BTW, not trying to start a flame war, but a 555 can have uses beyond an LED. Heck, a few threads back I read about someone using it as a fail safe for a sprinkler system. Even Dave used one to create a board to control the Mantis LED lighting. If you understand the internals (watch blog #555), you can do great things with it, and go beyond standard circuits. Back in the Z80 and 6502 days they were used for reset circuits. The 555 didn't change from the '80s, people did, and it has since become a beginner LED project, instead of a serious component with a (yes, very flexible) function. A cheap-ass source of PWM, a single shot pulse, even a crappy triggered timebase. watch the blog, and understand just what the discharge pin does.