plan to take this to the next level.