If you are a thinker, a mad scientist in the making or just a curious ADD person like me, the Arduino boards are just what you are missing in life.

Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple micro controller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board.

Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can be communicate with software running on your computer .

Arduino hardware can be used in Windows, Mac or Linux. The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased pre-assembled and the open-source IDE (programming environment) can be downloaded for free.

There’s a great starting guide at http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage, but I have also been recommended this book:

30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius

This guide shows you how to program and build a variety of projects with the Arduino microcontroller development system. Covering Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, it gets you up to speed with the simplified C programming you need to know–no prior programming experience necessary.

You can find more books and arduino boards and components on here.

Examples of what one can accomplish with Arduino:

Technorati Tags: Arduino, arduino projects, C Programming, DIY geek, geek gifts, IDE, Linux, Mac, muti platform, Open Source, Programming, robbots, Windows

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I have selling on Amazon.co.uk a copy of each of the following books:

Linux Shell Scripting with Bash (Paperback) (SOLD)
by Ken O. Burtch (Author)
Linux Shell Scripting with Bash will help you learn to not only get your system up and running quickly by employing the Bash shell, but it will also show you professional scripting solutions through the use of structured programming and standard Linux development tools. The book focuses on the Linux environment, which the shell relies on to function, and the robust Linux tool set, making this book ideal for learning shell scripting. Real-world scripts are included that are readable, extendable and easy to debug. This book is an asset to any Linux user.

The Qmail Handbook (Paperback)
by David Sill (Author)
qmail is used by hundreds of ISPs and thousands of other sites, including Hotmail since 1997, which has over 30 million users. qmail is popular because of its security, reliability, speed, low memory use, user-controlled mailing lists, straightforward administration, and much more! An Introduction to qmail is designed to guide system and mail administrators of all levels of experience through the installation, configuration, and maintenance of a qmail server.

SSl and TLS: Building and Designing Secure Systems (Paperback)
by Eric Rescorla (Author)
SSL and TLS: Designing and Building Secure Systems offers clear and comprehensive descriptions of these security protocols and their implementation, and also provides “designs”–tried and true templates that suit various scenarios. Armed with this book, you can become well versed in the importance of SSL and TLS, be able to work with them to provide solutions, and furthermore identify an appropriate tested “design” that will solve the security problems of a proposed new network installation.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Books, Email, IT Books, Linux, Linux Shell Scripting, Qmail, Security, Server System administration, SSL. TLS

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Why has no one thought of it before….. ? You may ask. But someone now has.  The XMLVM project was created by Arno Puder and his team at San Francisco State University.  What it does is provide a bridge between disparate compile-time and run-time environments — in a word cross-compiling, as described by  Frank Ableson on the Linux Magazine website. 

XMLVM serves as an umbrella for several projects. For all projects, a Java class file or a .NET executable is first translated to an XML-document. Based on the XML-document generated by the front-end, various transformations are possible. (extracted)

The possibilities are immense, but I think it will really take off in the mobile market with Applications being able to run cross-platform from Android to iPhone and so on.

Technorati Tags: Android, Development, iPhone, Mobile, Programming, XML, XMLVM

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the PHP version 5.2.7 was removed from distribution due to a bug that caused a security hole in some configurations. The bug was related to the magic_quotes_gpc which will be deprecated in version 2.6.

The PHP development team has officially announced the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.8. This release addresses a regression introduced by 5.2.7 in regard to the magic_quotes functionality, that was broken by an incorrect fix to the filter extension. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to this release, alternatively you can apply a work-around for the bug by changing “filter.default_flags=0″ in php.ini.

Technorati Tags: PHP 5.2.7, PHP 5.2.8, Programming, Security, Web Programming

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Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development. It offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools, comes with extensive standard libraries.

The Python developers have released the final version of Python
3.0, a major reworking of the programming language. It’s said to be intentionally incompatible
with the Python 2 series.

According to Guido van Rossum (Project Founder)

“… the new features in Python 3.0, compared to 2.6.
Python 3.0, also known as “Python 3000” or “Py3K”, is the first ever
intentionally backwards incompatible Python release. There are more
changes than in a typical release, and more that are important for all
Python users. Nevertheless, after digesting the changes, you’ll find
that Python really hasn’t changed all that much – by and large, we’re
mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a lot of
old cruft.”

read the official “What’s New in Python 3.0” release.

Technorati Tags: 2to3, Programming, Py3K, Python 3.0

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