Got my invite for the new digg alpha preview. I must not be the only one because the login screen is hanging. #digg

RT @Funks29: Kick Ass “Better Off Ted” is back on tonight!!!

It is this point where I recall reading that Radio Shack was founded for hobbyists who built ham radios, which was probably a niche market at the time and still is, but if you can grow a business catering to a growing niche market, why shift gears to compete against giants like Best Buy. It had been a while since I’d entered a Radio Shack and actually purchased something, but I’ve learned that the only good part of the store is the back where they have the “hobby” section. The rest of the store is full of cellphones on display and maybe a RC Car. it is unfortunate that Radio Shack has abandoned its demographic that made them so popular, but at least they have partitioned an eighth of the store to such a niche market. I found an overpriced capacitor pretty quickly (because there were only 3 different values) and proceded to the checkout. Words can not describe the confused look the clerk gave me as he rang up the capacitor, and after I paid, he questioned me on my cell phone plan, I guess in an attempt to get me upgrade my 5 year old RAZR. I walked out hoping i’d never have to enter Radio Shack again, and anxious to fix my monitor.

I was completely wrong and a week later, I read an article in Hack a Day about a Parallax RFID Reader for $10, a great deal from the normal price of $40. I wasn’t working Memorial Day and figured I’d see if any of the local stores had one or two in stock. I visited 4 stores in total, starting at 9am when they first opened, and the first 3 didn’t have any in stock. Each time I enquired with the clerk, they provided extremely little help, and for the most part were rude. They probably get commission on opening a cellphone plan, and saw me as some nuisance that get them money early in the morning. I was determined to find the RFID reader and driving between s wouldn’t tores and getting stuck behind a Memorial Day parade gave me a lot of time to think about the future of Radio Shack. Radio Shack doesn’t see enough commerce in the hobby market, and are probably going to try and get rid of all the hobby equipment to just be in the cell phone and consumer electronics business.

It wasn’t shocking when I heard that companies are bidding to buy Radio Shack, probably in an attempt to acquire it’s cell phone department. I highly doubt that any company that buys Radio Shack will maintain the hobby section, and the era of the mainstream hobbyest is fully shifting online, which may be daunting to the unguided novice. Luckily there will hopefully always be mom and pop stores who cater to the hobby market, like Unicorn Electronics, which was amazingly convient for getting parts immediately while finishing projects for my undergraduate degree. Luckily there are a lot of replacements helping beginners learn electronics, like MAKE Magazine, and hopefully more will emerge to help the ever growing market of hobbyests learn and challenge themselves.

Listening to #NoAgenda with @adamcurry and @therealdvorak live @ http://noagendastream.com in the morning. #ITM

Working on importing all my social network stuff to my website to make it automatic. Take a look. http://www.stevenviola.com

As I mentioned, I have graduated from Binghamton University, and received my Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering Degree. Not having to write film noir essays, and read bioengineering research papers gives me more time to do things I enjoy, especially programming and engineering. I have many projects for the summer, which hopefully I document here. One idea i can now work on is a project manager to gather and organize all the ideas I have throughout the day, so I don’t forget them and miss out on the next big thing. The way I want it to be is every project is always evolving, and projects can be merged together.

Speaking of forgetting projects, when migrating the blog to Wordpress, I had more ideas for my Nixie clock, and i predict a Nixie Clock Part 2, and maybe Part 3 to wrap up the trilogy. I gained a tremendous amount of experience in the past 2 years, and things that seemed difficult or out of my league are simple for me now. I now know how to design, manufacture, and populate printed circuit boards, even with surface mount devices. A new project I can’t wait to tackle is getting my payphone to work. Since my last post, I acquired a payphone, and sucessfully opened it, and was able to place calls. Unfortunately the coin return coil doesn’t work properly, and I haven’t had much time to fix it, but I hope to get Skype calling independent of a PC on the payphone, which may be a challenge, but we’ll see.

Hopefully wordpress and my free webhost will be nice, and not give me any problems, so I can just focus on my projects and not have to worry about constantly fixing and maintaining everything. I look forward to enjoying my summer and the projects ahead of me, and will hopefully post again soon.

From the Official Google blog:

Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV -- it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.

@Tomtiernan Wow, never thought I’d see the day. I’m back btw, unpacking, but ready to do the DS SLR thing whenever you are.

@suebasile Finally I have a reason to use Twitter