Thanks for sharing your story Nick! I feel your pain. :)

I think you're best solution is to get a dual stepper motor shield, like this: http://www.robotshop.com/en/dual-steppe…

Typically if we got an odd submission, we'd run it! We just started a new column on Boing Boing called Maker Mayhem, which you might enjoy. It's about weird/dangerous projects from old how-to magazines: http://boingboing.net/tag/maker-mayh…

That's a tough question! You need more than one tool to make something, usually. If I had to say just one tool - a Leatherman Multi-Tool.

Thanks, Jon! The Crazy Cards (magic trick), Longboard Skateboard, and Mid-Century Modern Rocking Chair are my favorites.

Make: Electronics, by Charles Platt, is the best electronics primer ever written (disclosure - it is published my Make and I'm the founding editor-in-chief of MAKE.)

The Arduino comes with some great tutorials built-in. When you launch the Arduino programming application, you can select example code to load. Check this out: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Ho….

I have not tried anything with two Arduinos. All the things I've made with an Arduino require just one.

Basically, picked off one-by-one. And my bees absconded a couple of months ago. I need to get more!

Hey Andy! Thanks for inviting me to do this. My chickens were eaten by coyotes, bobcats, and raccoons.

Thank you very much everyone. You asked interesting questions and I hope I answered them to your satisfaction.

By showing us that you are the right person for the job!

The reason that I wouldn't try it now is that my kids are older and it's not as easy to pull them out of school and disrupt their lives that way. But maybe once they are in college my wife and I will try living somewhere else again. We lived in London in the 80s, and Japan in the late 80s, and then Rarotonga in 2003.…

I've been working at it since 1979 or 1980! I hope to have it down pat by the time I am 80 years old or so.

Because there is always time for Barry! :-)

That's an astute observation, David! I hadn't really thought of the maker ethic as being an antidote to the kinds of manipulation cited in the book Influence. But I think you are right!

Our life in Rarotonga was a lot different. There wasn't very much to do, and we could live cheaply, so I spent most of my day walking around the island with my baby daughter strapped in a baby carrier on my body. When I was living in London I was playing in a band and again my financial needs were miniscule. My rent…

I would start with small projects that don't require a lot of expensive tools. For instance I bought an inexpensive wood carving set and started wiggling my own spoons and saltcellars. It's a great way to pass the time, and I can even do conference phone calls while I am whittling away! Once you start getting good,…