Its about time we talked about my other obsession — music. You might now this, but I’ve produced and released two albums on iTunes and CDBaby. More info inside.

Recent versions of cheap Arduino clones have been coming out with a different USB/Serial chip, which replaces the usual FTDI. The chipset is called CH340G and this post explains how to install the drivers for it on both Mac and Windows.

LaserCutter & MakeABox.io — its a ruby gem and a website for making PDF designs of laser-cut boxes, which fit/snap in together at all edges using tabs that go in and out. The output of the library is a PDF document. Typically next step would import that PDF into Adobe Illustrator for additions and touch ups, and then sent off to a laser cutter for the actual, well, cutting.

Occupus (formerly BORAT: Bathroom Occupancy Remote Awareness Technology) – is an Arduino-based restroom occupancy detection and rapid notification system based on a network of nRF24L01+ 2.4GHz RF radios. It supports multiple (up to 5) casters (each installed in a bathrooms) and a single reporting unit.

Review of Arduino IDE Alternatives.

Review of the list of books on being a Maker that I’ve been reading and thoroughly enjoying.

In this post I share the story of how I got myself into Hardware programming with Arduino.

Back Seat Driver is a library for programming autonomous (or not) Arduino based robots. This library provides a convenient non-blocking command API to programmatically drive an autonomous vehicle. Current implementation is aimed at a 2-wheeled robot, with the two Servo motors setup opposite each other. Therefore to move the robot forward (or backward), two Servos need to rotate in the opposite direction (this is certainly true in the current version of the library, but may be more flexible in the future if need arises).

In this exciting and informative talk, presented at PgConf Silicon Valley 2015, Konstantin cut through the theory to deliver a clear set of practical solutions for scaling applications atop PostgreSQL, eventually supporting millions of active users, tens of thousands concurrently, and with the application stack that responds to requests with a 100ms average. He will share how his team solved one of the biggest challenges they faced: effectively storing and retrieving over 3B rows of 'saves' (a Wanelo equivalent of Instagram’s likes or Pinterest’s pins), all in PostgreSQL, with highly concurrent random access.