Hello everyone! This is our last gift guide for you all as this is the last week before Christmas! Today, I have some gift ideas for the people in your life that are new to all things tech and want to get into it, or maybe you just want to share with them how fun it can be! This list is perfect for people of all ages.

Lockpicks
Lockpicks are a fun way to get the brain working. Especially when paired with a book on lockpicking, this is a great gift to get people started with critical thinking skills. It’s kind of like a wooden puzzle, but with more danger! 

Brain Jack by Brian Falkner
Technically a young adult novel, this book is great for anyone. The story is fun and engaging and has some real life elements thrown in just for fun. Check out my review here for more information.  

Discover Electronics Kit
This kit has everything you need to get started with electronics except the soldering iron (which we sell too!). This will take you from your basic lit LED to all sorts of more complicated projects for inspiration.

Feynman by Ottaviani & Myrick
In order to be an official geek, you must know the awesome-ness of Feynman. This book is a graphical version of his life. Super fun to read and informative as well!

Sewing Electrified LED Embroidery Kit
This is by far my favorite “beginning” kit we have. No soldering required and the end product is something you would want to hang on the wall! We now have four different constellations to choose from.

Manga Guide to Physics by Hideo Nitta
The whole “Manga Guide to…” series is fantastic. I love how the books are all in an age appropriate format for anyone. That way, no matter if your just getting started, or need something more advanced like the “Manga Guide to Relativity,” you’re covered. So everyone from your best friend to your super-smart 7 year old can enjoy them. 

We have another gift guide for you guys! Today, David has some tips for those looking for gifts for all the makers in their lives. 

Ice Tube Clock
Perfect gift for the retro vacuum tube aficionado in your life. This clock uses vintage nixie tubes to display the time and has a full featured alarm clock with adjustable brightness all with a slick clear laser cut acrylic case so you can see all of the parts. Takes about 3 hours to assemble, the most difficult part is hooking up the nixie tube.

Bulb Dial Clock
This is another engenius alarm clock that displays the time like a sundial but the sun is instead an array of different color LEDs. It displays hours, minutes, and seconds and also has an alarm function. Takes about 2-3 hours to assemble, requires a lot of soldering.

Lichtenburg Figures
These paperweights show the naturally occurring 3D path that electrons make that’s most commonly seen in lightning storms. They are made by bombarding the plastic with electrons from a linear accelerator (around 2-3 million electron volts!) and then grounding it with the strike of a nail to cause all of the electrons to rush out of the plastic at a single point.

Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit
This kit has about everything you need to prototype your next (or first) electronics arduino project. It comes with a breadboard, arduino, relay, servo, LEDs, temp sensor, potentiometers, photocell, flex sensor, shift register, buzzer, passives, and a instruction booklet with a bunch of projects to learn all of the ways you can harness the power of the arduino!

Teardowns: Learn How Electronics Work by Taking Them Apart
This book is chock full of projects you can do with every day items around your home. Built for people that have more of the hacker/tinkerer mindset, this book teaches you about electronics by taking things apart and gives some examples of how you can make them better!

The Best of Instructables
This book contains the best DIY projects from the popular site instructables.com. The book contains over 120 projects on home and garden, entertainment, food, fun, crafting, computers, games, electronics, transportation, and more!

DSO Quad
A recent addition to our store, the DSO Quad is a pocket sized 4 channel oscilloscope that features up to 72MSPS on 2 channels, a function generator, and has an internal 2MB USB stick that can be used to store sampled data, upgrade the firmware, or run custom programs.

Daniel Wilson is the author of the recent New York Times Best Selling book Robopocalypse as well as several other books. He is also a television host and robotics engineer.
He will be at Ada’s on December 11th at 4pm to read from his book and, if you’re really nice, he may even have some inside information about the Spielberg directed movie version of Robopocalypse or his next book AMPED. Hope to see you there!

Do you guys like DIY posts? I do, and I think they’d be fun to do every once in a while here. Also, these lace window screens are so awesome, I just had to share! Here you go:

1. Gather your supplies:

 Lace
Aluminum Window frame cut to size
Grey Corner Clips
Spline
Spline-tool
Scissors
(You can get everything except the lace at a home improvement store)

2. Put together the frame using the aluminum and corner clips.

3. Lay the lace over your screen leaving at least two inches of lace over each side of the frame.

4. Using the concave side of spline-tool, roll the spline into the track in the frame.

5. Trim back the lace.

6. Your frame is finished!

This coming Black Friday weekend, Ada’s will be participating in a Capitol Hill wide sale. At our store, you can get 20% off everything in the store! And there are over 70 other businesses participating on the hill. So, come on up to get all your shopping done in one weekend… how fun! Here is the official information:

Support Local! Shop Local! Shop The Hill!

Holiday shoppers wanting to spend their money locally and get a great deal can “Shop The Hill”, Black Friday weekend, Friday 25- Sunday 27. Over 70 Capitol Hill businesses are offering discounts and specials on Black Friday and all weekend long. Clothing, gifts for kids, massage specials, home goods, stocking stuffers, health and wellness products  and so much more can all be found on Capitol Hill. You can even find great deals on food and drinks if you need a break while shopping! Visit http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/ShopTheHill for details on all the participating businesses. You can pick up a map at any of the participating locations starting Saturday, November 19th.

Shop The Hill is supported by CapitolHillSeattle.com, Babeland, Dumb Eyes, Sound Transit, The Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce and United Reprographics.

This coming Sunday, November 6th, at 1pm we will be hosting a book signing with Johnny Cache, wireless hacker extraordinaire. Johnny is co-author of “Hacking Exposed Wireless.” The 2nd edition of the book was just released about a year ago. He is also the author of many well respected wireless hacking tools. We will have copies of his book for sale or you can bring your own. We are thrilled to be hosting him!

I’m so excited to announce Amber Case as our Author of the Month for November. She will be in the store on November 30th at 6pm.

Amber is a cyborg anthropologist and user experience designer from Portland, OR. Some of the projects she is involved in are Geoloqi and CyborgCamp. She has also been featured in Wired and has done a TED Talk. I can personally say that she is super interesting and a fantastic speaker. The field of cyborg anthropology is not only fascinating, but it has a definite effect on each of us.

Amber is getting ready to publish her book “A Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology” and she will be bringing copies of it with her to the talk. She will provide a quick overview of the book, what cyborg anthropology is, and why she wrote the book. She will also be doing a reading of an assortment of entries from “A Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology,” signing books and answering questions. This is not something you will want to miss!