My brain, as anyone who knows me well can attest, is prone to inspiration and, consequently, distraction. This means that, in order to get things done, I rely on external aides to assist me in breaking tasks down, following through on each step, and delivering the final thing. This is not unusual among STEAMy folks, therefore systems like Kanban boards have become popular in the tech industry (and would probably be helpful if adopted by other STEM).
Since posting here about Deadlock, I’ve kept hacking away at new stuff. I haven’t posted all my recent work yet; some things take a while to test privately before they’re ready to go. Expect dedicated updates for some of them. Meanwhile, here are some things that I’ve done since Deadlock that are already on Github: Listless, a mailing list manager built around SMTP/IMAP, written in Go and scripted in Lua.
Update: In addition to implementing miniLock in Python (below), I have since also implemented it in Go, the library and tool for which can be found in the go-minilock repository. It's been over a year! I have written the occasional blogpost on indiebiotech.com in that time, but even that blog suffers. If I'm honest, and to provide flavour for the rest of this article, every time I was sitting at my keyboard and might otherwise have been motivated to write a post on something, I wrote programs instead.
I've posted twice recently after a prolonged blogging absence, and here I am again. Perhaps I should always be running a crowdfunding campaign, so that I have a stake in blogging; I'd be far more prolific! I'm too principled (or, to some “dogmatic”) to include advertisement on this or any blog, and flattr revenue is far too thin to encourage more than the occasional post otherwise. In any case, today I'd like to share something with you all that I've been meaning to write up for ages anyway, but which becomes especially relevant in light of my IndieBB DIYbio/Biohacking/Teaching plasmid design project.
For a while preceding buying my own Arduino, I spent my time looking at all the cool projects people have used them for on the Make blog, Fashioning Technology and the Arduino wiki itself. Although I love all the projects that showcase the artistic use of electronics, and I'm impressed with the more utilitarian uses also, I see great untapped potential in the Arduino as a replacement technology for certain niches where equipment is prohibitively expensive.