I wasn't initially sure I had a comment for this, but posting a blog this morning about a PS I realised that I did!  My best gift was just over a year ago - a copy of Charles Platt's book Make: Electronics:

My wife bought it for me after I mentioned that I ought to try and learn a bit about electronics to help with working with the Bombe at the National Museum of Computing (that's actually electrical, not electronic, but by-the-by for this purpose.)  I got hooked pretty much straight away and went through it page-by-page.  I ended up emailing with Mr Platt about alternative approaches I'd worked out given the lack of availability of some parts and unfound errors - he's a very friendly, helpful chap.  The rest is history: I devoured his Make: More Electronics, which I was given for Christmas, joined Element14 on the back of making purchases from Farnell, and started working on my first major project.  I also remember taking one of the little projects in there for randomising dice throws and extending it to two dice to play 'Snap' with logic ICs to detect matched dice to confirm a Snap when a player pressed their button, increment scores and locking the other player out.  Crazy really - it ended up stretching over 4 breadboards arranged in a T shape, but great fun.  Soldering with the cheapest iron Amazon had available and working with a fairly cheap multimeter as well.  It was those little steps and taking them further that made it all so interesting.  In fact, it generated one of my earliest questions on Element14!!  I keep thinking of going back to it and actually creating a cheap build on vero board and a project box. 

I wasn't initially sure I had a comment for this, but posting a blog this morning about a PS I realised that I did!  My best gift was just over a year ago - a copy of Charles Platt's book Make: Electronics:

My wife bought it for me after I mentioned that I ought to try and learn a bit about electronics to help with working with the Bombe at the National Museum of Computing (that's actually electrical, not electronic, but by-the-by for this purpose.)  I got hooked pretty much straight away and went through it page-by-page.  I ended up emailing with Mr Platt about alternative approaches I'd worked out given the lack of availability of some parts and unfound errors - he's a very friendly, helpful chap.  The rest is history: I devoured his Make: More Electronics, which I was given for Christmas, joined Element14 on the back of making purchases from Farnell, and started working on my first major project.  I also remember taking one of the little projects in there for randomising dice throws and extending it to two dice to play 'Snap' with logic ICs to detect matched dice to confirm a Snap when a player pressed their button, increment scores and locking the other player out.  Crazy really - it ended up stretching over 4 breadboards arranged in a T shape, but great fun.  Soldering with the cheapest iron Amazon had available and working with a fairly cheap multimeter as well.  It was those little steps and taking them further that made it all so interesting.  In fact, it generated one of my earliest questions on Element14!!  I keep thinking of going back to it and actually creating a cheap build on vero board and a project box.