an all day rain affair put a damper on this friday. i woke up, had lunch, then by 1:30 i was back asleep on the couch while watching a movie on my laptop (i didn't fall asleep last night until 4:00). i woke up again before 6:30, the sky already growing dark by then.

in lieu of spending a grand on new camera equipment, i spent $50 on an arduino kit from dx.com. i figured just reading about it simply wasn't enough anymore, time to get my hands dirty with some actual equipment. the current issue of wired (20.10, the one about makerbot) has a 2 page radio shack advertisement for a solar-powered arduino controlled water pump for rain barrels but the URL doesn't work and a search on their site reveals no project of the sort.

i finished reading 1491 a few weeks ago, about indian life before european colonization. there are many good things about reading a book on a kindle, but one of the bad things is it's hard to gauge the end of the book. kindle gives me the percentage left, but without actually seeing the book, i don't know if the last 100 pages might all be bibliography and notes. this problem only happens in non-fiction books. speaking of which, i'm taking a break and going fiction for the time being. i'm starting to read cloud atlas by david mitchell. i've seen the book in bookstores (back when such things existed here) and always thought it was a non-fiction about cloud identification (which actually interests me if i already didn't own a coud field guide). i was intrigued by the soon-to-be-out movie adaptation by the wachowski starship and wanted to have the book under my belt before possibly seeing the film.

since i slept so much today, i'm afraid i won't be able to fall asleep tonight. i guess this will give me more time for reading.