My dad was an early techie...back before anyone conceived of that word. Im talking early computing back in the 1950s and 60s. They didnt really have a name for a programmer, but he jumped into it as an opportunity.
I can remember one time when I was about ten, say 1976, having to accompany Dad to the central computer center in Denver in the middle of the night. Some sort of emergency call.
I have no idea what the problem was...my brother and I just hung out in a very white room, drawing with crayons on reams of used dot matrix printer paper...the back side. The front side contained nothing but jibberish: lines of code. My dad read through those front sides. Page after page in seconds each to determine the bug.
That computer occupied several floors. It was a monstrosity. I have no doubt that Mountain Bell invested millions of dollars in it. Today, the same power can be purchased for a dollar.
Which brings me to this video. I picked up a digital picture keychain for $10 at Target last week. Its a disposable prodect! It absolutely blows me away that somthing like this (if it were ever possible) would have cost thousands 20 years ago.
Ah well, heres the video. Find cheap crap and make it special!
Heres a PDF of my template if you want to try it out.