Maybe a bit (and maybe entirely) offtopic, but I wanted to learn, what is best to use to drive home equipment (230V) from a microcontroler?
I spent this night trying to learn about this all and didn't find anything that would be simultaneously very simple to use, quite reliable and providing decent power.

Following one of older threads here, I visited http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ as they seem to provide some solutions.

A solid state relay appeared to be a failure - it can drive some very low power devices, but your average TV set would be too much for it.

An SPM circuit looked promising, but using a 3-phase power supply for "Home appliances like washing mashine" (as they suggest)? One for quite a big and dirty family, it seems... Too many pins, too many tricks to drive something simple.

I saw some nice schematics of IGBTs with gates isolated with optocouplers. Fairchild seems to provide ones with direct base and emiter connection though, so I looked how correctly to use these and got completely lost in data sheets, specific application examples etc, until some post on some obscure PIC forum straightened me "Forget IFBTs, they suck, go for a triac."...

So I checked - Okay, triacs are simple and neat, but they can't provide enough power. But combining one with a thyristor seems easy enough. Cool. Just looking for example application I dug up some other PIC project, a light dimmer. And on the project, in fine print I saw a note "This construction may be illegal in some countries, especially in Europe"...

What do you suggest?

Ps. have you seen the ACEx microcontrollers? Not nearly as powerful as 8051, in package the size of a typical optocoupler they mean really cute toys :) I think it's time to learn some new assembler....
http://www.fairchildsemi.com/pf/AC%2FACE1502.html