As before, much of my spare time in the past two weeks has been spent making two more Scalemate plushies so I could give one of them to my little nephew Brandon this weekend as a "Hi, welcome to the world" present. I wanted to make two of them in case I messed up, and also to have a choice of which one to give him because they weren't going to be identical or perfect, but ideally better than the first one I sewed. I wanted them to be fairly bright and cheerful looking, the better to get his attention …
As a late birthday gift, AJ (who flew into DC last night) gave me a gimmicked chocolate bar that rickrolled me the moment I tore the wrapper open. If you look carefully you can see a speaker glued to the foil. The circuitry consists of a solid-state audio chip that can record a few minutes of sound, the necessary driving circuitry for the recording chip, and a miniature amplifier that boosts the recording to audible levels. A cleverly placed nonconductive tab was pulled out of position when the wrapper was peeled back, closing the circuit and dropping the bomb on …
