A chip off the old Chip!
mindrobots
Posts: 6,506
I was reading the Espruino forum the other day and stumbled across a thread with this quote from Gordon Williams, the creator of Espruino,
So as you go through your day to day living, think of what might happen from you showing someone something, taking some time to mentor someone or passing off some no longer used electronic "toy" to an eager mind.
From little walnuts, mighty trees can grow!!
(That made more sense than, "take time to smell the tortillas!")
"It's interesting that you came from Basic Stamp - that was really one of my motivations for Espruino... trying to provide an interpreted language in a micro, but doing it with something a bit more modern."
So as you go through your day to day living, think of what might happen from you showing someone something, taking some time to mentor someone or passing off some no longer used electronic "toy" to an eager mind.
From little walnuts, mighty trees can grow!!
(That made more sense than, "take time to smell the tortillas!")
Comments
Then the guy who dreamed up the Arduino also said he was inspired by the BASIC Stamp.
On the other hand, many years ago I showed my girl friend the 6809 board I had built, explained all about hexadecimal and instructions and how to program the thing via it's hex key pad and seven segment displays. She was not at all technical, her passion was arts and drama. But, the next thing I know she is studying maths, economics and computer science at the local technical college. Then she left me to go and get a degree in mathematics. Last I heard she was a software engineer in Germany.
Moral of the story, never show you geek toys to the girl you love.
Or marry the girlfriend before she gets away
In my case, I married a instructor/programmer/operator on another ICL computer. While she doesn't like electronics, she cannot complain that she didn't know what she was getting into. I already had my ICL mini running in my a/c garage!
Guess it explains why our 3 kids worked part-time in electronics while at school.
Walnuts are nice trees, but the wood is just not as sturdy as oak.
Other folk may attempt to use a mustard seed reference (Mathew 13:31:32), but that gets off into the weeds when talking technological innovation.
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Bottomline... I am happy to see someone admit that the BasicStamp was their inspiration for something better. I think that really all that Chip ever hoped for it to be -- and not 'the dominant microcontroller in the whole wide world" The BasicStamp just made everyone aware that educational microchips were possible. Thus all that has come to pass.
There was a time when Ken Gracy was madly rushing from high school to high school explaining the BasicStamp to educators. It wasn't all just sitting around and raking in piles of cash.
If I'm building a ship, I want Oak, if I'm building a runabout, I want Mahogany, if I'm building cabinetry, case work or small pieces, I want Walnut (or at least a Walnut veneer over a sturdy Oak carcass) and not Oak. The only Oak I really like is quarter sawn Oak. Walnut smells much better when you saw it also, it has a rich, nutty smell (doh!), where oak has a bitter, unpleasant smell reminding me of diluted cat urine. Lately, I'm tending toward Cherry and Maple for domestic woods. All of it is too expensive now days to build anything of size. For small things, you can get into the exotic woods, like Bubinga, which I like just because it is fun to say!
I told you, the choices for quotes were the Walnut one or the tortilla one which just didn't fit!
There is this nice story about the roof of Salisbury Cathedral, I think it was, anyway after five hundred years or so the roof had rotted out and needed replacing. Conveniently the guys who built the cathedral had also planted new oaks around it. Five hundred years later those oaks were just ready to cut down for the new roof!
I don't see anybody thinking so long term now a days.
Awesome!! That could be the best example of "just in time" logistics!!
Today, you're lucky to get planning 2 or 3 quarters in advance.
P.S. Yes, cost of wood.....my Mahogany runabout cruised way past my budget a long time ago, even with less pressure on my computer budget!!
-Tor
That would not happen here, the environmentalists would all be protesting, EPA would be suing and ELFers would be chaining themselves to the trees.
In no way does my story rise to the level of a new oak cathedral roof planned 500 years in advance, but I'm still pleased to have become self-sufficient in firewood thanks to tree seedlings I planted, 50-at-a-time, for 65¢ a shot when we built our house 23 years ago.
That's pretty cool! How many total seedlings did you plant in total? If given 500 unmolested years, your forest would probably be pretty impressive!