For those of you who are into electronics (or want to be), here are a couple of kits that we’ve recently put together.

The Chronulator

The Chronulator is a clock kit with a neat twist. It shows the hours and minutes on two analog panel meters. It’s a pretty simple kit, with a short parts list (a handful of resistors, a microcontroller [socketed], some jacks, etc). Probably the hardest part is soldering the power jack; those little buggers can be a pain. It’s a kit that you’ll easily be able to put together in an evening. You should know how to solder, but it’s not a tough job. 

The Chronulator : As Customized by Jeffrey Schrab

More time will be spent figuring out an enclosure for the clock (it doesn’t come with one). Not having an included enclosure is a good thing, as it allows you to mount your clock into all sorts of interesting configurations. (The meters can be attached directly to the printed circuit board, or wired apart from it.) The downside is that since these are analog meters, they are big. The 3″ x 2.5″ displays are nice, but the 2 1/2″ depth makes them harder to fit into small boxes. I’ll post photos once we have ours in an enclosure. (In the above version, the builder changed the labels to Volts and Amps; pretty neat. The included meters show mA.)

If you’d like to learn more, check out The Chronulator Site at ShareBrained. You can buy it as a complete kit, a partial kit (no meters), or fully assembled (you still need to put it in an enclosure, or not).

The Magic Box

I put together this kit while Evelyn was adventuring in the Galapagos. It’s an interesting magic kit. Here’s how it works:

While looking away, you have someone choose one of the pawns from the box. They then close and lock the box and return it to you. Magically, you are able to determine which pawn was removed. You can do this with your eyes open or closed. It’s a pretty neat effect.

I like this kit because it really has an old-world “magical” feel about it. There are no visible electronics at all–not even a visible power switch or battery compartment. That adds to the mystery. Here’s a photo of the complete kit:

As you can see, this is not only an electronics kit, but also requires a bit of woodworking. The wooden assembly part of the kit is pretty easy, requiring just a small hammer and a small screwdriver. The electronics assembly is a bit more complicated. First off, I’d recommend purchasing a set of DIP sockets. There are a number of IC chips, and it’s easier and less stressful to install sockets and then plug the chips in. (You don’t have to worry about overheating the IC). Second, you need to be very careful when installing some of the components, as they need to be installed on the opposite side of the PCB, are very fragile, have to be bent, and have very tight lead spacings. It’s not as difficult as trying to solder surface mount components, but you do need to take your time and be careful, as the alignment of those components is important. 

If you are interesting in learning more about this kit, you can find it here: Nuts & Volts Magic Box Kit. You can also check out the April and May 2007 issues of Nuts & Volts for an article describing the project. (A copy of which is included with the kit, along with a CD-ROM which contains additional assembly details. Be sure to read through the instructions carefully. This is a moderately difficult kit, and should only be attempted by those comfortable with soldering and more advanced assembly.)

MiniPOV3

If you are just getting started with electronics, and want an easy and fun project, take a look at the MiniPOV3 Kit from Adafruit. POV stands for “persistence of vision”. It’s the concept that the human eye can only notice changes to a certain point (the retina of your eye “retains” an image for a brief period of time even after the image is gone). If a light goes on or off faster than about 16 times a second, the human eye sees the light as being continuously on. It’s a cool effect and is used all over the place. Things like televisions, LED clocks, computer monitors, and movies all use POV to trick the eye into seeing movement or continuous light. 

Here’s what you get with the kit:

As you can see, it has a pretty basic parts list. Some LEDs, resistors, diodes, a nice PCB, the microcontroller (with socket–thank you), and the battery holder. This is an ideal starter kit and here is why: Limor’s Instructions. Her instructions are some of the best I’ve seen on the web. She tells you exactly what tools you’ll need, how to solder it, how it works, and so on. She uses a lot of pictures and it’s very clear how to put the kit together. All in all, it’s an excellent first or second kit for someone who wants to do more soldering and have a neat project when they are done. The end result being something that will do this:

What’s also cool is that this project uses an Atmel microcontroller, so you can re-program it! You can program in whatever message you like, or use the default one. Hook it up to the computer, follow the instructions, and you’re all set. It takes a little work to do this, but the added bonus is that you get to learn about programming microcontrollers.

Besides this kit, Adafruit Industries also has a couple of other interesting products, such as the Arduino, iPod Power Boosters, MIDI controllers, and so on. One of her best products, which I highly recommend, is the BoArduino. It’s an Arduino clone, designed to plug right into a solderless breadboard. It makes prototyping Atmel projects far easier, as you have a lot less wiring all over the place (versus using a regular Arduino development board). I bought about five of these just so I have enough to mess around with. The downside is that it doesn’t have the USB chip, so it can’t be plugged directly into your computer. However, a $20 cable solves that problem (you can buy them together at a discount). If you are into Arduino work, check out the BoArduino–it is perfect for prototyping.

On the main page of the Austin American-Statesman there was an article about rising food costs. As an example, they used this typical, everyday family:

Todd and Michelle Erdner and their seven children – Tehillah, 2, Enoch, 4, David, 7, Abby, 10, Datiya, 9, Nina, 6, and Simeon, 7 months – come to the grocery store with a list, coupons and an idea of what’s on sale.
…
Michelle, a calm mom who has degrees in child psychology, English and education, home schools the children.

Unfortunately, this smart young set of Stanford graduates forgot one fucking thing: To put on a fucking condom. The era of needing 7 kids to run the farm is over. Welcome to the 21st century. And thanks for eating up an unfair share of limited resources. With any luck my taxes will be used to pay for your kids college education. Whoopie-fucking-do-da.

Just remember, folks: It’s a vagina, not a clown car.

Let me get this out of the way: You are not special. You are not unique. Statistically speaking, no one in the world even knows about you. Even if you have 1000 close friends, that’s only 0.00000015% of the human population. That’s a really small number. You live in a tiny house in a tiny town in a tiny state in a tiny country in a tiny continent in a tiny world in a tiny solar system in a tiny part of a tiny galaxy within a gigantic universe.

Nice way to start an entry on happiness, right? Boy, Ron is a real asshole tonight. But hear me out.

Everyone is striving. Striving to learn how to walk. Striving to graduate High School. Striving to finish College. Striving to do well at their job. Striving to have the Big House in the Nice Neighborhood. Striving to have the Perfect Family and the Perfect Life. Striving to be an Important Person Known By All. Striving to be THE BEST.

There is only one small problem.

We will never reach that lofty goal.

And that fact, in all its minutia, can lead us to dispair. Oh, my god, will I never finish school? Oh, will I never get the perfect job? Oh, will I never have a family? Oh, woe is me!

But remember these few things: Even the most important people in the world today are meaningless. In the great math that runs this universe, they are but a pimple on an ant stomped dead 10,000 years ago. Remember the careers built upon failed marriages. Remember those amazingly competitive people who end up dying of a heart attack at 45.

Consider this: You own life is a gift. The very fact that you are alive today is so utterly inconceivable as to make it almost impossible. Consider how many pieces fell into place to land you on this earth, alive and sentient. You are already one of the most amazing beings: you are aware.

So, put aside the meaningless and enjoy your gift of life with awareness. Revel in the fact that you are you–an almost impossibility. Drop the bullshit and the pettiness and have fun.

After breezing through the spineless House, our dearly beloved economic “aid” package is stuck in the Senate. The price tag is now up to $156 billion, with rebates going to an even broader group. Previously, most older Americans living off Social Security would get nothing. Now they will, likely thanks to strong lobbying from the AARP.

But, of course, it gets stupid. While I do think that the older people should get a check, they are also adding in some other delights. Like increasing the top-end cutoff (above $75K/$150K) and extending unemployment benefits for an additional 13 to 26 weeks (depending on where you live).

First off, I’m all for fairness. If you bring in an income, you should get a “rebate”. On the flip-side, it’s pretty unlikely that a $1200 check is going to make a lot of difference for a couple making more than $150K a year. (Cue my “cry me a river” line. Here’s your tiny violin. Start playing.) Either we act like socialists and just give the money to the poor (however the hell you define that), or don’t do anything at all.

Second, is the increase in unemployment benefits. Most states currently allow for 26 weeks. This would bump it up to 39, or, in “certain states” (yet to be defined) up to 52 weeks. That’s an entire year of unemployment.

Now I realize that it can be hard to find work, but an entire year? You can’t find some kind of job that pays some kind of money–in a year? Maybe I’m being too harsh, but that sounds like an awfully long time to be on the dole, especially when a Walmart greeter job would pay you better than unemployment. I’ve seen our parents take whatever job they could, so that they could pay the bills and keep the kids fed. You do what you have to do. Period.

And, frankly, what kind of incentive does that give people to get out and look for work? Humans are notorious procrastinators. We love to let things drag out on and on and on. In my opinion, people need a fire lit under their ass before they will do shit. Take away that fire, and you’ll just see the average time on unemployment increase.

I know I’m sounding harsh here, but I’ve worked through enough recessions, and had plenty of nowhere jobs that I despised. But, guess what? I bit the bullet and paid my penance. Just like a lot of hardworking people out there. The last thing we need is more babying of our population.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but inflation is eating me alive.

Take my water bill. We have a tiny one bedroom apartment and are now paying $40 a month for water. When we first started here, it was in the $25 range. In this year alone I’ve seen an average increase of 3.5%. What probably annoys me most is that $40 is approaching (and surpassing, in some months) my god-damn electric bill! Crazy. The really sucky part is that there is no water meter for the apartment, but instead it’s an average for the facility, so if some numb-nuts keeps filling up the pool, it hurts us all. On the flip side, our facility is mostly seniors, on very fixed incomes, which means they play close attention to their use.

Rent, up 3.33% this year. I’m expecting another hike this fall.

Gas. Don’t even get me started. I’m just glad that I do a majority of my work at home and have a fuel efficient car.

Natural gas. On the bright side, this is “included” in the rent. For how long, I don’t know. And how much of the 3.3% rent increase is due to natural gas costs?

Amazing, electricity is pretty stable. Maybe it’s just because it’s clearly high and low when I expect it to be. For example, my water bill was still over $40 in November in December. One of the months Evelyn was on vacation, the other we were in Chicago. That chaps my hide. The electric bill for December was $25. The average is $50. That makes sense.

Food. Up, up, up. Mainly due to the “ever shrinking package”. You still think you’re paying $9 for a bag of frozen chicken breasts. The problem is that bag used to be 5 pounds and is now 4. Shit, take a look at most of the containers these days, comparing them to old ones. They are shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. Fruit juices and pop are probably the worst offenders here. This is a big reason why I’ve become so dilligent in keeping track of food costs.

(An aside about food costs: I’ve mentioned this before, and it bears mentioning again. For food staples, find the cheapest source and shop there. Don’t go to a “nice store” because it’s nice. It costs too damn much. I know I’d rather wander through a newer “cooler” store, but we do most of our shopping at a boring, old-school, H-E-B. It saves us 20% in food costs. That’s hundreds of dollars a year. I guess this goes for any king of shopping. By your electronics stuff at Buy.com, not Best Buy. SD card at Best Buy, $28. Same card at Buy.com? $9, with free shipping. Every penny counts.)

Now, I’m bitching and moaning, but I am fortunate to have the capability of working more hours to make up for the cost increases. A lot (most?) people don’t. I look around at the seniors in our area and see an average of 3.5% of their fixed income being eaten away. I look at my parents, also on a fixed income, and see how it’s harder for them to keep up with prices.

And to return to that idiotic tax “rebate” we’re supposed to be getting: I don’t want it. Sure, $600/$1200 (or whatever) would be nice, but I’ll just dump it into savings. After all, it’s my money in the first place. The government is just loaning it to me until the 2008 tax season. Remember 2001, people? That stupid $300/$600 check was counted as income. Either way, I’d rather see that money go to seniors living off their social security. People who have lived and worked all their lives and for whom it’s difficult to earn additional money. Those are the people who need it most. Not me, who can just work harder. Not most others, who are young and able to earn a wage.

So I challenge those wage earners out there: Give away your check. Give it to a senior. Give it to a charity. Give it to a pound. Give it to someone in real need. Please don’t give it to yourself, who probably doesn’t need it. If you do need it, I understand, but please give it some thought.

Earlier today I was reading a recipe which talked about a pork roast. Here’s a snippit:

In a large mixing bowl, combine the pork cubes, Sazon seasoning, oregano, ground cumin and brown sugar. Place the pinto beans in the pot of a 5-quart or larger slow cooker. Then layer with the onions, seasoned pork, green peppers and tomatoes. 

I always think about this topic while cooking, but never remember to write about it. So, here goes.

Brown your meat.

That’s all I ask. If you are going to make stew, brown the meat first. If you are going to make pot roast, brown the meat first. If you are going to make a roast beef, brown the meat first. If you are doing just about anything with meat, brown the meat first.

Why? Because browning is a chemical reaction (called the Maillard reaction). You know why coffee, roasted meat, and toasted bread taste so good? That’s the Maillard reaction. You want to get a nice well-browned coating, and then you can shift to whatever cooking method you are using (ex. braising / slow cooking a pot roast). Your intention is not to cook the meat, but to get that beautiful and delicious chemical reaction started.

One thing to keep in mind when attempting to sear and brown meat: water is your enemy. Water will prevent you from properly browing something. You see, you don’t get the chemical reaction until the water is boiled away. Too much water and you are left with gray meat that doesn’t look or taste too great.

So, what you need to do is simple. First, make sure you carefully dry the meat with paper towels before attempting to sear/saute/brown it. This goes for anything (pork chops, chicken breast, beef, whatever). Get that excess water and/or marinate off the meat. It won’t brown unless it’s gone.

Second, don’t overcrowd the pan. The cookbooks warn this, and it’s not because overcrowding “cools” the pan. It’s because there is a much greater chance that the “weeping” meat will dump too much water at once, resulting in a pot full of gray stewing meat. It’s much much better to brown in batches. Put in a little, get it well browned, remove, repeat with next batch. The results will look and taste so much better.

BAD BROWNING!!!
OVERCROWDING!!!
NONSTICK PAN!!!

Third, use a steel, aluminium, or cast iron pan. Either of those will give you a much nicer reaction than a non-stick pan. (Yes, I know non-stick is nice. But you are losing a lot of flavor using one. We’ve done head-to-head tests and found that the non-non-stick pans produce much more flavorful dishes. Really noticeable.)

So, that’s my plea. Brown the meat first. You’ll be happy with the results.

Update: So I went looking for a good example photo of browning meat. And I couldn’t find any. Everyone out there is overcrowding their pans and keeping them stewing in juices in horrific cheap non-stick pans. For the love of god–meat is expensive–treat it well. Please.

Update 2: My faith in humanity is restored. The good folks at California Hunting Today know how to brown their meat. Thank god the Hog Hunting Blog writer knows how to brown meat.

Uncrowded!
Looks Like Steel!
The Hog Would Be Proud!

After looking though pages of photos of gray meat, I feel better now.

Oh, Congress, thanks for nothing — again. Will that tax “rebate” check be $300 or $600? Don’t matter to me, since I’ll get nothing.

You see, in their desire to get a “rebate” to “everyone” (read: the poor, who don’t pay income tax), they set the criteria as people who pay into Social Security [who make less than $75K]. Well, as an independent small business owner, I don’t pay into SS. I still pay income taxes. And to be more of a stickler about it, aren’t you supposed to get “rebates” for things you’ve actually purchased? Do people now get rebates on items they don’t buy? If so, let me know where!

Our Presidential Candidates

I realize that it’s a tough call, since most of the poor don’t reach income requirements, and could probably benefit from the money the most, but come on. Small business owners are the bread-and-butter of new job creation in the United States. And isn’t job creation and new businesses what this country really needs? Do we really need people spending $300-600 checks on more crap at Walmart, or paying down existing debt to gigantic corporations?

Now, there are rumors that there will be “breaks for businesses”, which I read as “kickbacks to big corporations”. I’ve yet to see much from Congress that actually helps the small business owner. Instead, it’s the good-ol-boys scratching each others backs. Great way to spend my tax dollars.

Enough with the quick fixes already, which need to be repeated every couple of years. Let’s be fiscally responsible for once, damnit.

Update: It looks like they changed the criteria a bit. Who knows what criteria they are using now.

Individuals who pay income taxes would get up to $600, working couples $1,200 and those with children an additional $300 per child under the agreement. Workers who make at least $3,000 but don’t pay taxes would get $300 rebates.

Update 2: Deb is right, I do pay into SS/Medicare via the 1040 SE (self-employment tax). It’s unemployment I don’t pay into. I get the joy of paying quarterly estimated taxes, which seem a lot more “real” to me than payroll deductions. Maybe because it’s already taken out with payroll, and for estimated taxes I have to write big checks.

I woke up expecting the worst, and was not disappointed.

After a horrible day in the foreign markets, the federal reserve panicked and did an unannounced rate cut. This, of course, helped to push a jittery market down even more. At last check, the DJI was down 2% and the blue chips look down between 2 and 5 percent. (It also pisses me off, because it further degrades my savings income.)

If we weren’t in a recession before, we sure are now. And even if we aren’t in a recession, everyone will think that we are, and therefore act like we are. Great, isn’t it?

And while many are selling off and talking of the end of the world, I’m buying. Give me an order of Altra (people love smoking), and a helping of Kraft (people love eating). Come on, folks. While Kraft may be at $29 now, it was $34 only a month ago. And it’s not like people are going to stop eating, no matter how expensive food gets. All you have to do is wait for it to pop up again and you’ve made 17%.

And lets look a little at history. Even after the “crashes” of the late 80s, the market was back up, and making more, only a year later. You just had to wait out a year and you were back in the black.

I’ll put my money where my mouth is. Here are orders going in today:

Altria (MO) @ $74
Markel (MKL) @ $404

Next week will be a dash of Kraft, and maybe some Procter & Gamble.

Why? Because I believe in our (often fucked up) American system. I believe in a country, for all it’s faults, that makes private enterprise possible. (Try starting up a company in most other countries–heck, even PR! Good luck with that.)

But-but-but–the weak dollar! But-but-but–the Chinese! You know what I say to the weak dollar? I say it makes our products more attractive. You know what I say about the Chinese? I say they are a huge fucking market for my cheap American goods.

Heck, it’s a great time to be a ”computer guy” in America. You speak English AND you are dirt-cheap, from an outsiders perspective. Why more U.S. companies aren’t selling their IT services to Europe is beyond me. There’s gold in those hills, as long as we can maintain a tight grip on inflation at home.

So quit bitching. Quit feeling entitled. Get out there are do something. Go after those emerging markets. Either way, we’ll check back in a year and see how my MO and MKL are doing.

After sitting in my parents house for over a decade, I finally picked up my old Sony Laserdisc player. It still works fine, except for the fluorescent display which gave out ages ago. After using it for a while, I realized one of the great things about this machine: the remote control.

Without question, the Sony LD remote (model RMT-M37A) is the finest way to move through a movie that I’ve ever used. Better than any DVD player’s control. Better than any iPod control (yes, believe it, Apple fans–Sony made a better “jog” control). Better than any bit of A/V technology I’ve used in the last 20 years. It’s brilliance is its simplicity, and the fact that it works exactly as you’d expect it to.

It won’t win any beauty contests, but look: Look at the absense of buttons. No idiotic control with 80 buttons here. All of the common stuff is right out in the open, in big (glow in the dark) buttons. Need to access the less common commands? Just flip up the top portion and there they are (right photo). Ok, that’s nice and all, but why do I rave? I rave because of the round control at the bottom.

The round section has two parts: The inner circle, which spins, and the outer ring. The outer ring is where they got it right. It rotates 60 degrees in either direction and is spring loaded. To reverse the movie, you rotate it to the left. To forward, the right. The second you let go, it springs back to the center. The farther you rotate it, the faster it goes. Unlike most DVD remotes. You don’t have to use some stupid combination of a Fast Forward button and then, with a trigger finger, press Play again. I fucking hate DVD remotes.

The inner circle is the jog shuttle control. While the outer ring is for quickly moving around, the inner circle does frame by frame. In addition, pressing the jog/shuttle button (with a light, so you know it’s on) changes the overall behavior, allowing you do zip through freeze-frames with ease. The end result? You can navigate through a movie, stopping, rewinding, whatever–without looking at the fucking remote. You don’t search for buttons. You just spin the ring and have it snap back.

Why rant about this? Because this is almost 20 year old technology and it works better than ANY stuff I’ve used since. You can tell that it was designed by A/V guys who do video editing. Why hasn’t it been re-created? (The Apple iPod control is a sad shadow of the Sony technology. Why do I have to keep spinning my thumb around in circles? That’s fine with 1,000 songs, but not 10,000.)

The other question is why, with this old technology, are the scanning and single-frame functions so much better on Laserdisc than DVD? That one is easier to answer. You see, on normal Laserdiscs, each frame of the movie takes one track on the disc. One rotation of the disc, one frame. There are 54,000 tracks / frames on each side of a disc. So, it’s trivial for the machine to show a particular frame, almost instantly. Want to go back? Just hop to the previous track. Want to go to frame 23,564? Piece of cake. No searching through data streams, you just go right to that place on the disc.

In addition, there is no compression. One track, one rotation, one frame worth of data. This is why, even though Laserdiscs have fewer lines of resolution, they often look better than DVDs, especially for dark scenes. This is because DVDs compress data so that non-moving portions of the scene don’t get updated. Motion does. That’s why you often see artifacts, even on better mastered disks. Watch the underwater scenes in Das Boot and you’ll see exactly what I mean. They look awful.

The downside, of course, is that the disc are huge–the size of LP records (which are coming back, in a big way, by the way). Most movies take both sides of at least one disc. Cheaper players required you to flip the disc after about 30 minutes. This Sony can do both sides, though there is a pause and a big clunk-clunk sound as the mirrors move. Some movies, like Hard Boiled, require three or four discs for the entire movie and cost a lot. The resolution is also lower, though dark scenes almost always look better on Laserdisc.

Now if only this stupid “VHS/Beta: The Sequel” drama would end, I’d consider checking out the new HD equipment. For now, I’m content with my streaming video, my DVDs, and my Laserdiscs.

When making stuff, you learn pretty quickly that it’s both expensive and time consuming to be building everything from scratch. This is especially true when working on a prototype. Does it really make sense to build a complicated doodad when you don’t even know if the idea is sound?

Take, for example, one of the projects we are considering: a guitar effects pedal.

The musician uses their foot to adjust the effect, whatever that might be. While the electronics inside are surely going to be complicated, we have most everything we need on-hand to handle that. (For a little apartment, we have a surprisingly well stocked electronics setup.) What we don’t have is the pedal. And, perhaps more importantly, I don’t have the space or equipment to make one (even out of wood). But look what I found while roaming the local second-hand store:

It’s an old set of videogame driving pedals (gas and brake). Decent size, spring loaded, and pretty heavy duty. The perfect thing for a guitar pedal prototype. Just crack open the case, make note of how it’s wired up (two simple potentiometers), write down the values for the components (ex. the pots and other resistors) and you’re ready to go. Plus, since it’s a little older (designed for the XBOX) there is no fancy crap in there. Just a couple of wires and the variable resistors. That’s it. Perfect for hacking.

So, now I have a stable “user interface” to prototype with. Something close enough to the real thing to be valid, but cheap and easy to put together. (The pedals, since they didn’t come with the steering wheel, cost me all of $2.) As an added bonus, I’ll able to use them again for another project. They will be the volume and waveform controls for a Theremin we’re building.

I’d love to say that I had an “a-ha!” moment at home and thought of this idea, but I didn’t. Instead, I carry a list of things to “be on the lookout for” and an open mind. That’s what helped me make the connection while roaming around the store. Keep an open mind, and always look at things with the thought of “what can I do with this?”

Take another example:

This is a “My Cooker”. A little pretend stovetop for kids. You put little pots (missing) on the top and it lights up red and makes sound effects. The dials (which I have already removed here) even turn on and off the burners. So, what do you have? You have at least 3 LEDs, a sound chip, a speaker, switches, and a really heavy-duty plastic case.

What do I see there? I see a user interface for a musical instrument. Three big red circles that a musician can hold their hands over, moving them up and down to adjust the tone. I see three pre-drilled dials ready for me to install my own buttons or controls (volume? tone? pitch? BPM?). The key is that I have a ready-made case, made of kid-proof plastic, ready for whatever electronics I want to toss into it. Would I use it for a “real” device (to sell)? No. But it does give me a quick and dirty way to test out ideas.

And that’s the key. Get those ideas flowing and implemented as fast as you can. If you are a small scale entrepreneur (or a hobbyist) you can not afford to waste a lot of time and money on something that may or may not work out. You need to get something in your hands and play with it. I find that playing with things gets the ideas flowing far faster and better than any sort of stupid “brainstorming” session.

I’ll add one more tip for those parents out there: watch your children. No, don’t helicopter over them, but watch them play. Watch how they use things in “unacceptable” ways. Children are not bound by the “rules” that adults often are. They haven’t been taught “that’s not the right way to use that!” They very often come up with unique ways of solving problems. You can learn a lot from watching children play. At the very least, you should learn not to limit your thinking, but to keep an open mind to all problems. Tough to do, I know, but it’s a skill you must develop like any other.