Seems my last update had me bumped from Nullsoft to misc on Webdog. 
Bastards! JK I love you Webdog. Sort of.

Got my AVR starter kit, the STK500. I must say, I'm having a blast with it.
Their development tools are pretty good, and the hardware itself rocks.
(mmm 1 cycle instructions, and running at decent clock rates).

Enjoying getting back to the basics, writing (err, cut&pasting anyway) 
serial code that works by setting the state of the serial line to high and
low, and more. Had some frustrating time with a bad serial cable, but got 
that sorted out. Now the hard part, which I know little about, will be 
making a simple custom board for the footswitches. Basically this 
microcontroller will read a number of switches and knobs, and detect events 
on them, and send serial messages to the host computer (which will be running 
Jesusonic) notifying it what the user has done. All super simple, but should 
work good. anyway, there will always be room for second gen, of having a 
little LED or LCD display on the footboard...