On kickstarter I sponsored a linux game engine project, called Leadwerks. At the level I sponsored the language it supports is Lua. Since one of my principles is to learn at least one new computer language each year, I figured Lua's one of the selections for 2013. I will chronicle my experience with Lua and also would appreciate any advice folks might have on learning it or their opinion of it. So far my investigation revealed that it has heavily drawn from scheme, which is a plus in my book, but that you have to pay for convenient forms of the documentation. While I really believe in supporting art, I would like to be convinced that it is art before I support it. I also am considering including it in the coding modules of my Human Computer Interaction course at Stevens next winter and would appreciate your opinions on that.
Other progress my quadcopter kit is slowly progressing, not much motivation since the poor choice of batteries for the kit required me to order a charger from HobbyKing and that may take as long as 45 days! Not good.
I have sponsored other interesting kickstarters recently too. For those of you interested in the sous-vide cooking technique, I recommend a combo of kickstarters, one for temperature regulation, codlo, and one to accomplish really low budget vacuum sealing, thriftyvac. As a bonus I have exchanged email with both of the kickstarters and they are really great folks. If you want to dip your food in the sous-vide pool, this is an inexpensive way to begin.
One other kickstarter worthy of mention is a fountain pen, visionnaire. Being an aging hacker I grew up on the elegance of fountain pens and this seems like a great deal. A fountain pen with a good flow is more comfortable to use after all those years on the keyboard. In this age of bits on the screen it is still great to receive an occasional handwritten piece of snail mail on fine paper, highly recommended.
Finally a bit of an announcement. As of July 1st I am starting a book on Human Computer Interaction. I will keep you posted on that progress too. No working title yet, but I sure would like to work Humane into the title. I was a fan of Raskin's principles. I will try not to go so long between posts. Later!
Will the quad copter autorotate when the charge runs out of the batteries? For example, will it just fall from the sky and destroy any payload you have put in it, or will the decent be significantly less than free fall?
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