Letting Out The Magic Smoke

Yesterday I was making a voltage divider circuit with a potentiometer on a breadboard. I planned to solder it down and use it as a variable power supply when prototyping. I was fooling with some of the leads (with power on) and I think I created a short-circuit on the metal case of the potentiometer. Anyways, it began to glow red under the dial (no, they're not supposed to glow) and let out some magic smoke. It also began to smell funny... luckily, it still works!

Hello!

Hi,
My name is Noah. I'm in the 8th grade and am passionate about electronics, programming, and robotics. I've tried and failed several other times to start a blog, but this one I think may work. This time I'm not focusing it, or trying to build up a large user base. This will be a personal journal of work that I do that I think is worth sharing. I hope people see what I write so it's not for nothing, but I figure that if anything this will be something interesting for me to look back on when I grow up, and see how I've changed.

As I mentioned, I have several (rather nerdy) interests, and don't intend to focus this blog as I have others. It is called "Blog of a Young Maker," so it will have stuff I make, but that could be anything from art to a program to a robot.

At the moment, I currently have several other collections of work. My Youtube channel can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/user/generalgeek314?feature=mhee
My LetsMakeRobots profile here - http://letsmakerobots.com/user/13577
And finally my Instructables profile - http://www.instructables.com/member/generalgeek314/

I hope you enjoy my work, and feel free to comment!

- Noah