You specifically.Originally Posted by planters
Actually, I'm just thinking about what happens so often in electronics. Some new thing starts to take form, and you get a few sellers who know their stuff, all doing interesting things, like making simple designs to do things like collimate multimode diodes, do spatial filtering, or selling RGB diode packs that are well matched for beam specs, and suddenly you have the transition from geekly intrigue to simple DIY hobbyists kits. Now, that's how Maplin got started. In the UK, they focussed on kits. Mail order, mostly (before the net, and forums, even BBS's). Catalogs. And then shops! Awesome, to walk a couple of miles, see all those possibilities, including an actual HeNe tucked into the ceiling tiles somewhere and beaming overhead... And suddenly they get a new manager, all business, strictly business, and from a mix of geek-den-and-library, the whole thing gets colder, bigger, moves to a big new place, calls itself 'Mondo' or some such, like promising the world, but the thing that made it grow is ignored, all but killed off. Right now they are going where Tandy (US's Radio Shack's UK effort) went, and it's a sad sight.
It doesn't take a seer to know that this is a common course of events! Even in the hands of one sole creator, like in a sci-fi novel series, for example, it happens... Hell of an example, but it explains it pretty well so I'll use it: Greg Bear's Eon. The 'Stone (or the Potato, depending on POV, if you're from the US, or Russian). Irreverent or not the thing is a mystery to all, hung there in near space a day after not being seen by any tech or eye, and the strangeness REALLY kicks off when they discover that the seventh chamber goes on forever! All kinds of future promise are there, and he keeps it up awesomely for two books, but by the third it all blooms outward like a dying rose. Or nova. And the mystery is gone. It's reason to be is gone. A victim of its own success.
Maybe I should have explained myself at some other time than so late at night it's past morning, but what I'm getting at is that like the future of many things, laser project building is at That Transition, the one that risks taking it out of the originators and enthusiasts, and turning it into mass production. (And that's already happening though the quality is quite the lottery right now..) Some day someone is going to approach you with an offer you may not be able to refuse, and they will promise the Earth to all comers, but not be able to offer what you can and do. And by then it would be too late. BUT, right now you have foresight. If, and how, you may avoid or postpone that passing, may well depend on what you do now.
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