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Welcome back Jeff! Always a good time when Mr Keyzer stops by. YESSIR.

• Jeff is preparing for the winter in Washington.
• The MakerBot is possibly going closed source.
• Kickstarter tells hardware companies, “We’re Not A Store“
• The LIFX bulb has caught a particularly large amount of flac.
• Chris wonders if people care about non-connected devices anymore. The IoT could very well come from Kickstarter.
• The Art of Electronics 3rd edition will be out next year! Or will it?
• Did you know: Dave is 1.028 smoots, Chris is 1.075 smoots and Jeff is 1.100 smoots? Find out more about crazy measurements here.
• Hardware is dead? Well, computer hardware maybe. But who thinks they can make money from computer hardware?
• A bunch of experts from Harvard say what we’ve been saying as well: “Manufacturing is important for the economy“. Duh.
• Can manufacturing ever be abstracted out, similar to an API? Is that what CMs do now?

That’s all for our time with Jeff. We’ll be sure to have him back again soon. As always, you can find out more about the stories, comment on them and add some of your own story ideas at The Amp Hour subreddit.

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Another round with the MightyOhm! Welcome back Jeff!

• Jeff has a new job! He’ll be joining Valve as a hardware designer in June!
• There is a handbook for working at Valve that was previously released online.
• Additionally, another employee wrote about the culture of working at Valve.
• Jeff highlights the importance of networking. Chris has written about this before, specifically for engineers.
• In getting a new job, it’s becoming increasingly important to show a portfolio of sorts. Jeff does this by documenting his projects on his MightyOhm website.
• Jeff’s kit business will continue but may need to be outsourced to a third party.
• Kickstarter is getting bigger, as are the projects. The Pebble watch is now at $6 million dollars (and counting) and has 26 days left.
• Ian of Dangerous Prototypes visit the SEG market in Shenzhen and show off the true power of a large electronics ecosystem/supply chain.
  
• New type of patent agreement out of the engineering group at Twitter. States that patents will only be used defensively and continue to be used in the same manner wherever those patents go.
• Speaking of legal issues, a seemingly bogus lawsuit is being claimed against (many) companies that sell vacuum tubes with mercury in them…that they have mercury in them! Shocker! See more from this Hack-a-Day post and accompanying law filing.

It was great having Jeff back on the show and we can’t wait to see what he develops while at Valve. We wish him the best of luck!

Thanks to sigma for the picture of the valve.

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• All about Sabaticals, and trying to get out of working for a living :->
• We ridicule a Spray-On Antenna in a can!
• We are reluctant to mention a new reality TV show called Top Engineer. Before auditioning, be sure to check out Joe Grand’s experience with a Discovery Channel reality TV show.
• The Mythbusters are producing a show called Unchained reaction
• Jeff doesn’t quite like the new $1300 Cube 3D Printer from 3D Systems, because they ain’t playing the open source game. But it seems all Dave’s predictions are coming true.
• Dave is having 2nd thoughts about doing a through-hole PSU kit
• Dave rants about several things, as per usual.
• Jeff is headed to the Computer History Museum to check out the Jim Williams exhibit.
• Jeff like this new book: Analog Circuit Design: A Tutorial Guide to Applications and Solutions

Next week on the show, we’ll have special guest Bunnie Huang! Get your questions in for him ASAP!

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Whilst Chris is on his belated honeymoon, regular cohort Jeff Keyzer from Mightohm.com takes over.
• Jeff has been travelling again:
• He barely survived Berlin for New Years, what with their readily available fireworks, unlike Australia.
• The Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey
• Another surplus shop tour, including the TWR swap meet.
• Will Detroit just make crappy cars again? or will they turn all Japanese?
• Dave heard a big BANG on his desk, something smells fishy.
• Jeff isn’t too happy with TI’s new MSP430 web based development environment
• Will Raspberry Pie meet their $20 price target? Dave & Jeff think they might have a hard time.
• There is a 6502 documentary in the works.

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Welcome back Jeff! Joining us for some holiday fun!

• Chris started a new engineering job today! Dave is getting the keys to his new lab today!
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• Jeff is attending DorkBot Austin tonight! Reminds Chris of PechaKucha.
• What should we call a group of nerds standing around? Chris likes the term, “a grumbling of nerds”.
• Dave hasn’t seen Altoid tins in the grocery stores, but has built projects in tic tac boxes, cassette cases and hammond cases.
• Chris just got a new BeagleBone to play with! It’s awesome!

• Digi-key is doing their Digi-Wish again this year, so you can ask for something out of their catalog.
• Chris wished for some of the classical CDs they stock at Digi-Key(?).
• What’s the difference between black and pink foam in electronics? One is conductive (black) and one is static resistant (pink)
• Our wishlists:
• Dave — A spectrum analyzer, likely one off of eBay. The Rigol ones are too much for Dave so he needs to go older.
• Chris — A sig gen like the newer Rigol DG1022 because a certain Aussie’s kit isn’t available anymore. Jeff and Dave say Chris isn’t wishing big enough.
• Jeff — Lots and lots of kits!
• The adafruit Icetube clock kit.
• The NixieKit NixieTherm thermometer kit (suggested by electroman-j).
• The Fun Cube Dongle kit.
• Jeff’s new Ham Callsign is W6OHM! Awesome! Dave wants VK2EEV (but has to get his license first!)
• Chris’s co-worker did a homebrew solution for programmable outdoor holiday lights, controlled by text message!
• We loved John DeCristafaro’s (@johngineer) post on displaying a holiday image on an old scope with a micro!
• Our past guest, Jeremy Blum was named the IEEE “New Face of College Engineering”!  Awesome! He will be featured during national eWeek.
• Itching to get your hands on an old micro? Try out the new Microbee Z80 kit, which is now available!
• This Day in Nerd History:
• As seen on today’s Google Doodle, it would have been Robert Noyce’s 84th birthday. He started Fairchild and Intel. Wow!
• It was on this day in 1901 that Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio transmissions. They had been transmitted from his large transmitting station in Poldhu Cornwall England and he had received them in St Johns Newfoundland. (thanks to Alan Wolke for the suggestions!)
• New contest from DesignSpark for using the ChipKit in an energy efficient application. Giving away 1000 ChipKits but you have to play by their rules.