PCEC's latest interests include some of the latest things that members are examining in the world of their experience. We try to keep it related to electronics but there might be forays into different aspects of computers such as programming languages that work with the Internet or graphics or anything that people are into.

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Email us at: playinmyblues at gmail dot com

Latest Member Interest:

August 27, 2010:
PCEC Reviews the BeetleBot by Solarbotics: Have a gander at the review of the the Solarbotics BeetleBot on the Robots page. Solarbotics gave us a cool little robot and PCEC put it together and tested it.

August 17, 2010:
Processing: The introduction of this book, "Processing," is quite interesting, covering the topics of aesthtics and math. Also of note, today on Yahoo! Canada there is an article on "What aliens would really be like" saying that they might be most interested in our art. It goes on to say that we might best present them works based on language and mathematics. Here is the link: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/yahoocanada/100815/canada/what_aliens_would_really_be_like.

August 16, 2010:
Accessible XHTML and CSS Web Sites Problem - Design - Solution: This is one of those books I picked up for cheap on the Coles bargain tables at the mall. This books covers the the topics of XHTML and CSS (otherwise known as Cascading Style Sheets). What is the big deal? Having gone through the book "HTML Illustrated Complete," 2nd ed. by Elizabeth Eisner Reding and Sasha Vodnik, that is the basis for publishing this website in its current state, as of August 16, 2010. That book was written in 2000 where as the new book was published in 2005. At some point, the Pictou County Electronics Club (PCEC) website will receive an overhall to bring it into the more current standards of building websites - using XHTML and CSS. I have just started chapter 2 of the new book. The overhall will take a while to come into being.

August 16, 2010:
Processing: I have already started reading and working with the book "Programming Inveractivity" by Joshua Noble. However, I found that I wanted to do more work with a book dedicated to the Processing environment before doing much more with the 1st book mentioned. I will work with them simulatneously as the part of 1st book I mentioned is going into Arduino. Arduino and Processing are closely related and so work well together. Now I am using "Processing" by Ira Greenberg - got it at the NSCC, Pictou Campus Library; check out NOVANET for those of you in Nova Scotia. For those not familiar with NOVANET, it is the consortium of post secondary educational instituion libraries in Nova Scotia. Inconjunction with PARL (look up PARL; I assume the other public libary systems are taking part), you can borrow from any library in Nova Scotia, receive it at the library of your choice and drop it off at the library of your choice. With the library resources of our public libraries being spread thinner year after year, this is a very important privilege and resource to have. In the Introduction to "Processing," it mentions that the Processing environment has been introduced into quite number of schools' curriculum for the digital arts, including Parsons School of Design (check out this project); Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia; UCLA; Yale; NYU; Helsinki University; Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Miami University of Ohio; University of Washington; and Elisava School of Design...

Have a look at the PCEC Links page for the Processing link.