I want my daughters to grow up having good fundamental knowledge of things like basic electronics, plumbing, mechanical stuff, construction etc. I recognize that more and more analog things will be digital in her future, but it never hurts to know the basics.

To that end, I recently bought Gia, my three-year-old, her first electronics project kit. I researched this quite a bit -- I did not want anything overly complex, nor did I want anything too simple. Something that would be fun and get her to think and ask questions. I found the perfect kit -- Snap Circuits.

Although their website is horrible and ugly, their product is awesome. I got the SC-100 basic kit. It has about a 100 projects you can do using a battery pack, motor, speaker, music chip, alarm chip, resistors and a few other parts.

So far, we have created mostly projects that make cool sounds. I think Gia's favorites were the ones where the motor speed can be increased and then shut off causing the flimsy plastic wheel to become airborne. Another one is a water alarm where two wires have to be inserted into a glass of water to cause an alarm to go off.

Overall, I am pleased with Snap Circuits. It is helping me achieve exactly the goal I wanted while giving dad+daughter some fun things to do besides tinker with home brew computers.

In this picture, Gia is trying out a fun, motion-activated "Happy Birthday" tune player project.

Can you imagine creating biological machines just as simply as writing code?

I am guessing your answer is no. Until today, I couldn't either. Then I watched this amazing video of Drew Endy at the Chaos Communication Congress. It is totally cool stuff. Here's a synopsis of the talk:

Dennis McDonald tagged me in the "8 Things You Didn’t Know About Me" game so here goes:

1. I love Chai and drink a lot of it (not the Starbucks kind...the regular Indian kind which is way better).
   
   
2. I am a digitalmediaholic. I have over 6 terabytes of ripped movies and 100 GB of music.
   
   
3. I am a dot com bubble survivor. I founded a venture-funded startup called iWidgets.com that created widgets for web pages. Unfortunately, the technology was six years ahead of its time.
   
   
4. My un-Americanized name is Nikunj, pronounced nick-ooonj.
   
   
5. I have never had any alcoholic beverage...none.
   
   
6. I became a vegetarian in 2001...did it cold turkey (pun intended).
   
   
7. I grew up in Bombay and came to the U.S. in 1987 for my undergrad education. Never went back, and became a U.S. citizen a few years ago.
   
   
8. I enjoy the creative aspects of brand development, especially logo development, tag line creation and messaging.