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Offices tend to have their own set of weird quirks and inside jokes often formed out of hilarious shared experiences. Instructables is no exception. Our founder, Eric, is a health fanatic and that’s definitely rubbed off on the office. We often spend lunchtime talking about Jack Lalanne, juicing veggies and pulling 100 tug boats through water with our teeth.

(There was also a pull up competition on my first day at the office.)

Recently, our office chatter has taken a turn from fitness talk to Lionel Richie’s video for the chart topping 1984 hit, “Hello”.

If you’re unfamiliar with the song, it comes out of the great ’80s “stalker genre” of song (ie: Every Breath You Take by The Police). The song is undeniably awesome. The video, however, is incredibly cheesy and slightly creepy, taking us through the life of a professor, played by Lionel, that is secretly in love with a blind student, Laura.

Lionel calls her up, singing his love on the phone, only to hang up mid sentence. He sings behind her in the cafeteria as she’s eating lunch, follows her into a dance class to serenade her, and so on. Eventually we learn that the love between Lionel and Laura is mutual, for she sculpts his head out of clay and reveals it to him by saying, “This is how I see you”.

This video has caused so much hilarity in the office that all kinds of “Hello” pranks have ensued. One morning I came into the office to find this on my desk (courtesy of my work wife, Angie):

I knew I needed to one up Angie, and with Lionel as my inspiration, Jonathan and I decided to build the clay sculpture of Lionel’s head.

This was not an easy process. Considering neither one of us knows how to sculpt, I immediately took to the internet to see if anyone else had sculpted Lionel’s head. I did come across this unbelievably hilarious tutorial by Ted Fines. Ted, also a n00b when it comes to sculpting came up with this:

Photo by Ted Fines

As you can imagine, that left me pretty concerned.

I was down, but not out. Determined to find a way to sculpt Lionel’s head, I stumbled upon the story of a bunch of art students in the UK, which undertook “The Hello Experiment”. They actually sculpted Lionel’s head blindfolded:

With renewed inspiration, I crafted my plan. We went to the local weave and extension emporium in the heart of the Tenderloin and bought a foam head. Next, we purchased a bunch of air dry clay and a variety of clay molding tools. Mind you, I had no idea what to do with this tools, but I felt they would add more authenticity to my newfound life as a sculpter of creepy celebrity busts. (For the full set of instructions on how to make your own Lionel Richie clay head from “Hello”, check out my Instructable.)

We decided to mold the clay around the foam head so to have a bust that was, at the very least, anatomically correct. Next, while carefully pouring over an image of the original clay head from “Hello” we began to sculpt. The whole process took about two hours, and in the end we had our very own Lionel “Hello” head:

The happy couple

Once dry, I carefully packed up Lionel’s head and plotted how to get it onto Angie’s desk without her noticing. When she went out to grab coffee, I placed Lionel on her desk and waited for her return. This is what happened when she came back and found Lionel:

So good, so sweet, so Lionel.

Working at Instructables, I always have my eye out for fun projects. Much to my chagrin, I am not the type of person who can easily come up with awesome project ideas. But that’s all changing thanks to Pinterest.

Pinterest lets you create an online pinboard of inspiring ideas and projects from around the web. Most importantly, whatever other people in your friend circle pin shows up in a stream on your homepage. Finding new ideas and inspiration is dead simple.

One of my favorite categories is food, and I’ve pinned close to 100 food projects on my “Food Porn” pinboard. Looking at food pictures is fine and dandy, but I want more! This is my Pinterest weekend, and in keeping, here are the recipes I’m making from Pinterest:

Corn Soup from La Tartine Gourmande

Pesto chicken stuffed shells from What's Cookin, Chicago?

Pumpkin Banana Bread from Skinny Taste

Cheddar jalapeno cornbread muffins from Love and Butter

Pinterest is awesome for food and craft projects, but I’m not having much success with finding tech projects. Where do you go for project inspiration (tech or otherwise?). Put your favorite sites in the comments and spread the love.

Month two is rounding the bend and I wanted to provide an update since moving from my bean bonanza last month, (aka The Four Hour Body) to Weight Watchers’ Points Plus system.

I’ve been on Points Plus for the past four weeks and the results are in:

Weight lost in the last four weeks: 5 lbs
Total weight lost in past seven weeks: 10 lbs
Inches lost in the last four weeks: 3.5 inches
Total inches lost in the past seven weeks: 10.5 inches

I am really happy with the Weight Watchers plan. I do tend to eat the same few meals every day, so counting points is easy. Also, I’m NEVER hungry. It actually feels like a diet I can do without feeling like I’m on a diet! I am also taking one day off a week where I don’t count and that has been totally fine. I generally don’t gain wait the day after my binge day, either.

Throughout the last two months I haven’t been doing any exercises. In Month 3 I’m going to switch that up. I am going to start exercising this month and see how that changes the numbers. I’ll check back in next month with an update!

Holy cow! Our second Code Cafe EXPLODED with new coders. We had 8 people join us at Ma’velous to work on different coding projects. I worked on two things:

1) Playing host to all these new people and making sure everyone was happy, comfortable, feeling like part of the group

and

2) getting help in my project to have a bird house tweet when a bird comes along. With the help of Jof, Michael and Andy, I figured out the best way to “activate” my arduino to transmit a message via Xbee to the computer (and then to twitter) was to use a PIR (passive infrared) sensor.

The great news is that Ma’velous is very happy to have us in their cafe. They generally reserve a table for us and the owner, Philip,  is looking forward to our arrival each week. The bad news is that Ma’velous has little/no outlets to plug in, so if you come next week, COME CHARGED!

If you have any comments about how Code Cafe could be improved, please let us know in the comments or next time you visit!

Here are the details on our next meetup:

Code Cafe #3: Tuesday, May 24th
Ma’velous, 6 – 9pm

With tons of people coming into town for Maker Faire, I thought it most fitting to provide a guide to San Francisco for the makers, geeks and freaks that we cater so well to.

Whether your in San Francisco for a weekend or a week, here are a few things you should definitely put on your list:

1. Tour Tech Shop: why? Because you want to drool over their millions of dollars in equipment. Amazing machinery and beautiful space. Day passes are also available.

2. Raygun Gothic Rocketship at Pier 14: yes, a rocketship! Get our your best Barbarella costume and come see this beautiful piece of art. On display until Fall 2011.

3. Market Street Blooms at 7th and Market: two towering metal flowers have been placed in San Francisco’s mid-Market area, brightening up one of the more depressed areas of San Francisco. The 15 foot pieces of art are well worth seeing and bring a beautiful sense of whimsy. This installation will continue until November 2011.

3. Electronics flea market: held on the second Saturday of the month and focusing on electronics and amateur radio gear (March – October). Giant nerd swap meet.  http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/

4. Museums: Visit the Tech Museum, Computer History Museum and Exploratorium. GO!

5. Visit Instructables.com HQ: So I am biased. Whatever. Point is that Instructables is a DIY mecca for millions of makers, hackers and hobbyists to post their projects and be inspired. Come visit our office for a tour — meet the robots, check out our laser cutter and get to know the team behind this popular site. And if you’re in town for Maker Faire 2011, RSVP for our Ice Cream Social.

6. Hackers, you say? Visit Noisebridge and revel in its chaos.

7. Head south to Weird Stuff and HSC: if you’re heading down the Peninsula, you are going to want to check out these two warehouses full of parts, pieces, components and awesome stuff for makers, hackers and hardware geeks. You’ll be able to identify either by the “unique” cars in the parking lot — such as the one with 20 antennae strapped to the roof or another with 60 feet of CAT 5 strapping down items in the back of a pickup (yes, I have seen both of these at HSC).

8. Tour a data center. Why? Because if you haven’t already they’re awesome to see. There are a couple in the city itself, so find yourself a network engineer and get an inside peek.

9. Take a mini-class at the Crucible. Learn to play with fire, make kinetic art, metalwork, glassmaking and so much more. They have regular events and weekend classes for all interested.

10. Shoot guns at Jackson Arms. If you’ve never shot a firearm, I highly recommend doing so. It’s a wonderful education in the power of these machines and safe handling. Plus… it’s just fun!

What else am I forgetting? Post your suggestions in the comments!

Last night was our first Code Cafe and it was awesome!

Ma’velous learned through Twitter that we were going to be hosting Code Cafe at theirs and reserved a large table for us in advance. How awesome is that?

@m_c_t and @jof joined me to work on various projects. I mainly stuck to working through Programming Ruby and learned some cool new shortcuts. We learned about @m_c_t’s trip to China’s electronics city, Shenzhen, and all the cool gadgets he found for rock bottom prices.

The evening was capped off with tons of great coffee and an impromptu key signing party. Having a small group was great. It was really nice to be able to ask my Code Cafe cohorts for help or clarification and learn about some of the issues they were facing. It’s incredible how much you can learn just talking to really talented developers.

Hope you join us next week!

Code Cafe #2

Tuesday, May 17th
6 – 9pm
Ma’velous (1408 Market)

Photo by SpecialKRB (Flickr)

Four weeks ago I embarked on an intrepid plan to eat beans, eggs, lean meat and veggies as part of the slow carb diet laid out by Tim Ferriss in his book, The Four Hour Body.

I followed the diet religiously for the last four weeks.

The diet was appealing to me because of the notion of a “cheat day” — a day where you could eat whatever you wanted with no regrets. Sadly, these days appear to do nothing but reset whatever weight loss I may have made during the week.

Here are the results:

Days 1 – 10: 5 lbs lost, 7 inches lost

Days 11 – 28: no weight loss, .5 inches lost

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the thought of eating another can of beans actually induces tears. Tim Ferriss says that people think they need more variety in their diet than they actually do, and that eating under his plan won’t bore you to death. After four weeks, I couldn’t disagree more. By the end of the four weeks all I wanted to eat was anything but THIS.

Why didn’t the slow carb diet work for me? I suspect it was way too high in carbs (beans) and calories.

I turned to Weight Watchers to help me understand why I might not be losing weight. I’ve used WW before and their new Points Plus system takes calories out of the equation and looks at only Fat, Fiber, Carbs, and Protein to give each food a point value.  Based on your age, height and weight, you have a certain number of points you can eat each day and from there you can figure out how many Twinkies you can eat until you hit the mark.

I’ve never liked the aspect of counting anything (a large part of why the slow carb diet was so appealing), but when I input my daily food log into the WW Points Plus calculator, my points were off the chart. I was simply eating more than I should have been.

With that in mind, I’m back on Weight Watchers. I am sticking with a lower carb diet, but incorporating some of the things I love back into it. A typical day on WW looks like this:

Breakfast: Greek yogurt, granola, berries

Lunch: Chipotle chicken salad with guacamole, salsa and pinto beans

Dinner: Chicken sausage, lots of steamed veggies, rice

Snack (if needed): banana

I’ve been including a couple glasses of wine after dinner as well and am so much happier. WW gives you some extra points to play with, so I’m still going to have a cheat day once a week, but stick closely to the diet the other 6 days.

Being on Weight Watchers I’m also losing weight again! Down 1.5 lbs since starting it two days ago. I’ll provide another update in a month’s time and we can see how well the WW plan works.

Photo by Agathe B (Flickr)

I received a surprisingly large response on Twitter to asking if friends would be interested in a weekly coding cafe. So we’re doing it!

I haven’t been doing any programming since starting at Instructables and am really missing it. This is a great opportunities for booth noobs and more experienced folk to get together and code it out!

We’ll be doing the first Coding Cafe at my favorite new coffee shop, Ma’velous. This place is awesome for a number of reasons:

1. awesome coffee and wine
2. local business that needs our support
3. not busy
4. centrally located at Market and Polk (two blocks from Civic Center Bart and one block from Van Ness Muni station)

Ma’velous doesn’t have wi-fi. If you’ve never worked in an internet free environment, I highly recommend trying it out. Programming doesn’t generally require an internet connection for coding, so I like the ability to just sit down and focus without email/IM/Twitter constantly distracting me.

If you do need wi-fi, I will be “bringing the internet with me”, and in theory, can tether eight computers to a cellular access point. Hope to see you there.

Coding Cafe #1
Tuesday, May 10th 6 -9pm
Ma’velous (1408 Market St)

Hook up with us on freenode: #codingcafe

Photo from maveloussf.com

For the past five days Jonathan and I have been doing the 4 hour body diet plan. It’s been going surprisingly well! Personally, I love beans, which are a large component of the diet, so I am happy as can be (and never feel hungry).

The food options aren’t terribly interesting (dark greens/veggies, beans, lean meat, eggs), but it seems worthwhile. I don’t have much to report on the amazing weight loss, as we’re only on Day 5. We’ve both lost some weight, but we’re in it for the long haul, so let’s give it some time!

What we are really excited for is our day off. Each Saturday we are taking the prescribed day off and eating whatever we want. Throughout the week when we’ve wished to have certain foods, we’ve just put them on our “Cheat Day” list, to be consumed on our day off. After five days the list is a bit daunting. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

• Specialties Cookies
• Pie
• Dotties (our favorite brunch spot in the Tenderloin)
• A creamy milkshake
• A foamy latte
• Melty pizza
• Crispy, creamy macaroni and cheese
• Mint chocolate cookie Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
• French toast
• Beignets
• Sushi
• Fruit
• Yogurt
• Basil pesto
• Thai food with noodles and peanut sauce (ผัดซีอิ๊ว! พระราม!)
• Beard papas
• Donuts from across the street
• Cornbread
• Candied yams

So yeah, I am not sure how much of this we’re going to get through tomorrow, but we have begun to lay out an hour by hour “game plan” to optimize both our time and eating potential. It looks something like this:

7am Wake up

7:05 Eat a scoop of ice cream

7:20 We bike in separate directions. Jonathan is headed to wait in line at Dottie’s (the line is epic) while I run across the street to get us donuts and lattes. I will then proceed to Dottie’s so we can consume our first breakfast in line.

7:45am — Dottie’s.  Whatever is on the “specials” menu. Will definitely include their blueberry coffee cake, cornbread, maybe fruit. No, wait — definitely some fruit.

9am — Head to SoMa on bicycles with plenty of storage. Hit up Specialties for a chunk of butter, er, “cookie”. Grab some Beard Papas.

11am – noon — Grocery shopping. There are some things that if you want done right, you’ll have to do yourself. This includes Macaroni and Cheese. There’s just no substitute for doing this yourself and having it fresh. Get parts for: mac and cheese, maybe a pie, and some hummus and naan.

noon – 2pm — Get some sushi for lunch.

2 – 4pm — Get baking. That mac and cheese is not going to cook itself. Consume some snacks. Pesto with a spoon.

4 – 6pm — Enjoy mac and cheese. Order in some thai food.

6 – 8pm – I have promised homemade cupcakes and banana bread for the office which I will undoubtedly be making at this point. Anyone’s guess if this actually makes it to work.

Are we going to get through all this? Well, probably not! At worst we’ll definitely get through the morning and be clutching our stomach’s for the following several hours. Jonathan is pretty adamant that we bike everywhere we eat tomorrow, in some sort of attempt to burn calories as we eat…. I don’t think that’s going to nearly cut it, but happy to bike!

Victory includes getting through about 1/3 of this list. Anything less means we really need to work on our competitive eating chops and buckle down.

But seriously, where is Paula Deen when you need her!? She could be such a help in understand how long things will take to cook, how to deep fry properly, and proper butter application techniques.

I’ll likely have an update on how this went (or follow me on twitter for the game day play by play).

About 5 months ago I wrote this piece about how to succeed at whatever goal you’ve set yourself up for. In my case it was a fitness goal and I really needed some strong motivators to get me in shape.

Now for the exciting update!

I spent the first two months of my exercise plan doing Pilates. I wish I hadn’t stopped. After a couple months, I was beginning to get compliments on my slimmer figure and could feel my core getting a lot stronger. But I wasn’t changing fast enough — I wasn’t dropping dress sizes, pant sizes or anything like that. I was just reshaping everything.

I decided to kick things up a notch and joined another studio, Burn, that has a one hour class focusing high intensity cardio, weight training and some pilates. I thought it would provide me with the OOMPH I needed to start taking off pounds.

I also nearly had a heart attack the first class and took this to be a good sign of future weight loss potential (if it kills me, that must mean it’s working).

The Good

• I have built a freaking ridiculous amount of muscle. And by that I mean 15 lbs of muscle in three months. It’s insane.
• My cardio endurance has gone through the roof. I don’t run out of breathe anymore!
• Exercise has become a habit. I like doing it because it makes me feel good and I can keep it up on my own.

The Bad

• As far as I can tell, I have not lost any additional fat.
• I have gained 15 lbs (of muscle), but believe me when I say that NOTHING is fitting better.

So what next? Well throughout my five months of weight training, I didn’t adjust my meal plan. I consider myself a relatively healthy eater, but I don’t watch calories. I just keep away from junk food and fried food. The one thing I have not kept away from is rice and pasta. They are my crack and I love them — but I’m giving it up.

Following in the steps of a friend of mine, I am going to take 90 days to follow the “4 hour body” diet plan. After 90 days, we’ll see where I’m at.

Before I ever read the “4 hour body”, I was making fun of it (you need to read the New York Times review to understand how ridiculous this diet is).

While Tim Ferriss may have tested all his cockamamie ideas on himself, I find them ridiculous:

• Take a cold shower before bed?
• Put an ice pack on my neck for 30 minutes at night?
• One day a week eat whatever you want, but you’ll need to drink grapefruit juice before your second meal of the day and ever so often engage in muscular contractions???????
• And countless others…

Yes friends, I laughed quite a bit about this man’s weight loss designs and relegated it to the area of pure fantasy. That was before I’d met people who had actually done this stuff… and weirdly… seemed to say it was working.

So that’s my update. I have bought a 24 pack of black beans (one of Mr Ferriss’ approved foods), a plethora of supplements and I’m going to surrender to the 4 hour body.  I’ll check back this July.