Plugging In the Pi T-Cobbler Plus and Attempting my First GPIO Project

So I wanted to get the physical challenges out of the way first before I even attempted to boot up my Raspberry Pi. I took a look at the Pi T-Cobbler Plus breakout cable and was asking three initial, pressing questions:
1. Does it matter if the cable is rotated the wrong way when plugging it into the RPi?
2. Can the RPi be up and running when I plug in the data cable or will it damage the motherboard?
3. How do the pins of the Cobbler fit into a breadboard?

I tried to briefly tap into my common sense resources... if the data cable was attached to the RPi GPIO pins with the cable forced to run over the motherboard, that would equate to a bit of silly design work on Adafruit's side since it is called a "break-out cable" not a "break-in cable".

I have to admit that this photo on the Adafruit Pi T-Cobbler Plus page helped me quickly figure out the correct connection decision.

It turns out these were very, very good questions to ask. So with the common sense voice inside me head shouting, "Do some more research before you ruin your Pi!", I found this this helpful video which illustrated that the quickly explained the potential damage you could do to your RPi if you don't pay attention to the

Once I didn't witness any smoke or detect and burning circuitry aromas emitting from my RPi I felt confident that I didn't fry my Pi. I moved on to YouTube to search for some tutorials to test out my new breakout kit... This video is what I found:



I felt lucky to find such a fantastic 2 part tutorial on using the RPi GPIO and Python code to control On/Off and delay commands for LED lights. I dove in and gave it a try.

A precursor to my rather disjointed video documentation of my newbie adventure: I haven't figured out how to do VNC to do a proper screencast recording on a remotely connected PC yet, please be prepared for some motion sickness.

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Overall, I am astounded by the ever-growing sea of resources for just-in-time, on-demand, community-based learning which is called the Internet. I can't imagine progressing forward at such a fast pace with my independent learning without the online resources I discovered within seconds of typing in various keyword searches.

Up next, I've had this relentless, niggling urge to see what is out there in cyberspace for interfacing Arduino (another fantastically versatile maker-movement invention) with RPi. One step at a time. This successful Kickstarter project has captured my attention.