Hi, I just found eevblog about a month ago, only joined the forum a few days ago.
I've been reading through recent posts and for my two cents, it's really encouraging to see so many people communicating so enthusiastically about so many projects and subjects. There seems to be a very low (if non-existent) troll population. It's fantastic to see people actually *doing* things and showing them.
I can understand if this forum has lost some of its small community feel, but, it could be worse. I used to op on a few programming channels on irc, after 10 years or so of being MIA, I went back to a group of dead channels, no heated discussion, no personalities, no old friends, pretty much just tumble-weeds (relatively).
I'm also seeing many people like myself who are entering mid-life and getting back into electronics in a major way after maybe only doing it as a kid; makes me feel like less of a freak (maybe that's a bad thing though). Whatever the case is, Dave's really done the whole world a favour by relentlessly and consistently providing good eevblog content which has attracted so many people to this forum. I'm sure many people are like myself, when I look to start learning in a new area, I look for a community filled with good people, enthusiastic people who aren't afraid to share their knowledge and who have a lot of real world experience. It's lets people like myself learn at a breakneck pace and the enthusiasm is infectious.
I certainly plan to stick around.