Target (and other box stores I would guess) usually carries 1 or 2 of the Pajama Sam or Freddie Fish games on CD. They're $10 and I don't believe they require activation. In fact you don't even need the CD to run the game after it's installed, for Pajama Sam anyways. I can't speak for Freddie Fish, I wasn't around when they played it yesterday.
My wife tells me now that Freddie Fish ran directly off the CD.
That looks like the same basic game as the Pajama Sam series. These are the best kids games I've ever found. It teaches them to use the mouse, how to save/load a game (or file), and a young kid can actually play the game themselves. Every other brand of game I've bought for a young child has been buggy to the point uselessness, but these games are really good. My son could play through a Pajama Sam game on his own when he was 2 or 3 years old.
I am not an EE, but I can tell you that conventional light dimmers do not work by adding resistance. They work by delaying the point in which voltage is applied to the bulb in a half-cycle of AC power. PWM is the preferred method of controlling the apparent intensity of an LED bulb, but I don't know if dimmer circuits work very well with LED bulbs. They should function correctly and it wouldn't hurt the LED's, but I don't know if the visual effect will be as the same with an LED bulb.
The bacteria they add are normally found in traditional yogurt. These newer yogurts are just reintroducing some of formally common lactose digesting bacteria that are believed to be beneficial to humans.
The sugar in milk is lactose and it is found only in the milk of mammals. As a result, the only bacteria that can digest lactose are found in the digestive systems of mammals, specifically breast feeding 'younglings' and milk drinking humans. Yogurt is made when these bacteria are allowed to feed off of the lactose in milk, which results in the creation of lactic acid. Lactic acid gives yogurt it's tart taste and prevents the growth of other BAD bacteria. In old-world yogurt, there are a bunch of different bacteria that can be found in yogurt, many with beneficial qualities for our health. In industrial yogurt production the process is controlled and limited to only two specific bacteria that are only prized for the ability to produce yogurt very quickly.
Yogurt is historically a middle eastern food, b/c the preservative power of the lactic acid would help keep the yogurt safe to consume for some time. In northern Europe people developed the ability to digest lactose into adulthood, an ability that most people and other mammals do not have. There was an article on/. a few weeks ago about this same ability having been found to have developed in a tribe in Africa just in the past few thousand years.
I highly recomend the book "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen". In fact, on Amazon, they show the section about Milk and human history in the excerpts. It is really pretty fascinating information regarding this subject.
I agree, just b/c PCs run at 3GHz today, your dining room creations don't need to. You also should be more specific. What is you background now? Are you a programmer? Are you interested in digital or analog electronics? How much money do you want to put into the hobby?
The money part is pretty important, b/c it will dictate the equipment you will have. Electronics hobbyist cover the spectrum of a $5 radio shack soldering wand and components robbed from discarded equipment, to high dollar equipment bought at surplus auctions.
For the digital domain, it makes sense to use a microcontroller, b/c it cuts down on component count as compared to logic chips. For a $230 you can get a Microchip ICD2 and development board from www.digikey.com, P/N DV164006-ND. Microchip has a very good user community at http://forum.microchip.com/. If you want to spend less money, there are many plans on the web for do it yourself bootstrap programmers for PICs. I reccomend the ICD2 if you can afford it. It supports a very wide range of parts from Microchip, and the development board will save you a lot of time in building.
In the analog domain, the operational amplifier is the heart electronics. A great place to start, if you have not already, is to build math functions with op-amps... dividers, multipliers, integrators, et. As you perfect different analog circuits, you can start to combine them into larger circuits.
Depending on the money your willing to invest, there a lot of good books available. The first I would suggest, and I've seen it in other posts in the this thread, is The Art of Electronics. It's a good general reference. Also, it can't be overstated, the wealth of information available on the web in the form of manufacturers datasheets and application notes. www.national.com is a good place to start looking for datasheets. They have some really good online tutorials, check out there analog university, http://www.national.com/AU/. Wikipedia links to some good resources as well in their electronics articles.
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Actually, now that you mention it, didn't they do this in Tom Clancy's 'Clear and Present Danger'?
I think you mean the NSA and ECHELON.
Target (and other box stores I would guess) usually carries 1 or 2 of the Pajama Sam or Freddie Fish games on CD. They're $10 and I don't believe they require activation. In fact you don't even need the CD to run the game after it's installed, for Pajama Sam anyways. I can't speak for Freddie Fish, I wasn't around when they played it yesterday. My wife tells me now that Freddie Fish ran directly off the CD.
I agree!
That looks like the same basic game as the Pajama Sam series. These are the best kids games I've ever found. It teaches them to use the mouse, how to save/load a game (or file), and a young kid can actually play the game themselves. Every other brand of game I've bought for a young child has been buggy to the point uselessness, but these games are really good. My son could play through a Pajama Sam game on his own when he was 2 or 3 years old.
I am not an EE, but I can tell you that conventional light dimmers do not work by adding resistance. They work by delaying the point in which voltage is applied to the bulb in a half-cycle of AC power. PWM is the preferred method of controlling the apparent intensity of an LED bulb, but I don't know if dimmer circuits work very well with LED bulbs. They should function correctly and it wouldn't hurt the LED's, but I don't know if the visual effect will be as the same with an LED bulb.
Touche'... coconut milk and soy milk do not contain lactose.
The bacteria they add are normally found in traditional yogurt. These newer yogurts are just reintroducing some of formally common lactose digesting bacteria that are believed to be beneficial to humans. The sugar in milk is lactose and it is found only in the milk of mammals. As a result, the only bacteria that can digest lactose are found in the digestive systems of mammals, specifically breast feeding 'younglings' and milk drinking humans. Yogurt is made when these bacteria are allowed to feed off of the lactose in milk, which results in the creation of lactic acid. Lactic acid gives yogurt it's tart taste and prevents the growth of other BAD bacteria. In old-world yogurt, there are a bunch of different bacteria that can be found in yogurt, many with beneficial qualities for our health. In industrial yogurt production the process is controlled and limited to only two specific bacteria that are only prized for the ability to produce yogurt very quickly. Yogurt is historically a middle eastern food, b/c the preservative power of the lactic acid would help keep the yogurt safe to consume for some time. In northern Europe people developed the ability to digest lactose into adulthood, an ability that most people and other mammals do not have. There was an article on /. a few weeks ago about this same ability having been found to have developed in a tribe in Africa just in the past few thousand years.
I highly recomend the book "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen". In fact, on Amazon, they show the section about Milk and human history in the excerpts. It is really pretty fascinating information regarding this subject.
I agree, just b/c PCs run at 3GHz today, your dining room creations don't need to. You also should be more specific. What is you background now? Are you a programmer? Are you interested in digital or analog electronics? How much money do you want to put into the hobby? The money part is pretty important, b/c it will dictate the equipment you will have. Electronics hobbyist cover the spectrum of a $5 radio shack soldering wand and components robbed from discarded equipment, to high dollar equipment bought at surplus auctions. For the digital domain, it makes sense to use a microcontroller, b/c it cuts down on component count as compared to logic chips. For a $230 you can get a Microchip ICD2 and development board from www.digikey.com, P/N DV164006-ND. Microchip has a very good user community at http://forum.microchip.com/. If you want to spend less money, there are many plans on the web for do it yourself bootstrap programmers for PICs. I reccomend the ICD2 if you can afford it. It supports a very wide range of parts from Microchip, and the development board will save you a lot of time in building. In the analog domain, the operational amplifier is the heart electronics. A great place to start, if you have not already, is to build math functions with op-amps... dividers, multipliers, integrators, et. As you perfect different analog circuits, you can start to combine them into larger circuits. Depending on the money your willing to invest, there a lot of good books available. The first I would suggest, and I've seen it in other posts in the this thread, is The Art of Electronics. It's a good general reference. Also, it can't be overstated, the wealth of information available on the web in the form of manufacturers datasheets and application notes. www.national.com is a good place to start looking for datasheets. They have some really good online tutorials, check out there analog university, http://www.national.com/AU/. Wikipedia links to some good resources as well in their electronics articles.