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  • Author Author: e14megan
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Happy Birthday, element14!

The Best Thing to Ever Happen to June 14th. image

So, in the style of our Raspberry Pi celebration, I was going to kick-off this post talking about other really cool things that happened on June 14th. However, after looking at the Wikipedia Page dedicated to this date... I was honestly coming up a bit short. Yes, things happened, but a lot of them weren't great. For example, Albert II became the first monkey in space... before dying on impact. Yikes. So instead, myself and decided that element14 is probably the best thing to ever happen on June 14th. Go us!

 

Happy "First" Birthday!

And while this is the eighth birthday for the community, this is a "first" for a couple members of the element14 team, so wanted to give a quick shout out to , Mindi and of course... yours truly (though it's a bit depressing to wish "happy birthday" to oneself). But I digress. Here's to a happy "first birthday" to the newest members of the element14 team, and what will hopefully be many more years to come.

 

Birthday Presents! image

To help commemorate the occasion, every member who logs in between now and June 28th, 12PM CDT will receive the "element14 8th Birthday Badge". This is a limited time only badge, and once the day and time has passed you will no longer be able to receive it (even if you ask really, really nicely). In addition to this, we'll be giving away eight birthday presents to various members of the community. You heard (read) that correctly - we'll be giving presents to you!

 

How to Win

Comment below with where you were or what you were doing when the element14 community launched. While some of you were probably diligently working to ensure a smooth and successful launch (looking at you, ), many of us didn't join until weeks, months or years later. We'll choose eight members who reply, and send them their choice of the following presents:

 

For example: On June 14th, 2009 I was likely celebrating the finish of Finals Week at my University. Since DePaul is on a quarter system, we generally went a bit latter into the year than other schools, with Finals Week usually the first or second week of June. And by celebrating, I was probably catching up after a few all nighters and trying really, really, really hard to not stress about my pending grades (I graduated with a 3.445, so I think I did fairly well, even if I missed *** Laude by .005).

 

You have until June 30th, 11:59AM (noon) CDT to enter.

 

Going Green

Looking for another cool way to celebrate June 14th and potentially win some prizes? Be sure to check out Going Green, the newest Project14 competition that's launching today! This is the first theme that was chosen by members of the community, so we're all very excited to see what cool projects you come up with.

Parents

  • Good evening, everyone.

     

    Once again, I want to apologize for the delay in announcing the winners. Since June 14th, I've suffered crippling technical issues, personal illness, and a national holiday. But we're ready to announce the winners!

     

    Congratulations to:

     

    I'll be contacting you directly so you can tell me which of the presents you would like. Thank you for everyone who shared their stories, and I look forward to celebrating many more years to come.

Comment

  • Good evening, everyone.

     

    Once again, I want to apologize for the delay in announcing the winners. Since June 14th, I've suffered crippling technical issues, personal illness, and a national holiday. But we're ready to announce the winners!

     

    Congratulations to:

     

    I'll be contacting you directly so you can tell me which of the presents you would like. Thank you for everyone who shared their stories, and I look forward to celebrating many more years to come.

Children
  • in reply to e14megan

    Hi Megan,

    Oh, so sorry to hear that, I hope you're much better now.

    I hope you had a good national holiday!! Incidentally I was in San Francisco then, my first time in the US for 4th July. It was nice, very busy with fireworks in the evening by the piers.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I've suffered National Holidays too, luckily we don't have too many of those.

  • in reply to e14megan

    Thanks. I enjoyed writing it.

     

     

    Mike

  • in reply to shabaz

    Wow, glad you enjoyed your time in the US,

     

    Mike

  • in reply to e14megan

    Thanks @Megan and element14 team for selecting me. image

    This is really awesome.

  • in reply to mconners

    Hi Mike,

     

    Thanks! I got to do a mini road-trip, through a very tiny bit of CA/Nevada/AZ area for a week, but time just flew by : (

    I visited a trade show, a couple of fun things are here:

    This was industrial automation related, you can see on the left side of the scalextric set that there are blue barriers that open/close just in time as the slot-car moves past. This was done even though the sensors and actuators were all connected by Ethernet : ) there was nanosecond-level jitter.

     

    And here was a virtual reality demo where you got to pretend to be a doctor doing a heart transplant! I lasted about 10 seconds before I accidentally killed the virtual patient. The lady in this video did better than me.

  • in reply to shabaz

    That's so awesome! Had you been to the US before?

     

    Mike

  • in reply to mconners

    Hi Mike,

     

    A few times but not for very long. So I take any opportunity I can to take some time off and explore while I am there.

  • in reply to e14megan

    Congratulations to the winners.

     

    I enjoyed reading everyone's entry.

     

    DAB

  • in reply to e14megan

    Congratulations everyone and element14 - it is not always fun getting older, but in this case it is nothing but fun...