[Cerium]

When I was in 6th grade I found Ladyada's website, that really annoying one with the white dots you had to click, and saw her newest project, minty mp3. I was really impressed and thought I would never be able to design circuits that well. It was already my goal to be an electrical engineer. Then a year or two later Andrew released his book "Hacking the Xbox", I read that in one sitting. Really awesome work. I was just floored by the confidence to go to all that work setting up a bus tap like that to extract the initialization code.

Anyway, these two have been people I've been envious of at times and inspirational figures at others. A little random, but I thought I would share.

[SexyCyborg]

As an unlikely Maker struggling in an environment that's not always very supportive, Bunnie and Limor have my absolute undying loyalty for the way they each reached out with just a simple "Hey, if you need something just let me know". Since then each has periodically checked in to see how I was doing. They are absolutely the real deal and everything the hardware community should be.

Also Limor's husband Phillip- I can't always follow the English in the chat sessions when it gets very technical. He always takes the time to go back and repeat things in simpler terms to keep things accessible to those of us watching who are enthusiastic, but not all that knowledgeable.

[Posibyte]

I'll second these sentiments. In college, I caught her build log of the original Game Grrl. Seeing her take commodity objects and clone systems and turning it into a lovely end product was my spark to get into the world of hardware.

Her, Andrew Huang, and Ben Heckendorn are wonderfully inspirational creators and hackers that I've on countless occasions referenced and consumed all sorts of projects and ideas from.

[anaccountwow]

When I was 3rd or 4th grade I would spend a lot of my free time on the internet reading the BenHeck forum. I got a lot of inspiration from the various diy portable builds and broke a lot of game consoles trying to emulate them.

[asadlionpk]

Yes indeed! I remember lurking on Ladyada's site in my school days looking at cool hacks and tricks.