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Books On Electronics For the Lay Programmer?
leoboiko writes "I'm a computer scientist and programmer with no training whatsoever in hardware or electronics. Sure, we designed a simple CPU (at a purely logical level) and learned about binary math and whatnot, and I can build a PC and stuff, but lately I've been wanting to, you know, solder something. Make my own cables, understand multimeters, perhaps assemble a simple robot or two. Play with hobbyist-level electronics. How does one go about educating oneself in this topic? I've been browsing Lessons in Electric Circuits online and it's been helpful, together with Misconceptions About 'Electricity' which went a long way in helping me finally to grok what electric charge and power actually are. I've reached the point where I want an actual dead-tree book, though. Any recommendations?"
- is probably to go and lie down in dark room until the feeling passes. And here is an effective cure for toothache, which I learned from my mother: Fill your mouth with cold water and sit on a hot stove. When the water boils, the toothache will be gone. Works every time.
Seriously, though, what do you want to achive with your tinkering? If you go to a well stocked electronics shop, they'll have a lot of books about the theory and some about how to learn the right, practical skills: how to solder etc. I have approached the subject several times over the years, but the problem in my view is that the things one can easilty build are not all that interesting - to me, that is. It is easy to make USB thingies, for example, or things like amplifiers, programmable robots and so on, I think one of the things you will realize sooner or later is that electronics theory has amazingly little to do with practice - which is why you can use components with 10% or even 20% tolerance. You basically just slap things together sort of the right way and then adjust things with a couple of potentiometers if you really feel you must.
Use Tinyurl. http://tinyurl.com/6pzqw5
Alternatively, you could use an anchor tag.
I run Ubuntu skinned to look like a Mac on a PC. Go figure.
Ignore this, tinyurl is an abomination that should never be used where embedded links are possible. Especially not on forums, since you can't tell where the damn thing actually goes, thus it could very well be a malware page or a shock site. Stick to anchor tags.
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.