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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.

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 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

Starting my job at Instructables has been great amounts of fun. It’s really true what they say, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. I have some very creative coworkers (see below) and have found the Instructables community to be incredibly gracious.

Without further ado, here’s what I’ve been up to (but too busy to share over the last week). It’s the late, late edition!

My coworker Randy made a clap off bra:

I visited NASA Ames Research Center a couple weeks ago and learned all about Kepler. Here’s my recap on KQED Quest.

Jonathan and I were interviewed for this geek love computerworld story (I think you’ll agree we are the most awesome people on this list).

Man puts his head inside particle accelerator. Survives. Full story here.

Exciting news to pass on: I have just accepted a position of Editor at Instructables.

If you haven’t heard of Instructables, it is possibly one of the most awesome DIY/Maker/how-to websites on the face of the planet. In fact it’s pretty much the only one that matters. (Not like I’m biased or anything!)

I first heard about Instructables when I attended Yuri’s Night at NASA Ames in Spring 2008. Instructables was doing a nerdy show and tell. I saw all kinds of robots and other contraptions that had been built by the community. I was totally enamored.

Fast forward a few years and the position at Instructables opened up. I’ve been freelance writing and contracting my mad marketing skillz for the past 5 months and while I’ve enjoyed it, it’s not an easy existence. In freelancing you gain total autonomy over your day in exchange for compete uncertainly about where you’ll work and what you’ll make each month. While I managed to keep my head above water financially, it was stressful. And I really craved finding a team to work with again (freelancing can be pretty lonely).

So here’s a rough outline of what I’ll be doing for Instructables:

- Curating four sections of the site: Outside, Play, Technology, Workshop
- Coming up with ideas for contests that you’ll love and want to enter
- Creating and publishing new ebooks
- Making Instructables!

That’s the big picture and I’m sure as I dig in there will be lots more.

I was pretty determined to get this job at Instructables and went a bit over the top in doing so. To prove my nerd cred I created this video to show them:

How to get hired at Instructables from Laura Khalil on Vimeo.

So there ya have it! I start my new job on Monday and would love to hear from you about what contests you want to see, Instructables you dream of making or would like to see me make and anything else!

I will still be blogging for KQED Quest every Tuesday and keeping Dorkbyte alive and well, so stay tuned for more science-y adventures.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and that means it’s time for some of us to find that perfect gift for a loved one. I’ve hand-picked some of my favorites for this year, keeping my geeks, nerds and makers in mind:

Plush Microbes

Attention science lovers! These are adorable, soft microbes are a great alternative to the traditional teddy bear. You can check them out at Think Geek for $20.

Make your own Valentine’s cards

Patent #875,845: Sexual Armor

Steve Hoefer has six different Valentine’s cards perfect for the Maker in your life, thanks to digging around the U.S. patent office. Each card is based off of actual patents (believe it or not) and these are entirely free to download and print on your own.

Steve has created cards based off patents for an Imitation Bouquet (Patent #1,583,505), a Lip Protection Device (Patent #2,434,078) and more. My personal favorite is this one shown above for Sexual Armor.

Download them now for free at grathio.com

Get your very own gramophone and make beautiful music together.

The Makershed does have a cornucopia of fun items for Makers, including these LED hearts, but what really grabbed my attention is this gramophone. There are a couple reasons :

1. It allows me to use the phrase, “And now you can make beautiful music together”

2. It’s freaking awesome. This is a great project to put together with that special someone so you can, ahem… make beautiful music together.

The project doesn’t come assembled, and apparently the instructions are in Japanese (!) so it’s up to you to get this puppy up and running. It doesn’t work with records, but does play CDs. This is available in the Maker Shed for $119.

Create an Experience

Experiences are my favorite gifts. Frankly, they create memories that will last long past the expiry date of any material object. If you’re a San Francisco based Maker, take a class together at Tech Shop or The Crucible. Not only can you learn some cool new tricks but you’ll both be developing a skill that you can do together!

For Valentine’s this year @jof and I are going to be getting our amateur radio licenses. I’ll be getting mine for the first time and he’ll be upgrading his a notch. What’s cuter than matching walkie-talkies?

Photo attributed to affinity1 on Flickr

January has been busy busy busy. Here are some of the highlights I’ve uncovered which largely prove my indefatigable point: Science is RADICAL!

Jeri Ellsworth and other tech luminaries launch the 555 timer contest. Make something awesome with a 555 timer and win big (What’s a 555?). Entries due March 1st.

National Geographic announces the best amateur astronomy photos. It’s hard to believe these were taken from Earth and not the Hubble. Check out the winners!

While the media flurry around Cablegate has definitely died down, I really appreciated this post from the EFF entitled,”The Best of Cablegate: Instances Where Public Discourse Benefited from the Leaks“. Must read.

Stanford researchers are creating video games that interact with single-celled organisms. Wacky, but true. Read my story about this on KQED.

TED has launched TED books. The, dare I say, revolutionary speaking series is starting to put some of its content into e-book form, short enough to read in one sitting. They’ve got a small and growing collection.

Last, but absolutely not least, Steve Hoefer was featured on Make:Live Episode 1. Steve is a Maker extraordinaire — and also my nerd crush. If you’d like to know what all the awesome is about, I profiled him a few months ago for KQED as one of San Francisco’s must follow Makers.

The first episode of Make:Live is all about arduinos! Steve created this *awesome* Secret Knock Gumball Machine (details for how to make this project are in Make issue 25). Check out the video: