First, Second, and Third Person You probably know what it means to write in the first person, but you may not be as confident about using the second- or third-person point of view. Today we’re going to focus on each of these three points of view. In grammatical terms, first person, second person, and third person refer to personal pronouns. Each “person” has a different perspective, a “point of view,” and the three points of view have singular and plural forms as well as three case forms. First Person In the subjective case, the singular form of the first person is “I,” and the plural form is “we.” I (first-person singular) look forward to my monthly book club meeting. The first-person point of view is used primarily for autobiographical writing, such as a personal essay or a memoir. Besides “I” and “we,” other singular first person pronouns include “me” (objective case) and “my” and “mine” (possessive case). For further clarification regarding the eight first-person pronouns just used, here’s a table: Next: Second Person
Ashish's Programming Journal: Building a computer controlled wireless robot For a long time, I have been trying to find the cheapest and easiest way to control electronic devices wirelessly using a computer. It can open up a lot of possibilities. For example, you could build a radio controlled relay board, and control it from your computer. You could even control the board with a "small" computer such as an Arduino (or any microcontroller for that matter). If your Arduino has an Ethernet shield, you could use it as a Web server and control your relay board from anywhere in the world (as long as you have access to the Internet of course). There are many things that you could do without creating a mess with wires. I have been working on a project at the Mobile Robotics Lab of IISc (Indian Institute of Science), Bangalore, in which I have to design a vision based obstacle avoidance algorithm for robots. To create a wireless link, you could rip the guts of a cheap RC car and use its transmitter and receiver to control your robot. Here's a flowchart of my system:
The Knock Box: Build a Knock-Sensitive Power Strip The Knock Box is a power strip with superpowers - it turns on your lamp whenever you knock on your nightstand. You get two outlets, individually controlled by knock-knock-knocking on a nearby hard surface. It's great for hitting the lights when it's pitch dark, but if an appliance can plug into the wall, you can toggle it! Control your lamp, turn on your fan, kill your alarm clock, or start the music in style, using any flat surface as your lightswitch. I was inspired to build the Knock Box when I woke up one night, stubbed my toe on my dresser, then knocked my lamp onto the floor as I reached for the fan. What's better: You can build a Knock Box over a weekend, and all of the electronics can be bought at any Radio Shack. IMPORTANT WARNINGS!