I am rubbish, need new brain

[drmcl]

So. a wee project to get me going. A bit of pi zero, a phat-dac and a case. What could go wrong.... Well, I ordered the wrong header so it came with a right angle not straight, I then soldered it to the wrong side of the PI-zero, snapped the little shim bit of the case in half and let the soldering iron fall on floor (hole in carpet with no dog to blame)
So, I'll just get ma coat....

[aTao]

Embrace the chaos. From here on out it only gets to be more fun.
Grow old disgracefully.

[MarkyV]

There are three states to a project:

Haven't Started = A Challenge
Complete Fubar = An experience
Successful Completion = Blind luck

May you have lots of luck with your next project

Mark

[Graymalk]

That is the kind of week I've been having!

[Heater]

There are three states to any project:

1) Haven't started = A chanllenge, this is going to be great, especially having learned a lot from previous projects.

2) Complete FUBAR = An experience. It may actually work to some extent. Or not. Valuable lessons have been learned for furure projects.

3) Abondenment = This is a drag and a mess. Besides I have this great new idea!....Start again at 1)

This seems to be true for commercial projects as much as hobby projects.

[KMyers]

Welcome to my world! Sounds exactly like my experiences of late, approximately the last five years or so....

[Heater]

Oh boy, I have countless, half baked half finished, half working projects gathering dust around here. I cannot bring myself to toss them in the trash. This has been going on, accumulating for decades.

[gregeric]

This is why we have project version numbers. Good luck for 2.0

[AJB2K3]

So. a wee project to get me going. A bit of pi zero, a phat-dac and a case. What could go wrong.... Well, I ordered the wrong header so it came with a right angle not straight, I then soldered it to the wrong side of the PI-zero, snapped the little shim bit of the case in half and let the soldering iron fall on floor (hole in carpet with no dog to blame)
So, I'll just get ma coat....

Count yourself lucky.
Last time I knocked the soldering to the floor, I caught it before it hit the carpet.

Unfortunately, it was still on and I caught it by the hot end!

I still haven't soldered a header to mine yet. even with a magnifier, i cant see the pins!

[Heater]

Ha, no pain, no gain. As they say.

Grabbing the wrong end of a soldering iron is a right of passage. An experience you will not forget. I reminder that you did actually do something.

[stderr]

I still haven't soldered a header to mine yet. even with a magnifier, i cant see the pins!

You could always use the two pair of reading glasses at once trick. It looks dorky but don't do any selfie youtube video tutorials until after you get in that cheap Chinese import loupe.

[blaablaaguy]

There are three states to any project:

1) Haven't started = A chanllenge, this is going to be great, especially having learned a lot from previous projects.

2) Complete FUBAR = An experience. It may actually work to some extent. Or not. Valuable lessons have been learned for furure projects.

3) Abondenment = This is a drag and a mess. Besides I have this great new idea!....Start again at 1)

This seems to be true for commercial projects as much as hobby projects.

Ive done that so many times! Hopefully ill actually finish my current project

[Ruffturn]

Welcome to my world.

[Heater]

It's a kind of mental illness.

One has years or decades of unfinished projects lying around the place. Or stashed in cupboards and draws. Or in my case stacked up in a storage unit I pay for every month!

Those projects are never going to get finished. Even if the will was there life is too short. And, as I said above, there is always the next great new idea coming along.

One can't bring ones self to throw them in the trash. Those parts might be useful one day you know. And, by the way, much of that stuff has historical significance.

So they just nag at you in your sleep. More and more of them every year....

At this point I think they call it "Hoarding" and they make TV shows about trying to cure people of it.

I have been wondering what to do about this recently.

Throwing everything in the trash is not acceptable. But perhaps clearing the decks by offering it all free to a good home is.

Or how about redefining the 100 projects into one huge ongoing project?

[blaablaaguy]

It's a kind of mental illness.

One has years or decades of unfinished projects lying around the place. Or stashed in cupboards and draws. Or in my case stacked up in a storage unit I pay for every month!

Those projects are never going to get finished. Even if the will was there life is too short. And, as I said above, there is always the next great new idea coming along.

One can't bring ones self to throw them in the trash. Those parts might be useful one day you know. And, by the way, much of that stuff has historical significance.

So they just nag at you in your sleep. More and more of them every year....

At this point I think they call it "Hoarding" and they make TV shows about trying to cure people of it.

I have been wondering what to do about this recently.

Throwing everything in the trash is not acceptable. But perhaps clearing the decks by offering it all free to a good home is.

Or how about redefining the 100 projects into one huge ongoing project?

Or you could salvage the usefull stuff and throw the rest away.

[Heater]

Ah yes.

Actually I have tried to do that from time to time.

The end result is boxes and boxes of perhaps, maybe, possibly useful parts all around the place.

There is no way I could trash my collection of TTL chips, or my new unused Z80 and 68000 microprocessors, or that radar CRT from 1947.

Perhaps I should open up as a museum.

Then there is the more modern stuff....

[Heater]

OK, I feel better now. I'm never going to worry about my mass of unfinished projects or the wasted time, expense and space they have caused.

Why? Because if I ever get haunted by such thoughts again I'm going to remind myself of Ernest Vincent Wright.

In 1939 Ernest spent some years writing a 50,000 word novel "Gadsby". The thing is he wrote all that without ever using the letter "e". As some kind of challenge to himself.

That is brilliant and all. And he did actually finish it. But really, it's a totally pointless exercise. Just when I think I'm crazy I find there is someone far more nuts than me.

Poor old Ernest died the year Gadspy was published.

[boyoh]

Projects start with two words " Started-----------------Finished", It's the bit in the middle I can't grasp

[Burngate]

I used to plan projects on paper, then buy the components, and build them.
Needless to say, most didn't progress much further than stage two, so the house is full of part-built projects.

Now I have moved over to a paperless workshop system.
The hard drive has gigabytes of paperless designs, complete with virtual components and part-built virtual projects.

My productivity has tripled - I can half-complete a project in a third of the time - and the cost has gone down significantly.
Also, the house doesn't get filled with dross, and if I need more space I just buy another drive.

[Heater]

Ha yes, "virtual" projects. Forgot to mention those.

Ages ago I discovered SPICE, specifically LTSpice which makes building circuit schematics and simulating them dead easy. The end result of all that is that I now have hundreds of half finished spice simulations all over my computers.

Then there is the purely software projects of course. Lots of abandoned software ideas cluttering up my hard drive as well.

The symptoms are the same for virtual projects as physical ones. In this case one cannot bear to delete them!

Luckily we now have git and github so we can move all those to the big software junk yard in the sky.

[Burngate]

Back to the OP ...
In the news, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10 ... sh-museum/

The OP's costs are a Pi zero, header, case, and carpet.
It takes practice to screw up big time.

[peterlite]

Find a local artist to repeat the iron dropping then sell the carpet as "art".

[blaablaaguy]

Find a local artist to repeat the iron dropping then sell the carpet as "art".

And once burnt carpets become the latest in fashion, the OP wont have to worry about it anymore.