The Realm of the Tiny

I've been working for the past few weeks on a surface mount version of the controller circuit described in this instructable for an LED cube.  "Surface Mount" means that the electronic components are soldered directly onto copper "pads" on a printed circuit board, as opposed to "through hole" devices, where a wire or lead goes through a hole that goes all the way through the board.

I've just soldered (properly, this time) two "0402" package capacitors onto the board.  This package size describes devices that are 1mm x 0.5mm (0.04" × 0.02").  After finishing those two pieces, I kinda stared, wide-eyed, at it all.  The accompanying picture shows the result.  I left a needle on the board for size reference.  The needle is 1.5" long, and it was really too big to be of much use holding the component in place.  The components in question are actually probably pretty hard to see, even in this close-up picture.  The needle point is close to the center, just above the label "C5", and the component is just below that.  The two silver dots are the pads and the little brown bit in the middle is the capacitor.  The second one is just above the "C4" label.

Work is still progressing on populating the board.  I'm probably not going to do any more on it for a few days as one of the parts I ordered turned out to be too big to fit on the board the way I designed it.  I've ordered a smaller replacement that should fit, but the uncertainty keeps me from doing much more work.  If I do get the urge to work on it more, I'll definitely check the pad layout very carefully against the specs for the new chip.