guest post by Aaron Muszalski

Adafruit Industries, the New York City firm founded by noted electronics maker and DIY evangelist Limor “Lady Ada” Fried, is releasing a series of merit badges that recognize a variety of electronics skills. 

The first one is “learning to solder” - if you’re new to electronics, we’ll have a special bundle of tools, a kit and limited edition “badge” to show the world you’re proficient in soldering, once you complete the tutorials and kit that is!

We will have a variety of badges, the first is soldering - others include:

Arduino
LEDs (with conductive thread & real LED!)
Open source hardware
TV-B-Gone’ing
Reverse engineering
Dumpster diving
Laser cutting
WaveBubble

I’m especially looking forward to the LED merit badge, with conductive thread and a real LED. A micro-electronics project in patch form. Nifty!

Incidentally, Limor takes her “nom de souder” from Lady Ada Lovelace, aka Augusta Ada Byron, daughter of the infamous poet and libertine Lord Byron. Lady Ada is now known as the “first programmer” for having written, in 1842, a set of instructions to calculate Bernoulli numbers using Charles Babbage’s (unrealized) Analytical Engine.

See Previously:

- Nerd Merit Badges

- Laughing Squid Embroidered Patches

photo via Adafruit Industries

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Learning Electronics Merit Badges From Adafruit Industries

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guest post by Mike Monteiro

If you enjoy your comic book buying experience replete with an angry, curmudgeonly, yet somehow charming store owner in a space that’s floor to ceiling newsprint in several states of ‘vintage’ than you’ll love Al’s Comics. You’re almost guaranteed to be yelled at for touching a comic the wrong way. Or bringing a drink in the store. Or asking him how Superman cuts his hair. In other words; it’s perfect.

Unfortunately, Al’s has run into some hard times as have many book store owners. With bills piled higher than this week’s comic stack he’s finding it hard to stay afloat. Being that he’s a community fixture, the community has come together to give him a leg up.

This Sunday, March 22nd there will be a Benefit for Al’s Comics at Cellspace located at 2050 Bryant Street in San Francisco.

5pm to midnight. Kids can hang out until 7pm, when the liquor starts flowing.

Pay what you can.

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid.

For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

Benefit for Al’s Comics at Cellspace

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