I hope it rains this weekend. Spider kit and lots of other goodies just arrived.
I am in Romania at the moment with my wife and her family. Picking this stuff up is a mind-bending trip into the past, and involves visiting the Post Office - a land of handwritten paper forms and rubber stamps - and standing in front of stern-faced customs folks who inspect your package and choose a taxation category and rate (ranging from painful to extortionistic). This time I had them stumped. This was not something they could find a category for. That made me smile (though for 30 solid minutes) - until the rate still came back as ‘extortionistic’. Oh well. “Bine ati venit Romania”
[Apologies if you see post this twice - I posted a similar entry a while ago, but never saw it appear]
Well, I couldn’t resist busting open a couple packets and taking it for a test drive.
I’ve done a lot of NETMF programming, and I was in MS Research Redmond when SPOT was being developed, and I was working in MS Research Cambridge when what was to become the Gadgeteer hardware design was being prototyped there, but I am ashamed to admit today was my first Gadgeteer program. Everything else I have done with NETMF has been on bespoke hardware. All I can say is y’all went and made that way too easy. Where’s the challenge?
That particular device looks like something you move up to once you have some non-trivial requirements. I only lack two minor details before leaping into the G400 : a paying customer and a design justification.
Looks like a sweet board, but I think I can get my fix at a lower price point until someone else is footing the bill.
More than you ever wanted to know …
Well, now that you mention it, yes. The actual origins of the Romanian people is up for debate by people who debate about such things, but there were Roman colonists in Romania. There are still Roman ruins and Latin inscriptions here, including in the center of the town of Constanta plus a cool Roman battle emplacement nearby there. The Romanian language is the nearest living example to Latin (and, as a result, pretty dang complex to learn - at least for me).
So yeah - there were Romans in Romania. But it seems like a stormy relationship that ended badly.
The real nature and history (not the Dracula stuff) of Romania is impressive. It is wild, natural and covered with layers and layers of history. I am in the north, in Iasi, near the borders with the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
Some of the buried history is dangerous though. My father-in-law dug up a WWII 75mm high-explosive artillery shell last weekend while working his field and the forest nearby is filled with unexploded shells. This is where the Russians came through (twice) on their way to Germany. Turks, Russians, Germans and Romanians have all fought for the hilltops around here.
@ mcalsyn - Wow, Romaina. At least my country is better than this. We have skyboxes. They deliver to your house, and you pay with credit card when they show up.
