Hello people !!!

So, you thought as a new year resolution to pick up robotics 🙂 Cool!!!!  unless you are have been doing some (lots) of related work it’s going to be a little tough at the beginning, so here is the best forum I’ve found:

http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/ — it has all you will need to start and build up to some pretty advanced robots! – might be the first and last robot forum you will use 🙂

Here are a few other useful  links:

http://letsmakerobots.com/ — lots of projects.

http://www.pololu.com/ — part shop with very good prices.

http://www.active-robots.com/ — uk part shot with decent prices – but very reliable and prompt. Also the have a huge stock.

I recently came across a very very interesting and true article in the E&T Mag. (  IET’s magazine – http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/) :

It is about the way we tend to do less and less with our hands, less labour and more and more “thinking”. I’ve put thinking in brackets because filling up some forms and writing some boring reports requires far less actual thinking than mending a  faulty gearbox, cd-player, or whatever other device. And it’s so much more un-rewarding – picture this:

– So, how was your day?

-Well, I filled this forms, wrote those reports etc… How about you?

-Me, hmmm… Fixed the 6 speed semi-automatic gearbox on my car 🙂

– Wooooow, now that’s cool!

Well… You get the point, it’s a HUGE difference. Problem is that school and even universities tend to  teach you more and more how to fill forms – It’s amazing how much accent they put on how you write and arrange things and not what you actually write there- these can get frustrating from time to time  🙂

OK, to wrap things up, the book that says more about this is:

The Case for Working with Your Hands

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Working-Your-Hands-ebook/dp/B003TSDNCM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&s=digital-text&qid=1279018635&sr=8-2