I've been playing with a Delcom Engineering USB I/O controller. USB just makes me happy--- control + power together, so no wierdo serial bit-banging or parallel printer connection necessary to interact with electronics, and no $$$ for a power supply.
I started out using Thomas Hargrove's libdelcom, but I wanted a more convenient interface. So, I've written a C++ library called libdelcom++, which I released last night under the GPL. (Woo! First freshmeat entry!)
I'm working on a companion library for talking to I2C devices.
P.S. SWIG rocks. If only it handled nested classes.
FOAF updates: Trust rankings are now exported, making the data available to other users and websites. An external FOAF URI has been added, allowing users to link to an additional FOAF file.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!