Do you think there is a defining moment where you realise that you are a geek? Like when you realise for the first time that you are interested in breasts (or other guys for that matter)? There were so many defining moments of geekdom in my childhood that I never really had a “coming out” moment. I’ve just always been this way. Nature over nuture for sure.

If you forced me to pick a defining moment, I might be tempted to describe the time that I was building a digitial tachometer kit for my 1200cc Toyota Corolla. Sure, plenty of kids have dabbled in electronic kits, experimenting with that side of life. This in itself does not make them geeks. How about building a digital tacho kit, managing to completely destroy several traces with some exceptionally poor soldering skills, but then continuing, undaunted by abject failure, to use an external breadboard to recreate the missing traces and components, and patching this sub-circuit back into the main etched board?

I tell you this, not as some sort of cry for help or sympathy-quest, but instead to explain my actions. In the dark of a cold winter, one seeks out new indoor passtimes. And what better passtime could there be than building an EEPROM programmer? I ask you?

Now I just have to think of an application. Blinkenlights anyone?

Tags: circuits, kitsets