Thanks! I remember reading A Wrinkle in Time when I was a youngster and it made a deep impression on me. Trouble was that I couldn't remember author or title anymore. My son will hopefully enjoy reading this in a year or two.

Best thing for them to do would be to crawl last.fm. Some pretty esotheric musical tastes there.

Oh yes, I remember that one. It chilled me to the bone. I hated it like Brussels sprouts... ... and boy is it a good story. For me it's been 'only' 30 years, but nevertheless...

And I recommend it.

I especially like Altera's "Nios Embedded Evaluation Kit" (aka the NEEK). It has its own TFT, sound codec, analog video input, ethernet and lots more. It also has a thriving uClinux community and they're working on including MMU support. Plus, you don't need a programming adapter for it - just put your hardware design on an SD card, insert into NEEK, power up, and off you go. Ok, it costs $449, but you can do far more than push a few buttons and let LEDs light up.