The RTC arrived today. Soldered some header pins onto it (soooo easy, I thought it would be more difficult doing stuff like that) and got it programmed with the time. Waiting for some other bits to complete the clock.
I did try and get my LCD running with only 3 wires from the Arduino and a shift register but the LCD just sat there blinking it's cursor on the first line so I don't think it did work.
However I have fucked up (I think, I haven't tried it yet) the 2 line LCD that came with my Arduino. I was trying to remove the header pins and solder longer ones onto it because they're too short and don't fit into the breadboards.
Removing the pins was easy enough but when I tried to remove the solder with wick so I could put the new pins in the traces on the board started lifting and I made a right mess of the thing :S I will try it to see if it works but I doubt it.
bastard by name