I was sorting out some of the stuff in my office near the desk when I saw the scene pictured above and thought to myself, “this would tell an interesting story.”
Going counterclockwise from near the top left, the items are:
- 1000 won note from South Korea from my stash of travel currency that I was organizing
- Adafruit Circuit Playground Express circuit board, which is programmable in CircuitPython and bristling with sensors and blinky lights
- Adafruit PyGamer handheld game console, which is also programmable in CircuitPython, as well as Arduino’s C-like language and the languages supported by MakeCode Arcade.
- “Googly eyes” rings from Flying Tiger
- Yubico Yubikey Security Key NFC
- Storyteller Tactics card deck, which I suspect I’ll be making regular use of soon
- Box containing SmartQ SD card-to-USB-C adapter; used for installing a new OS for a Raspberry Pi
- “K68”-style keyboard
The keyboard and Storyteller Tactics were prizes I won in the “Tracy’s Treasure Chest” raffle at last Friday’s Spring Tech Fest, a.k.a. Tracy Ingram’s 50th birthday party.
The raffle was unusual in that a winning ticket wasn’t for a specific prize. Instead, a winning ticket would allow you to enter a prize room containing over a hundred items, where you could choose what you won. You could buy multiple tickets, and you could win multiple times.
Proceeds from the raffle are going to girls’ STEM education in local high schools, so Anitra and I bought ten tickets and won three times (she got a Kemove K68 keyboard). I think we did all right!