Gadgets, depression, getDare

It's been a long time since I wrote a blog on here so I have decided to write some of my thoughts down.

Finished both my summer school classes on Wednesday and came home feeling dead. The last two weeks of school work consisted of me writing countless papers and not sleeping. I felt so terrible and stressed coming back from my finals that when I lay down to get some much needed rest I worried I would die if I fell asleep. I felt that stressed and messed up.

Well, after sleeping for about 24 hours I felt good as new. As a hobby I build gadgets and robots. I figured since I don't have much work this time of year I would spend a few days relaxing and building something. I had seen some nifty AVR driven OLED screens online and wanted to build some sort of handheld touchscreen gadget. I decided on building a basic lie detector based on GSR technology (I've always had an obsession for GSR and using the data gained from it in interesting ways).

I splurged big time and bought tons of fancy hardware and additional tools to build my gadget. I wanted to build the ultimate handheld lie detector.

So, I spend two days building the device and writing some kickass software to run on the AVR chip. The result was better than I could have ever imagined. After several days work I had a handheld lie detector with a graphing mode and even a concentration game thrown in where you have to levitate a monk, who sits on the touchscreen, with your mind.

So, with my finished product I start looking for attractive cases to mount the hardware in. Well, before the case was finished I decide to hang out with some of my friends and let them demo my latest creation. Big mistake. The temporary case I made to house the device was poorly made and some of the wires came loose. The result is the fancy touchscreen and OLED are now useless. Two of the wires crossed and now there is a big black bar across the OLED screen making it useless.

This just crushed my spirit. I spent about $240 getting all this fancy hardware and then two solid days writing a cool interface only to have it be for nothing. I may buy new hardware in the future and finish it but I just don't have any cash now. I just wanted to cry when the damn with broke.

It's going to be a long summer. Guess it's time to figure out all that screen printing gear I got a while back. Ohhh, and I think Kink Talk still needs love.

I love getDare because it is the one friendly place I am always welcome. You guys mean a lot to me. It's nice knowing there are a bunch of cool people I can always chat and learn with.