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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:

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.