Each year I've been trying to get more creative with ideas for Spencer's birthday cake. The plan this year was to incorporate LEDs in place of candles. I eventually settled on an Altair / IMSAI / PDP -style computer since those are the type of computers that inspired his RC2014. The IMSAI 8080 has the most colourful switches as well as a name that I could twist. The thought that it could show randomly flashing lights (as if the computer were running) and that it could also play a game of 'kill the bit' was very appealing. A plan formed to use a capacitive touch pad on the cake itself. The first job is to bake the fruitcake. I often use a 7" square tin and one of those cut in half and rearranged makes a cake of suitable proportions. Even after taking a slice off the faces to make them nice and square, there are still some rounded corners, so after putting on the marzipan, I used more marzipan as a filler to flatten the whole thing. Even though I wanted to end up w...