Dorkbyte.com

Photo attributed to jule_berlin (Flickr)

Over the past week I’ve been burning the midnight oil to bring you a whole new design and experience on Dorkbyte.

I wanted to freshen up the look of the site and provide some more social features to help you interact with Dorkbyte across the web.

Here are some of the highlights:

We have a Facebook fan page!

I know you’re dying to be our fan on Facebook. I would be. Seriously, we’re all on Facebook and it’s actually a great way for me to better converse with readers and geeks than simply through comments. Dorkbyte’s Facebook page is already on the path to awesome, but it needs you there! Click the Like button on the right hand column of the site, or go visit us on Facebook.

If you’re not convinced, here are a few reasons to become a fan:

We’re giving away stuff! Join our Dorkbyte page anytime in February, leave us a comment and you’ll be entered to win one copy of Timothy Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. If the title alone has not hooked you, The New York Times HIGHlarious review definitely will. The reviewer describes the book as follows:

“The 4-Hour Body” reads as if The New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog.

I want to read this book for that description alone! Ok, but back to the point — join our Facebook page and this could be yours! (Sorry, have to have a U.S. mailing address to win this).

Other reasons to join our Facebook page:

We’re talking about stuff! Dorkbyte on Facebook will be featuring more discussion, curated links to awesome stuff we find on the web to share and most importantly, allows you to join in. Wondering what to get your Valentine this year or want to keep the discussion going about some of the Ruby learning tools I’ve reviewed? If your answer is, “HELLZ YES!” then head over to the Facebook page and let’s kibitz.

Other big news related to our brand new site launch:

We are on Posterous!

That’s right. There are so many cool things I come across on the web on a daily basis that I’d like to share with you. Instead of re-blogging them on Dorkbyte, we’re sharing these little gems of internet awesomesauce at dorkbyte.posterous.com.

Not on Posterous? Not to worry. We’re syndicating our Posterous posts to Facebook and Twitter so you can always find the cool stuff we uncover.

We have a new logo!

Props to my boy @jof for helping me refine this. We have a new logo and a new avatar. Isn’t he/she adorable? There’s only one thing we’re missing – a name for our dorkbyte man/lady. We’ve started a discussion on Facebook to help us choose a name. Join us over there or throw your suggestions in the comments below.

That’s all I got for now. Hope you like the new site and expect to see more more and MORE stories coming from of Dorkbyte.

Ruby Warrior is now one of my favorite ways to learn Ruby. I profiled Ruby Koans a few weeks back, and while I do like the Koans, they simply don’t challenge the user to write code. And when it does finally ask you to write code, you don’t have the foundation to know how to do it properly (remember, Koans is just asking you to memorize rules about Ruby, not program in it).

So I went on the hunt that for a program that would both help me learn and allow me to flex my programming muscles. And that’s when I found Ruby Warrior.

Ruby Warrior is a ruby gem which creates a series of challenges for the user to program their way out of. You are a warrior, going off to battle the evil sludge monsters. You need to figure out how to move, fight, heal yourself (and more). I’ve just completed level three of the beginner option (there is also a more advanced option) and am loving it! The game provides you with hints, but ultimately its up to you to program your way out of the challenge, gain points and move on to the next level. Each level adds more complexity, building upon what you’ve already written.

In the last challenge, I had to create a program that would move my Warrior, heal him when he wasn’t being attacked and attack the sludge as I moved forward. Here’s my code:

In my terminal, this is what happened when I ran this:

As you can see, the terminal graphically represents what happens to your Warrior each step of the way. I found this really useful when I was writing this to try and understand where I was going wrong (believe me, I died a few times before figuring out how to heal myself and survive!)

I am loving Ruby Warrior. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out this page on GitHub or simply install the gem: sudo gem install rubywarrior

Noisebridge's old space felt more like a community.

I received an unsettling email recently from one of the officers at Noisebridge, San Francisco’s hackerspace, where I’m a member.

Without immediate action, the hackerspace will have to shut its doors in February. Quite simply, they’re running out of money and the immediate term situation is dire. Long term, the organization needs to find financial solvency. If you care about the space, consider donating.

This financial crisis has me thinking about what I love and hate about Noisebridge, why the organization is failing to find its financial footing and what I really care about in a hackerspace. Here are some of my thoughts:

The good

Noisebridge has only one rule, “Be excellent to one another” and this has often been a guiding light. Noisebridge is a “do”-ocracy with minimal infrastructure and tons of tools, smart minds and inspiration for anyone to do whatever they put their heart to.

It’s the place that inspired me to stick with programming. I showed up for a programming class in Python nearly two years ago and have stuck around ever since. I’ve made at least a dozen new friends there and had experiences in electronics and machinery I would have never otherwise had. I also met my boyfriend there, without such a space, it’s doubtful our paths would have ever crossed.

The bad

Noisebridge does have its dark side. Its messy and hosts a growing amount of freeloaders, mental patients and other people that want a space to hang out, without contributing.

Unfortunately, I think it’s this element which has contributed to a decline in membership and a waning commitment by current members to pay dues. If you’re a member, visitor to the space, or otherwise have thoughts on some of the elements that have contributed to the decline in members using the space, please speak up in the comments.

The ugly

Having said that, it can be an uncomfortable experience for women, I myself have left the space for months at a time, feeling unwelcome or uncomfortable with the unfriendly attitude towards the fairer half. Eventually I just got over it, but I’ve spoken with other women that have visited the space and know that I am not alone on this one.

My dream hackerspace

If I were to build my own hackerspace, it would look a bit different from Noisebridge. Membership would be curated, but the space would be open to non-members for a daily fee.

Heavy machinery need not apply. A small electronics lab, sewing machine and resource library. Anything else can get done at TechShop.

It would be a community. There would be weekly events for members to come. Some technical, others social. Maybe a Ruby study group on night, an electronics workshop another and a potluck and
“show and tell” every Thursday.

We would engage the community. Technology outreach to schools, an occasional workshop for the under 18 crowd, contests to engage the hearts and minds of those around us.

In short, it would be a space with fewer people that were more intensely committed to the space, its mission and in “doing” cool stuff.

Noisebridge may fall by the wayside, or maybe something else will pop up that appeals to those who have left the space in the last year — undoubtedly with more rules and structure to keep out the riff-raff and keep in the awesome. While I love Noisebridge for many of the people, free classes and equipment available, I can definitely see the allure of another space with limited membership (something like NYC Resistor’s structure). We do live in the center of the nerd universe. Surely San Francisco proper has room for a second hackerspace…

We only have nine days left until Christmas, but here are a few gifts that are great options for that special geek in your life any time of year. I have personally tried most of these and am happy to bestow them with the Dorkbyte Seal of Awesomesauce!

Blue Sapphire Tentacle Ring

I absolutely love OctopusMe‘s work. I can attest to the wonderful craftsmanship of her rings and guarantee that these are real conversation pieces! Crafted from an actual Octopus tentacle. Perfect for the squid lover (or Cthulhu fan) in your life. Pricing varies for her pieces; this ring is $280. This artist also sells a variety of charms, earrings and other rings. If you live in the Bay Area, many of her pieces are for sale at Paxton Gate.

Limited Edition Pac Man Moleskine

Children of the 80′s, anyone? One of my favorite games as a kid now has it’s very own swanky moleskine. But you’ve got to jump on this quickly. Amazon is already sold out and the only place that has it in stock (based on a quick google search) is Moleskines.com. I love that Moleskine is branching out to extend their excellent line of paper to fun projects like this. $20

Brass Knuckles Coffee Mug
When Jonathan came back from a trip to L.A. with this mug I knew he was onto something. Whimsy and “badassery” all in a coffee mug! Beyond the aesthetic appeal, the mug is comfortable to hold and has quickly become my favorite for all those warm drinks on cold winter nights. Sold at Pop Deluxe for $17.

Shadows Over Camelot
Board Game Fan? Shadows Over Camelot is one of the best board games I’ve played this year. It’s collaborative, so unlike traditional strategy board games, the players are working together against the board to save Camelot. But there could be a traitor amongst the players! Who to trust and who to watch out for? That’s the best part. This is a challenging game to win, but wickedly fun. Available at Amazon for $45.

Zombie Attack Hoodie

Do I really need to say anything more? It’s just pure awesome. Available exclusively from ThinkGeek for $45.

Binary Blanket

If you’re looking to take your love of all things nerd and wrap it around you in a soft blanket, this is the one for you. Available from ThinkGeek for $22.

Cooking for Geeks

This book has received a very warm reception from the geek community when it arrived on the scene earlier this year. More than just a cookbook, this is an engineer’s cookbook. Want to learn the science behind cooking so you can make delicious meals without needing a recipe? This is the book for you. Available in the MakerShed for $30.

Egg-Bot

Now is this a toy I’d like to get my hands on! Created by the Bay Area’s very own Evil Mad Science Labs, the Egg-Bot can draw on any egg (or spherical surface) to create any design you can imagine. $195

This past Sunday I gathered a dozen friends together to come over and decorate Gingerbread Houses. I provided the houses and frosting, they provided the candy decor and innovation.

One of the things that surprised me the most about this project was how many friends immediately discarded the pre-built design and did their own thing, cutting apart gingerbread and manufacturing an entirely new gingerbread home that went far beyond what I could’ve imagined.

Miloh remarked that this would be a great activity for engineering students, testing their construction skills and really encouraging them to venture outside of tradition. I couldn’t agree more!

Without further ado, here are the Gingerbread Houses created:

Laura and Jof’s Love Shack

Jof takes all the credit for building out the electronics on our house. A bright red heart with flashing lights adorns the opening, with roof tiles built for maximum nerdiness.

Miloh and Bill’s Synagogue/High Rent Home/Amish Retreat
This house evolved the most over the course of the evening, morphing from various theme to theme to accommodate its increasingly flamboyant exterior.

Subtle details include the Amish person standing at the side of the house, the scarlet letter “A” atop the house, and the intricate lego candy brick work across the front exterior.

Miloh and Bill were the first to discard the notion of building the house in a traditional manor with fantastic results.

Derek and Lucius’ “It’s a Very Merry White Trash Christmas”

This house was great. It included just about every type of candy I’ve seen (the phone shown is when it was only HALF complete). Best of all, the guys built a fish pond out front with marshmallow, blue liquid candy and swedish fish.

Meryl, Vera and Phoebe’s “The Eichler”

These three ladies decided to take architectural review to new heights. Nuanced details here include the lego candy fireplace inside the house and well, “something” outside the house that I didn’t get the backstory on. Looks like a fire pit. Hopefully we can hear more about what that is in the comments.

Mike’s Cabana House

What every Gingerbread man needs, a cabana on the beach to relax in! Mike did a great job with this, he had a slanted roof, covered in marshmallows and supported on the back end by candy canes cemented to the house with icing.

Christina’s Salute to America (or France) with a Gingerbread Tipi

I really loved the gradient of blue that was completely by accident. We ran out of blue icing and when Christina went to make more, it came out that rich blue color on the bottom. Ingenious!

Ani and Sarah’s Ultra Chic Bedroom

Ani and Sarah went all out with interior decorating. Candy cane chandelier, bed lined in candy drops, sugar people props already in bed. Saucy!

For all the photos, check out this set on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Having worked in marketing for the better part of a decade, and starting to make the leap to a new tech career, I’ve often struggled with that gray area between truth and “enhancing” certain features/benefits to sell a product. There’s nothing worse than marketing a crummy product, and unless you drink the Kool-Aid, you never feel truly satisfied with the work.

Advertising, a subset of marketing, is one hell of a business. These are the guys and gals responsible for all the ads you see and are often accused of trying to sell crack to babies. Maybe some of them are, but they are also some of the hardest working and most creative people in the field. I really appreciate good advertising and I saw a couple great examples pop up in my RSS feed that I wanted to share with you. Some advertising is truly creative and can be wonderfully informative.

Amnesty International: Fence

Brothers and Sisters creative team Lisa Jelliffe and Kirsten Rutherford have teamed up with the anonymous German street art collective Mentalgassi, to create art installations for Amnesty International. We’ve called the installations ‘Making the invisible visible’. They highlight the case of Troy Davis, a man who has been on death row for 19 years in the USA, despite serious doubts about his conviction. The posters are displayed on fence railings. Front on, you see nothing but bars. Troy’s face only becomes visible from an angle. Please help save Troy from being executed. www.amnesty.org.uk/fence

via Ads of the World

“Don’t look away! Right-wing violence in your neighborhood.”

via Ads of the World

This one definitely took me 30 seconds to get, but I love the creativity and how clear the hidden graphic resonates with the message.

Safe Sex in 8bit

via Adverblog

Ok, so no doubt this is totally cheesy and honestly if you’re a guy that totally resonates with the video game theme, you’re probably not having sex, regardless. But I thought it was a fun attempt at speading the word about practicing safe sex.

Abandoned classroom outside of Chernobyl.

Having embarked on learning how to program has been quite an adventure. It reminds me very much of trying to learn French 13 years ago — it took dedicated practice, a lot of memorization and total immersion in a French-speaking city.

Similar to French, programming has all kinds of foreign grammar and syntax to learn and frankly, it’s just going to take time to have it all sink it.  But I’m impatient (and a nerd), so I’ve begun researching how the brain retains information and what I can do to ease that along.

With that in mind, I’ve been reading an excellent book on HTML and CSS that’s part of the Head First Series from O’Reilly. It’s great because they really *get* the idea of creating books that help people learn.

So what does that mean?

Well from reading this book what I’ve learned is the brain is always thinking, and in doing so, only retaining information that *matters*. Most of the time, things we think about don’t really matter and the brain is actually trying to do us a favor by not storing that information so we can save up brain space for stuff that does matter. The trick is convincing the brain that something does matter, and that’s done in a few ways.

Head First takes a great approach with this and I think this is great advice for anyone looking to teach:

Make it Visual: pictures may really be worth 1000 words. According to Head First, they improve recall by 89% and help us understand concepts better.

Use a conversational style of speaking: rather than a formal lecturing tone. Keeping it light and fun helps us stay more engaged. Appeal to someone’s emotions (make it funny!).

Keep the reader on their toes: you need to be challenged with challenges, exercises or thought-provoking questions that will help us to think about what we’re learning.

Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby, Head First and Chris Pine’s Learn to Program are great at this (though honestly, I find Why’s to be a bit too esoteric in its whimsical fantasy world. I am often left trying to figure out the deranged fairytale side story than focus on Ruby.)

So now that we know how the brain likes to receive information, here are a few other tips on getting it to sink in for those that want to learn:

• Go slowly, pay attention and if you’re tired, just stop.
• Write notes, do all the exercises, even the easy ones you think you know.
• If you’re trying to understand something, say it out loud or explain it to someone else. Speaking activates another part of the brain and that can actually help you to understand what you’re talking about!
• Make this the last challenging thing you do for the day. Learning happens when we’re not actively learning. If you go on to a more challenging activity afterwards, your brain will forget to learn the first thing.
• Drink lots of water! Dehydration reduces cognitive functions.

I hope this information is as helpful to you as it was to me. If you have any other ideas on the topic, please share them in the comments!

I began taking a Ruby class a few weeks ago at Noisebridge where we are using Ruby Koans to learn how to program.

A koan is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition.

The koans exercises are in a series of files (unit tests). Each unit test needs to be fixed before you can move on to the next. As you progress through the Koans you’ll build upon the knowledge you’ve already acquired. When you open up a file for the first time you’ll see something like this:

Notice all the underscores? That’s where you need to figure out the answer and fill it in. As you fill in those answers, you’ll check your answers using rake in your terminal as you move along the “path to enlightenment”:

As you can see, I’ve competed 140 of the 269 koans and still have a ways to go. Fortunately, they’re pretty quick to do, so I should be done before long.

Koans uses test driven development (TDD) or the notion of red, green, refactor.  With the koans, run the tests and see it fail (red), make the test pass (green), then see if there’s any way you could improve upon it (refactor).

Pros and Cons of Koans

While I enjoy the koans and think they’re a good overview of a programming language, they do have their limitations.

From my experience (and I’m only halfway through) it’s mainly fill in the blank. If you don’t know the answer, when you run rake in the terminal, you’ll be given the answer or a clue on how to get there. So if you just wanted to keep running rake for each line of code you could just plug in most of the answers. In that regard, it’s not a great teaching tool if the student isn’t motivated to understand what they’re plugging in.

There’s relatively little programming involved. You’re learning some basic concepts, but there’s not much writing of code involved. I actually think this is a major downside to Koans. You may learn the concepts, but if you don’t know how to articulate them, you’re out of luck.

Despite these two negatives, I’m still having fun doing them and would wholeheartedly recommend Koans. If Ruby isn’t your thing there are now Python Koans as well.

Recently awoken from a nap with the SleepMask.

Over the last month I’ve been beta testing Mitch Altman’s newest creation, the SleepMask. Similar to his Trip Glasses, the SleepMask uses blinky lights and sound to pulse a sequence of brainwave frequencies that make you sleepy! And yes, it actually works.

There are three sequences on the mask, one for falling asleep, another for getting back to sleep if you’ve awoken and a final for taking a nap.

No word on when the SleepMask is going to be available for purchase, but I imagine it’s going to fly off the shelves.

Here are a few more (ever so slightly blurry) photos of the SleepMask

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Riding the cable car with my mom and dad when they came to visit SF.

Up into my mid-20s I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I’d be writing dorkbyte, making kinetic chandeliers or going to uber nerd conferences. In fact, when I was growing up, I thought I’d go one of two ways, professional flautist or philosopher. Both paths seemed to fit me well and by the time I entered university I chose philosophy. I pictured a future running around academia, maybe wearing a beret and smoking a pipe, lazed in an armchair, discussing Sartre and Kierkegaard with Masterpiece Theatre gently humming in the background of my office/study***.

Growing up, my father had other plans, always eager to see my get involved in the sciences, and follow along his lines. Maybe not becoming a bio-mechanical engineer like him, but to be “science-y” in some regard.

I always had an interest in the internet and computers, getting my first computer in 1994 along with a fancy 3300 bps modem. But it wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco and found my community that the nerd in me flourished.

As you get older you begin to realize the impact your parents and upbringing had on you, and while I would often run screaming as a kid if my dad tried to explain “just one more” physics concept to me, his long term plan has actually succeeded in turning me into a science geek!

See, my dad was the original maker/tinkerer in my life. He’s both an engineer (so he thinks he can do it himself) and he’s frugal (so he’s going to try and convince us he can do it). From that point of view, here are some of my most treasured memories of my dad growing up:

1. Making a baking soda volcano with me when I was in Kindergarden and taking it to the science fair. Destroying the kitchen in a “fiery” vinegar and baking soda blaze of glory in the process. I am sure my mom was thrilled.

2. Buying me my first car in 1996: a 1983 300D Turbo Diesel Mercedes. The car weighed over a ton, was solid steel, and the “turbo” in turbo diesel was broken, effectively allowing the car to go from 0 – 60 in 3 minutes. As a mechanical engineer, this was ideal for his 16 year old daughter because I couldn’t kill anyone (seeing as I couldn’t accelerate) and I would be impervious to collision in my tank.

3. Watching him attempt to repair the aforementioned car’s bumper and headlight, which were falling off, with duct tape. The car was silver and the duct tape was silver, so it made total sense. You can imagine the wonder duct tape does for covering up rusty fenders!

4. Giving me an ice scraper and telling me to stick my head out the window when the defroster did not work in the aforementioned vehicle in the dead of winter.

5. Sitting in the kitchen and watching my dad fell a tree, using exactly the right angle to cut it down onto the house.

6. Suggesting that for a nagging cough I place newspaper doused in kerosene on my chest to clear it up. He claimed this was an ancient Egyptian remedy. I did not take his advice.

7. Watching my dad try to build contraptions to trap the squirrels that were sneaking into our attic. They were only moderately successful (and never harmful to the squirrels!).

8. Buying me a telescope and taking me to the Cranbrook planetarium all the time to gaze up at the secrets the universe held. Mind you, we never got the telescope working, but it was always a silent reminder of the universe above.

There are countless other stories of all his handiwork, tinkering and imposed science eduction, but these are definitely some of the most memorable for me. And through it all, my dad has had the effect of turning me into the somewhat incorrigible maker that I am.

That’s who I’d like to give thanks for on Thanksgiving Eve. Love you, dad.

*** I was like 13 going on 73. I would sit home on Saturday evenings for most of my teenage years watching Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS.