Good news! Bay Area Circuits shipped new blue board colors. My design target was somewhere between sky blue and blueprint blue — I’m happy with how this looks. Feast your eyes:

Additionally, I was a bit worried about the state of the wood stand manufacturer previously. They managed to ship me out a sample, which is the item shown in the above image. It’s all getting so close to final/final! Here’s another shot of the new stand:

Otherwise, a shipment of custom-made alligator clips (18kg of!!) made it from Shenzhen to Crowd Supply’s warehouse. In the words of the Crowd Supply folks, that’s enough for a very pinchy alligator clip ballpit.

Beyond this, there has been much progress made on the documentation and instructions front. I’ve partnered with Alex Hornstein (of https://lookingglassfactory.com/) who is helping me get some cartoon explanations of how each circuit works put together, for a card that will be included on the board. This is particularly exciting to me because Alex is one of the best people I know at the combination of 1) analogies that explain how electronics work and 2) storytelling and cartoon-making. If I recall, Alex’s MIT undergraduate thesis was even completed in cartoon form. Alex is partnering with another artist in this case who is working on the drawings currently — I’ll share proofs as they become available.

The reason for doing this is because I feel that it’s important to have a handy explainer available in the kits. Forrest’s books and works are inimitable, and in the books, any of each of the circuits I am illuminating here is well-explained in the context of the journey of reading the book, or possible to understand through it. However, if someone is coming across the circuit without access to a copy somehow, I feel it’s important to provide some, at least minimal, step-up point to being able to "get" what’s going on. All in, I’m incredibly glad for Alex’s help here and looking forward to the results.

Stay tuned for more - it’s coming up on deadline/volume ordering time!