• An Arduino microcontroller. Thanks to RAD, I learned about Arduino, which gave me the ability to program hardware. It's something I've always wanted to do but never knew where to get started. I have one now, and I hope to complete an in-depth personal project next year.
  
  
• Apple's iPhone. Not because of the music, videos, and photos, but so they can deploy their creations using the iPhone SDK. Who doesn't want to make their own light saber battlegame utilizing GPS and accelerometer data?
  
  
• A trip to a software development related conference. A conference represents fun to be had learning and socializing with other geeks, and an opportunity to see what cool things other people are working on. Pick one according to the type of work they do, or the language they use most. Pick one unrelated if they want some adventure.
  
  This year I attended Lone Star Ruby Conference and had a great time learning things I never would have thought about to begin with. Even more fun were the conversations with other programmers who I'd met online, and some I'd never talked to before. (Here's a link to LSRC, whose website is down at the time of writing.)
  
  
• Books are always a good idea. This year I've especially enjoyed Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days and The Mythical Man-Month. Founders at Work was great for its insight into the minds of companies' founders (I especially enjoyed the interview with Steve Wozniak). Mythical Man Month is worth reading several times because of the wealth of timeless advice found in its pages.
  
  
• Parts to build a new computer. Many developers are - shall we say - frugal, and would love to have new equipment to work on, but never seem to justify the cost to themselves. Get them a motherboard, processor, video card, hard drive, optical drive, and tons of RAM and let them go to town building their own. Just make sure all the parts are compatible (and ask if you don't know!).
  
  After swearing off desktops last year, my MacBook Pro display went kaput recently this year (which Apple so graciously fixed out of warranty for no cost, except haggling), so I built a 64 bit dual quad PC with 8GB of RAM. Now I'm having fun writing programs without the 4GB memory restriction. Bloatware here I come! (Just kidding of course. The extra RAM and cores come in handy for bioinformatics research).
  
  Plus, the languages, platforms, and frameworks I use don't scale, so I need the extra processing power.

Those are some things I've enjoyed playing with this year. T-Shirts didn't make my list.

What's on yours?

So, with no further ado...

The Contest
For the next month, I'll be running a contest here for programmers to promote learning something new. In particular, since I think it's useful to learn languages and different programming paradigms, that's what this contest will focus on.

Last year it was very open-ended, perhaps too much so in that people didn't really know what was submittable. This year, I'd like to give you the opportunity of doing whatever you want (keeping it open ended), but with a couple of more concrete suggestions:

If you normally do web development, explore a different world. Do something for desktops, gaming consoles like the Xbox 360, or electronics.

If you normally develop for desktops, try something for the web with Silverlight, Flex, or html and javascript.

If you normally work in a dynamic language, try banging your head against the wall in a static one. If you're used to working in memory-managed virtual machines, do something in C/C++. Doing object oriented development? Try something functional. If your experience has been in the static world of Javaland and the like, try something more flexible.

Specific Examples:
If you work in Ruby on Rails, try something in C. Maybe you can contribute something to MRI. Work with pointers.

If you work in ColdFusion, step away from the Java, Groovy, and Flex holy trinity and try using the XNA framework to develop a simple demo you can play on your Xbox 360. Or write some search algorithms in Lisp.

If you work in Java or C#, why not try something using Ruby to work on an Arduino microcontroller. Film it.

If you work in Haskell or Lisp, you probably already know everything, so you'll have to convince me otherwise.

These are all just suggestions - on the higher and more complex end of the scale, in the most idealized version of the contest. Virtually anything you submit in the spirit of the contest will be accepted. If you're not sure, shoot me an email or leave a comment below, tell me your experience, and maybe I can suggest something.

What's expected?
Not too much. A simple demo application. Maybe it takes a few hours of your time. Extend or fix an open source project that uses something you've not had experience with. Just that you learn something new, and report on what you learned and your experience. You also must share the source code! You can report through an email or your weblog if you have one.

How do I win?
I will draw your name from a hat (or shuffled array) with an entry for each project submitted. There is nothing based on the complexity of the project or how cool or original it is. You only have to qualify, and you do that by learning something new, submitting your project, and writing a report on it. I'd like permission to edit and publish your report if you don't have your own blog to post it on.

When do I get my prize?
I'll notify the winner via email on or around December 5, 2008. The winner will let me know his or her choice between the iPod nano and iPod touch, their desired color (if there is a color choice), and their shipping address. I'll ship anywhere it's legal for me to, as long as the cost isn't ridiculous (maybe above $50 or so).

After that I'll place the order and if allowed to ship to a place other than my own address, I'll ship it directly to you. If not, I'll ship it to me and then to you.

Effort will be made to get it out as soon as possible, in case you want to re-gift it to someone else.

Overall, the point is to learn something new, to have fun doing it, and to get people involved in learning new concepts. If you accomplish any two out of those three goals within the next month, let me know about it and we'll enter you in the contest.

You have until December 5. Start coding.