I've found a plain (hardback, moleskine-like) notebook with no preprinted page numbers / dates works for me. Dates are filled in when entries are made.
It avoids situations where there's a feeling of wastage when a page isn't fully filled, or cramped writing when there's more than a page worth of information to write down.
Diligent makes several boards for the educational market, prices in the sub-$200 range. (And the devices are small enough they can be used with the no-cost version of the AMD/Xilinx toolchain.)
I looked at nand2tetris a while ago briefly and I have the impression that it focuses too much on making complex circuits.
The target audience for nand2tetris are people that want to understand how the CPU works, and nand2tetris focuses too much on how to make logic using nand gates leaving other areas uncovered.
I recommend the Ben Eater youtube chamnel, he has a series of videos about building an 8bit computer, that in my opinion is much more informative for a curious person.
I’ve gone through the nand2tetris course (parts 1 and 2) and I’ve also physically built Ben Eater’s projects.
nand2tetris covers many levels of abstraction; it is both lower and (much) higher level than Ben Eater’s projects, which is one of its main points: you can create something in one level of abstraction and then build on it in the next level of abstraction. It only starts with logic gates (a single one to start with, “nand” obviously) and goes through the other logic gates that can be built from nand gates, then various digital logic built on that, registers and other synchronous logic, ALU, full CPU, full computer. Hardware is only the first half of the course. Then you build a stack machine, assembler, objected oriented language compiler, a software library I think, and finally a game you write in that (doesn’t have to be Tetris). So the whole second half is layer on layer of software abstractions starting from the hardware. I would say it handwaves over video output and keyboard input because it’s not what they’re teaching about, while Ben Eater shows how to physically build such things.
Ben’s is purely hardware up through 2 main registers, an alu with only add and subtract, an 8 bit digital readout, no real input (besides updating RAM to input the code & data using switches), 16 bytes of RAM (4-bit address), and control unit to implement machine language with a few opcodes. His 6502 project starts with a CPU which is already far beyond where the 8-bit computer ends and builds a computer architecture around it (RAM, ROM, I/O, and peripherals: video, keyboard, serial).
nand2tetris is normally simulated and Ben’s covers physically building things which has its own set of lessons/skills to learn. Coincidentally I ran across a crossover of the two projects today: a video of someone who built a breadboard version of the nand2tetris 16-bit cpu (called Hack)! https://youtu.be/L-azf9ecvfo
I like the iCEBreaker board, relatively cheap (80 euro), uses the digilent Pmod interface for add-on boards and the Lattice FPGA works well with OSS tooling (Yosys, Icestorm, ... for me this is a deal-breaker as I hate the proprietary IDEs).
Here are some project tutorials for it (should be easy to adapt to other hardware too):
There's a ton of of dev boards out there, but I would say to be sure to get something with hardware buttons and LEDs, as it really helps with some of the Hello World level of things, and many of the cheapest options won't have those.
I started messing with FPGAs with the DE0-Nano, but eventually got so frustrated with the tiny buttons that I upgraded to a DE0-CV, which I really enjoyed my time with. It has some 7 segment LEDs, physical switches, and buttons, and it also has a VGA port, PS/2 port, and Micro SD card slot, so you can build a pretty snazzy little PC if you want to.
Altera MAX 10 evaluation board is probably one of the cheapest options. You use quartus prime lite to configure it which is free, and better than the equivalent Lattice tools.
AFAIK that usage traces back to the 1990s TV show "Quantum Leap", in which the protagonist would travel in space & time to a new place each episode.
The phrase 'Quantum Leap', then, was popularly taken to mean a large change.
The damage done to the vernacular by that show's title is only exceeded by the damage done to the vernacular by another piece of 1990s popular culture, Alanis Morissette's song 'Ironic'.
The only downside I see for electric yard equipment is the vendor lock-in with batteries. Other than that, they work just fine.
Pay up front for two batteries and a fast-enough charger, and you can charge one battery while you wear the other down; there's still some downtime, but after wearing out a battery the human operator probably needs some downtime, too.
The cost is basically equivalent, minus the battery cost; consider it a prepayment for gasoline, and it probably works out on that front, too.
There are a few large vendors to choose form though. While you have to choose your battery system up front, there are some good choices. the vendors have to compete as well as for companies they have stuff and batteries break all the time so if one vendor is a problem they just move one crew to a different system and distribute their old stuff to other crews. Or just start buying the new vendor for all crews and when not much of the old stuff is left throw it away.
Note that the above is about professional grade tools where you will find is useful to be locked into a battery system. For typical people have a drill on a different battery from the blower isn't a big deal, just buy a couple batteries. When the battery wears out in 10 years buy a whole new tool with a new battery.
Vendor lock-in on those batteries might not be quite as "lock-y" as other examples of vendor lock-in.
One can buy or print[1] cheap adaptors to use cross-brand batteries.
I wonder if it would be plausible to manufacture/sell a line of generic batteries with easily swappable adaptors for major brands, similar to how some AC/DC adaptors have a replaceable wall socket connection for different countries. Perhaps someone on HN knowledgeable on such things knows if there would be some technical or legal issue with that?
I bought a Dewalt battery -> Ryobi tool converter so I could use their cordless PEX cincher. It works fine. But I left the battery connected for some days (something I do all the time with the Dewalt tools), and it bricked the battery. Presumably it was lacking some sense/control lines, or the adapter had its own large quiescent draw, or maybe that's just the expected behavior for the Ryobi system? Obviously I accept the blame and I won't make that mistake again, but the point is it's not seamless. Also the adapter certainly did affect the weight/balance.
I don't see any hard impediment to making compatible batteries, it just feels like a soft lock in of momentum where it's easiest to go with the flow. I've seen plenty of aftermarket batteries for the major brands, but I don't use up enough batteries where I want to chance them having a very limited lifespan (as Chineseum batteries often do IME). I'd rather pay slightly more for a solid brand and know it will last for several years. And I don't think there are any incentives for the name brands to make batteries that work with each other, especially considering there are only a handful of companies making the major brands.
I've pondered buying more Ryobi tools since I have the means to power them, but then I ask myself if I really need to buy it at all rather than buy lower quality (eg lack of brushless motors). Perhaps that calculus would be different if I had an adapter to Milwaukee and was looking at their tools, but honestly Dewalt has swamped the market with enough different models that the last thing I need is to figure out other company's line (more soft lock in!). And some tools are fine in corded versions from whatever brand, like I'm contemplating a handheld planer and don't see how cordless would be super helpful.
> Obviously, it was wet with the weather last week, but I honestly can’t remember any huge puddles or anything like that. It’s not like I was driving my car through the Cairngorms.
This kind of argument-against-perfection / argument-against-absolutes is so transparently useless. It may be that I've just been noticing it more, but it seems more common lately.
Perfection of any kind does not exist in the physical world, so any test against perfection will fail - it's simply a matter of phrasing to choose what you want to identify as failing.
The test isn't whether All or Every such-and-such meets some test, it's the current state (do many or most meet the test?) and the direction (are more or fewer meeting the test?) that matters.
It avoids situations where there's a feeling of wastage when a page isn't fully filled, or cramped writing when there's more than a page worth of information to write down.