Laura Khalil

The craft bug hit me today. I decided to make some tissue paper pom poms. I purchased the Martha Stewart Crafts Pom Poms to make these, before I realized how easy these would be to make on your own!

These are a great way to add an inexpensive piece of art to any room.

Here are the full instructions to make these for your own home, without the kit:

Approximate Time: 1 – 1.5 hours for 5 Pom Poms

Items you’ll need:

• Scissors
• Wire
• 100 sheets of tissue paper (pick your favorite colors!)
• Tack

1. Each pom pom needs about 20 sheets of tissue paper. Divide your tissue paper in bunches of 20 and using your scissors, scallop the edges along the length of the paper. You can also create more jagged edges. Try our different techniques and see what you like.

2. Fold up your tissue paper like an accordion, switching sides roughly every 1 1/2 inches.

3. Take a piece of wire and wrap it around the center of your paper, securing it.

4. Fan out your paper into the shape of a circle. Then begin gently pulling up the first piece of tissue paper.

5. Once you’ve completed carefully folding up about half the tissue paper, flip it over and continue on the other side. This help give it the round pom pom shape.

6. Fluff and puff and you’re all done! Make a hook out of the remaining wire inside the tissue paper. Hook that up to a larger piece of string and wire, and hang from your ceiling with a tack or however you like.

Oh food porn, you vixen you. Every Wednesday I take a look at what’s food stories are trending around the web. Here’s what we got for you this week:

Paula Deen’s ancestors were slave owners. Least surprising news ever.

The Science of Brain Freeze. Ow, ow, ow, ow, owwww!

Study Confirms that Organic Food Lovers are self righteous jerks. Confirming what we’ve all known.

Apricot Miso Jam Recipe. Try it on toast with cream cheese for a truly ascendent experience.

My Thai Cooking: Honey Baked Chicken. I HAD to include this after raving about San Tung’s dry fried chicken wings earlier this week. Must try to recreate nomminess!

Banana Cream Pie with Salty Bourbon Caramel. And a dozen other salty sweet dessert recipes that have me drooling.

10 Dairy Free Ice Cream Recipes. Awesome roundup for vegans, the lactose intolerant or plain old ice cream addicts (I gladly lump myself into the latter category).

Make Frozen Yogurt Pops at home in about 30 seconds. Seriously. Why didn’t I think of this?

For our fourth eating adventure on 7×7′s Big Eats list we got on the bus and headed west to the Inner Sunset to visit San Tung, home of the famous dry fried chicken wings.

How can some be both dry and fried, you ask? That was the question on all our minds and we still don’t know! What we do know is there was nothing dry about these chicken wings. These extra crispy wings are enveloped in a warm sticky sweet sauce that makes it hard to stop at just one wing.

San Tung itself is a bustling, divy Chinese restaurant. Service is brusk and the line moves quickly to get in and grab a seat. This seems like a perfect place to enjoy on a gray day to warm the heart and soul with a bowl of wonton soup and a plate of American-Chinese comfort food.

Here’s a look at what we ate (click on any photo to open up a beautiful slideshow):

Next week, we’re heading to brunch at NOPA for their custard French toast. In the meantime, Jonathan and I are headed to Vegas for a long weekend. Vegas is the heart of some fine food, and while we won’t be going 5 star, I do plan on sharing some of our favorite meals with you!

It may surprise the average reader of this blog whose seen me eat my way through a prime rib, half a chicken and more chinese food than you can shake a stick at, that I am on Weight Watchers.

It’s true. One night a week I splurge and the rest of the time I’m trying to eat healthy. So far it’s worked out, but now it’s time to share one of my favorite healthy treats: Vegan Carrot Cupcakes.

I made these for a book club where a couple of the members were vegan. I loved them so much, that I don’t see any reason to prefer “regular” cupcakes over them. Seriously, you’d never know they’re vegan.

This recipe is largely inspired by the carrot cake recipe in Vegan Cupcakes, a really fabulous cookbook for cupcake lovers of all varieties (vegan or not).

Vegan Carrot Cupcakes with Walnuts and Cream Cheese Frosting
(Points Plus = 7 Points)

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup veggie oil or light olive oil
1/3 cup vanilla soy yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ¼ cups grated carrots
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup raisins

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix the sugar, oil, yogurt, vanilla and carrots in a medium bowl. Next, mix in each of your dry ingredients to the wet (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinammon and ginger).

Line your cupcake tin with 12 cupcake liners and spray it with veggie spray. Pour in your batter and pop in the center of your oven for 20 – 25 minutes.

Note: I’ve often read that you should sift the dry together separately and then add it to the wet in batches. I call fooey. This recipe is fantastic however you want to mix your ingredients. Just make sure everything is incorporated and not overmixed.

Orange Infused “Cream Cheese” Frosting

1/4 cup earth balance, room temp
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese, room temp
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
zest of one orange
pinch of salt

With a hand mixer, mix together the earth balance, vegan cream cheese and vanilla. Once well mixed, add in your powdered sugar, zest and salt. Mix on low, unless you want powdered sugar to go flying. Once it’s well incorporated, dollop on top of your cupcakes and eat!

Enjoy these cupcakes and indulge without feeling guilty.

Third stop on the Big Eats 7×7 list: House of Prime Rib. This is a place where the 1960s is alive and kicking. Double martinis are the standard and carts wheeling massive hunks of prime rib abound. Wanna feel like you’re visiting the set of Mad Men? Come here.

You gotta be in the mood for this place. We had a large group and many of us decided to get dolled up for the occasion. It was a lot of fun.

The prime rib was great, the service was fantastic and the atmosphere is just killer. I would recommend showing up here any night of the week for a cocktail and just enjoying your surroundings. It’s that much fun.

It is a rather pricy meal (about $70/pp) so get fancy, go 60s and make a night of it! Here’s a look at our evening (click on any photo to open a beautiful slideshow):

In keeping with our one week fancy, one week divey food tradition, our next stop is San Tung for their dry fried chicken wings. Stay tuned!

Ever since Mission Chinese Food popped on the scene a couple years ago, it’s quickly become one of the worst kept secrets. The food it hot, HOT, HAWT and delightfully unique. Service is brusque, seating is cramped and piping hot dishes come flying out of the kitchen. They remain carefully balanced on waiters’ hands like spinning plates as waiters dance to maneuver through the chairs, people and bustle.

If you’re not in SF and wanna get a taste for Chef Danny Bowien’s food, Bon Appetit has got you covered with several recipes from the joint.

For our second Big Eats meetup, Jon decided to host us at his amazing home in the Mission. Only a few blocks from Mission Chinese, we’d be able to enjoy the take out without experiencing the cramped quarters of the restaurant.

Mission Chinese Food is a must try for all SFers. It is fiery hot, so most dishes are not well suited to those shy of spice. After this meal, the group decided we were going fancy shmancy for our next Big Eats dinner. That led us to House of Prime Rib. Up next!

It’s on!

A couple weeks ago, I along with three of my food loving friends, began to tackle 7×7′s 100 Big Eats List. These are the 100 best dishes in San Francisco, as judged by the oh so posh 7×7 magazine. Let’s be honest, the list is amazing, and doing this challenge every week seems like an awfully fun time to share with friends.

The Rules

We’ve set up two simple rules for our Big Eats group:

1. We meet once a week. You may always bring a friend.

2. Those who show up have the final say on where and when we go the following week.

Without further ado, here’s a look back at our visit to Zuni Cafe (click on any photo to view a gorgeous slideshow of our visit):

From the service, to the atmosphere, everything was set for a beautiful evening. The food did not disappoint!

The four of us decided to take on Mission Chinese Food the following week and try their Salt Cod Fried Rice. Stay tuned for that food adventure.

Brunch, brunch, brunch! It seems to be all I’m talking about these days. That will stop soon. I promise. You see, we’ve embarked on a rather nutty plan to eat our way through San Francisco’s 100 Big Eats as determined by the estimable 7×7 Magazine.

But before we start eating our way through that list, we had to get breakfast! What better than meeting our friend Jon at our local bowling club for brunch.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Girl, you’re writing a food blog about eating brunch at a bowling alley? Pshhh. Bitch be crazy”.

And you might be right! But allow me to argue my case. Mission Bowling Club isn’t your parents bowling alley. You see, it’s posh, and dare I say hip. If you grew up in the Midwest, like me, bowling meant some seedy building with 60 lanes, lots of plaid, beer belly, fungal diseases wafting through the air. And how could we forget the really seedy bar with hot dogs rolling around in a plastic box with a heat lamps beating down on them. That’s a special kind of tasty, for sure, but that no Mission Bowling Club.

The plaid hasn’t gone anywhere (this is the Mission after all), but pretty much everything else is different. MBC features six lanes, a delightful bar with handcrafted cocktails and a menu that’s on par with any great brunch spot in the Mission. Go for a game, a drink, dinner, or the whole trifecta of fun, but go soon. A spot this good will be “broverrun” before too long.

On their gorgeous patio we feasted like kings.

The menu is slightly heart attack inducing, but Jonathan and I had rode our bikes to brunch (and presumably would need them to get home), so we can work off at least some of it!

All in all, we left satisfied, sated and boozed. It was delightful. But we’re serious people and we have serious business to attend to, goddammit! So this Tuesday it begins. We’re starting our way through the Big Eats Top 100 list. First off, we’ll be taking a crack at the roasted chicken at Zuni Cafe.

Until then, live long and nom!

Most Saturdays, Jonathan and I spend the morning working on our pet projects. For us that means coding! I am a lark by nature, and those morning hours are precious for my productivity.

We’ve recently begun inviting our developer friends over for “Bites and Bytes”, a light brunch and hack session. Work on whatever project you like, in the comfort of our home, with lots of juice, caffeine and tasty treats to keep your nourished.

Bites and Bytes can have everywhere from 2 – 10 people show up, and since this is California (where RSVPs are more of a suggestion than hard and fast rule), you really never know who is going to show up. You just have to play it by ear. It’s largely an impromptu gathering, where I want to spend time hacking, not cooking in the kitchen.

Planning a meal for that many, or few people, could seem challenging, but we’ve got it down to a science. So whether you have 2 people showing up, or a crowd of 10, these tips will help you to scale your meal in an instant. This is a great menu for book clubs, knitting groups or whatever small, informal gathering you might be having.

Bites and Bytes Light Brunch Menu

La Boulange Organic Roasted Coffee Beans

Freshly Baked Artisan Pastries

Peanut Butter, M&M and Double Chocolate Giant Cookies

Berry Salad

Bananas

Coffee– If you’re only serving coffee, and foregoing alcoholic beverages, go with the best. A good cup of coffee can fuel my morning, so treat yourself and your guests to your favorite blend. I use a single drip brew cup to make coffee. Every cup is extremely fresh, can be customized to the desire of its recipient, and means you don’t sit around with a giant bucket of burnt, brown slush for hours on end.

Fresh Pastries– San Francisco’s La Boulange is a French food lovers delight. Hearing the bells on the door jingle as you walk in and smell a slice of Paris is a beautiful thing. This bakery sells a variety of breads, pastries, quiches and sandwiches. All of which are delicious, fresh and made with quality ingredients (yes, I have tried just about everything). The aroma is buttery and deliciously noxious. I defy you to leave without trying at least one thing. I pick a variety of croissants, pain au chocolat, fruit pastries and savory pastries. Whatever doesn’t get gobbled up at brunch goes in the fridge of freezer and becomes a mid-week treat.

Giant Cookies– Sometimes you just want a cookie, ya know? This is where the supermarket comes in handy. These rich, sugary, fatty cookies are hard not to gobble down. Is this perhaps a bit excessive for brunch? Damn right it is. And your guests will thank you for it. And if they don’t finish these cookies off, you better believe your coworkers will on Monday when you bring them into work.

Berry Salad– I like a mix of grapes and whatever berries I can find in season. Avoid cut fruit. Here’s why: if you don’t know how many friends are attending your impromptu brunch gathering, cut fruit doesn’t keep well. It gets soft and slushy and generally is not something I want to ever look the following morning. With a berry salad, your fruit can remain in pristine condition, even after brunch is served. Leftovers remain fresh, crisp and in good condition.

With a brunch menu like this, it’s easy to scale up or down in an instant. Best of all, you don’t need to spend time cooking. You’ll probably have some leftover fruit and pastries, but nothing needs to go to waste. Keep it simple and keep it fresh and you’re good to go.

… and not tear your hair out.

Hosting friends for a weekend brunch can be a glorious, stress free affair if you plan ahead. Jonathan and I love brunching. Most weekends we can be found strolling around Fillmore street or the Mission plotting out the where and when of our next brunch meal. But brunching in restaurants can suck. I mean, yes, the food is often delicious, but the worst kept secrets aren’t even secrets anymore. Waits are long, service is pleasant, but highly efficient, and most unnerving of all, there are those people, you know them, just staring you down, waiting for you to get out of their seat!

It was under the duress of some hipster’s evil eye that I pondered, “what if we just made our own brunch”? I have two thumbs, a stove and some rudimentary knowledge of cooking. Surely we can throw a relaxing, mimosa-laden brunch for our friends and spend hours lazing around in the comfort of our own home!

Brunch: Take One (how to fail at making brunch for your friends, pull your hair out and do a crazy dance)

The first time we attempted to make brunch for a few of our friends, the kitchen looked like it had been hit with a food hurricane. We were making deviled eggs! french toast! to order egg sandwiches! bacon! MORE EGGS! Don’t get me wrong, the food was delicious, but it was exhausting. This was not the relaxing brunch I wanted.

Brunch: Take Two (how to make brunch a total delight!)

As we learned during our first attempt at brunch, planning is important. In fact, planning and preparing food ahead is the secret to a perfect brunch. By the time your friends come over, you want to be done with the bulk of the cooking so that you can enjoy the meal along with them.

Starting with the menu, have your main items be prepped the night before, so the morning of, you just need to throw them in the oven. Keep simple dishes, such as fresh cut fruit or a cheese plate to the morning.

Here’s our take on a perfect brunch menu, with instructions on how to execute this flawlessly for your next brunch affair:

The Perfect San Francisco Brunch

Overnight Cinnamon Buns

Cheese and Chili Egg Casserole

Locally harvested veggie roast

Lox and Bagels

Fruit Salad

Mimosas

Overnight cinnamon buns — cinnamon buns made from scratch take time to make. The dough will need to rise three times before they hit the oven. So to make this easy on yourself, simply start the night before and roll you pre-cooked cinnamon buns up, throw them in the fridge and pull them out an hour before you start baking them. I guarantee, this will be so worth it! Breaking up cinnamon buns into two steps: make and bake, makes this an incredibly easy treat to prepare.

Recipe Recommendation: Alton Brown’s Overnight Cinnamon Buns

Cheese and Chili Egg Casserole – Casseroles are awesome. They are universally loved, taste delicious and are dead simple to prepare. Get all your ingredients in a baking pan the night before. Pull it out a couple hours before you’re ready to bake it and you’ll be good to go.

Recipe Recommendation: Nick Jonas’s Chili Cheese Egg Casserole

Locally harvested veggie roast — We are extremely fortunate to live in a state where locally grown fruits and vegetables are easy to find. If that’s not the case for you, check what’s in season and give that a shot. This is so simple to make, you can easily prep it the morning of. Simply throw your veggies in a pan, add a generous drizzle of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and include a couple sprigs of rosemary. Don’t worry about the cooking temp. Just throw it in while your other dishes are cooking in the oven. It’ll be done in about an hour.

Lox and Bagels– Your grocer is your friend! Pick a few different varieties of bagels, include some cream cheese, lox, lemon and capers on a side dish and have your friends make their own when they arrive. This is a starter dish to serve while other items might still be in the oven.

Fruit Salad– Go with whatever is fresh and looks ripe. I love to do a mix of orange slices and strawberries. Add  two pinches of cardamom and a splash of triple sec. Your guests won’t know what hit them.

Mimosas– What would brunch be without a cocktail? Involve your guests and ask them to bring the OJ and champagne supplies. Combine in your favorite glasses and enjoy!

Logistics for the day of your brunch

Simply pull all your overnight dishes out of the fridge a couple hours before.

An hour before everyone shows up, turn on the oven. Prep your fruit salad. Toss your veggies in a pan.

Thirty minutes before, put your casserole in the oven along with the veggies. Start slicing your bagels and preparing your lox on a plate with all the fixings.

Zero minutes before, take out your casserole and let it cool and firm up for twenty minutes. With your veggies still in the oven, put in your cinnamon rolls for 30 minutes. Serve lox bagels, fruit salad and mimos in the meantime.

Take your veggies out when the cinnamon rolls are done. Serve up your eggs, veggies and cinnamon rolls. Watch as your guests eyes roll to the back of their heads as they fall into food ecstasy.

This year my resolutions are focused around the concept of “more” rather than “less”. I am not making any resolutions to lose weight, eat less sugar, drink less, watch less TV, eat out less… you name it. I’m chucking those out the window.

Instead I am focusing on the notion of “more”. I think taking an additive approach to my life is going to be more helpful than a restrictive one, and I believe that both accomplish the same thing. As mom always said, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

With that in mind, I have one resolution for my health: Eat more whole grains and natural (unprocessed) foods

This just seems like a good, common sense idea. Good for my health, my body and may lead to some of those other benefits I mentioned above (weight loss, I’m looking at you).

With health covered, I’ve got another resolution for my mind and spirit: Write the next Great American Paranormal Romance Novel

Ok, that’s only partially true. I don’t know if I can overshadow the “opus” that was 50 Shades of Grey, but I think it would be a riot to try. I will admit, I find the paranormal romance genre to be fascinating (my once deep and dirty secret) and I’ve always wanted to try my hand at self publishing, so why the hell not. Plus, the barrier to writing anything palatable in this genre is EXTREMELY low. If you can hold a pen upright and have a coherent stream of thoughts, you’re 85% of the way to surpassing the drivel that pervades paranormal romance.

What have you resolved to do in 2013?

I find it hard to avoid reflecting on the past year as I await the bells tolling in 2013. So much has happened, and I realize that 2012 was really the year of trying new things — BIG THINGS — and being totally ok with the outcomes of my adventures. If you’d asked me a year ago what I’d planned on doing in 2012, I would have said, “It’s the year I become a developer”. And yes, I suppose that did happen, but something else quite unexpected happened in the course. I rediscovered my love of writing.

Take a walk with me down memory lane…

After years of pining for a more technical position, I landed a highly technical contract at Yorba. It was tough work — I often spent my days doing serverside work, learning bash and triaging support requests. I managed the translation of their software into 50 languages and spend most of my days staring at code, trying to figure out how to get from A to B. I think a certain amount of fear is healthy when approaching your work, and I sure as heck was scared. But I learned a lot, and ultimately, I learned that I don’t really enjoy that type of work!

With my heart still in technical work, but more interested in the programming side, I spent a month at App Academy, learning Objective-C. And guess what– I hated it! Objective-C was not my cup of tea, so I jumped ship for the fairer shores of Rails.

And so I began my self study of Rails and consistently found myself more drawn to writing about my experiences in Rails than writing code. And that’s when it struck me — had I forgotten my true love? Writing had always been my dream, recently cast to the sidelines while I pursued other avenues. But there she was, so willing to let me pick her up again. I’ve always been a storyteller at heart — some of us tell stories through code, but my strength lies in the spoken and written word.

With that in mind, I’ve taken up a position running content marketing for a mobile startup. Coding is a hobby for me these days. He looks a little bit like a hillbilly third cousin, with banged up teeth, a bashful grin and wonky eyes, one bigger than the other. Not to say I don’t love him — he’s just a bit different and hard for me to relate to.

I never thought that through learning to code I’d rediscover my love of writing, but it happened. It’s been years since I’ve been able to say that I truly love and am challenged by my work, but that’s the truth! And ultimately, my interest in coding and in mobile technology has greatly benefitted me in my current position. If I hadn’t learned any Objective-C or Python or Rails, I wouldn’t be nearly as good at my job as I am. Funny how life does that.

My advice to you: Make lots of mistakes

One of the most memorable gifts I received for my birthday last July was an eraser from my boyfriend’s mom, Robyn. If Yoda came in the package of a beautiful and charismatic woman, it would be Robyn. On the back of the eraser’s packaging, she wrote, “Make lots of mistakes!” And so I’d remind you (and myself), that making mistakes is A-OK, trying and learning you hate something is totally fine. You are your harshest critic. So get over yourself and try what’s been scaring you. You won’t regret it.

I got rid of my smartphone a couple weeks ago, sick of the high price of service and horribly battery life. I felt like I was paying $90 a month to use Twitter, and having to constantly charge my phone when I wasn’t running between work and home.

It seems easy enough, getting rid of your smartphone — until you realize how much we rely on them for directions, constant communication, restaurant reservations, photo sharing and I’m sure much more. Fact is this: I rarely call people, I’m not a heavy texter and I was using my smartphone primarily for the apps. I don’t work “on the road” so I am often in a wifi enabled workspace. If you’re like me, read on. I’ve managed to cut my phone bill drastically and not sacrifice all those services completely. Here’s how:

1. Pick up a good used dumb phone on eBay.

You’ll be hard pressed to find any retailer selling dumb phones these days. I opted to go with a Nokia 1100. This phone’s heyday was about 10 years ago, made primarily for the third world. It was an extremely popular phone at the time, has a couple weeks battery life and could be hit by a bus and still work. As far as I can tell, Nokia 1100′s were sold by TracFone in the US. When I received this phone in the mail, it didn’t come with a SIM card, so I put in an old AT&T pay as you go SIM, but no dice. After many failed attempts to unlock the phone, I called up TracFone and got a new SIM card. I’m tied to their service (MVNO running on AT&T), but it is relatively cheap. I bought 400 minutes for $99, and considering how little I talk on the phone or text, I don’t plan on going through these quickly.

2. Get an iPod Touch

I must admit, owning an iPod Touch is what really pushed me to dump my smartphone. After all, I’d paid $200 bucks for an iPhone without an antennae. Seemed silly to keep paying Sprint $90/month for the privilege of using their network.

3. Free wifi is everywhere (at least in SF)

Another big concern was finding free wifi. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by this. All Starbucks have free wifi, as does BART. I don’t find it 100% of the time when I’m out and about, but I also don’t need to be online 100% of the time. Taking a break from Twitter/Facebook/email has been a really nice disconnect.

4. Offline maps

While I don’t often use Google Maps, it is a feature I need when I’m driving to far flung places. I was happy to find MapsWithMe, a free app that displays offline maps. It doesn’t do driving directions, but that’s why I have a pen and paper for.

5. Set up Skype for outbound calls
My rule of thumb is this — if there’s no wifi and I need to make a call, use the Nokia. Otherwise, use Skype.

Now that minutes cost me, I set up an annual subscription on Skype. This costs me about $30/year and lets me make unlimited calls (US and Canada) using my old phone number. This works on my iPod! As long as I have wifi, I can make phone calls using Skype, directly from my iPod, and save my dumb phone minutes for other occasions.

6. Set up Google Voice for inbound calls and texting

I decided to port my old number to Google Voice. I get all my texts through them and it handles my voicemail as well, so I am not charged minutes for someone leaving me a long message. Best of all, I can view voicemails and text through their iOS app on my iPod, so I don’t even need to touch my dumb phone (and incur charges) when I’m in a wifi enabled area.

I’m sure there are some people out there that are really tied to their smartphone. Maybe you take a million calls a day, or need to be connected. Admittedly my way is more complicated, and maybe not worth the time and effort to save nearly $100 a month. But I’m pretty sure the $1200 dollars I just pocketed will afford me a nice vacation

Heroku is my favorite service to deploy my Rails apps on. It can be a simple joy to use, or it can be a complete nightmare. It’s not difficult to deploy to Heroku, but there are a few things you must keep in mind:

1. Make sure your Rails app is located in a top level directory of your git repository. If you try to create an app anywhere else, it will fail to deploy to Heroku.

2. Heroku will not work with SQLite. You need to install Postgres if you’re working with Heroku. If you’d like to continue using SQLite in development, that has to be specified in the Gemfile. Ideally, you Gemfile should look like this:

gem 'heroku'

group :development, :test do
    gem ‘sqlite3′
end

group :production do
    gem ‘pg’
end

3. Once you’ve updated your Gemfile, run bundle install.

4. If this is a new repository, you’ll need to initialize it in the terminal with git init.

5. After your repository has been initialized, git add . and  git commit -m "Your message" .

6. Now we’re ready to push to Heroku! You’ll want to create your Heroku repo on the Cedar Stack. This is Heroku’s default runtime stack and works with Ruby, Rails, Python (and many more) languages. Run the command heroku create --stack cedar to create your repo.

7. Finally, run git push heroku master to push your code to heroku. You’ll notice that if you’ve been successful, Heroku gives you the URL in the terminal to visit your app.

If you already have a database in development, remember that isn’t going to be uploaded. You’ll need to run heroku heroku run rake db:migrate to setup your database on Heroku.

That’s Heroku in a nutshell. If and when  you do encounter problems updating Heroku, run heroku logs to help identify where the problem may lie. Whenever I’ve failed to deploy successfully to Heroku it’s because something is already broken in the app, that I didn’t catch in my development environment.

Good luck and please post other questions and Heroku advice in the comments!

One of the biggest challenges newbies to programming face is learning how to ask the right questions to fix problems and overcome challenges. Programming is just full of bugs and without knowing the tools that can help you overcome those challenges, bug fixing can seems like a miserable, infuriating slog.

My favorite debugging tool when working on Rails apps is Pry. It has, in a word, REVOLUTIONIZED my ability to deal with problems in the code and drill down to figure out where pain points lie. If you’re not using Pry in your Rails app, here’s how to get started:

Add Pry to your Gemfile and specify that you’ll be using it for development:

Run  bundle install

Next, move into config/environments/development.rb file within your rails app and at the bottom of the file tell your app you want to use Pry in development:

Awesome! Now that we’ve got Pry installed in our Rails app, let’s put it to work. In my example, I want to investigate why a piece of code is breaking. Based on the output I see in localhost, I know that there is something wrong with my code around user.username = auth.info.nickname in my app/models/users.rb file. Username is throwing a NoMethodError, so I’m going to place binding.pry on the line above where my code is breaking. This will spring pry into action so I can investigate that line further when I relaunch my server.

Restarting the Rails server, recreate the action that causes your program to break. In doing so, you’ll notice a couple things: 1) The site will hang 2) The console shows you that Pry is at work and you can now dig down into the broken lines of code to see what might be wrong:

Within the terminal we’re now in Pry, so just like IRB, we can begin digging into what problems lie.

In my case, I had forgotten to add Username to my User table, hence the NoMethodError. As you can see in the example above, I have since fixed it.

I’m only scratching the surface of why Pry can do. There’s a lot more information their site, along with a great introductory video that will help get you started.

As some of my friends know, I left App Academy a month ago to pursue my Rails studying full time. I’ve always subscribed to the idea of “failing fast” and in this case, I learned pretty quickly that Objective-C is not where my heart lies right now. I loved working on Rails projects and feeling stressed out by the program, I knew I had to take the leap.

Being a guinea pig for the first App Academy class was a very memorable ride. I do think that Ned and Kush are awesome teachers and are extremely dedicated to seeing their students succeed. In no way do I want to rag on them or all the hard work they’ve done, but being the test case does come with the expectation that you will be contributing to identifying bumps in the road and helping resolve them for future classes.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned spending 40 hours a week holed up in a room with other students, it’s that we all have very different styles of learning and what works for one person doesn’t work for another. I’ve always been a loner, preferring the solitude of a dark quiet room and a big bright monitor to work. My dream environment doesn’t exist in this setting, and that’s something that was fairly challenging to adapt to.

Class environment aside, pair programming as a learning tool has its own set of challenges. At first I thought that pair programming was primarily about skill matchup, finding people that were perhaps similar to you in skill, or could teach you. But what I learned through the process, is that pair programming is a lot more like dating. This is about personality fit and finding that person you click with. There were a couple people I really did enjoy pairing with at App Academy. But as much as I liked working with them, I kept finding myself wanting more “me time” to tinker. I didn’t want the pressure of getting a project done, I wanted the ability to explore and poke around, make mistakes and get back up. And what I learned is that if you’re in a 9 week program that is looking to pump out developers, there isn’t really any time to explore. Where I wanted depth and strong foundations, intensive classes by their very nature are heavily project focused, preparing students to have a breadth of knowledge on a variety of topics.

I think that teaching Objective-C as a first or second language is a very tough route to take. I kept finding myself missing the good old days of Ruby and Rails, where a lot of the magic of programming is automatically taken care of. If Ruby is like learning Spanish, then Objective-C is Klingon. If anything, I’m more emphatic now than ever before that Ruby should be the first language an aspiring programmer learns. The folks at App Academy seem to have realized that as well. They’re not giving this course again, instead opting to focus on Ruby, Rails and web development work for future classes (smart choice!).

Having said all that, there are still 16 awesome students left in the program and are about to complete App Academy. Many of them come from a Computer Science background or have some technical prowess already. The fact is, this type of program does work for some people.

Of course the things that I miss are the camaraderie, the ability to call over our teacher and bug him at any moment (now I have Twitter, Stack Overflow and my boyfriend for that!) and working with others on the same challenges. And while the going is slower on my own, I have time to digest knowledge and really, truly understand it at my pace. I might just be a junior Rails developer today, but I promise you I’m going to kick some Rails butt as I advance!

Terminals are basic, kinda ugly and wonderfully utilitarian. If you’ve ever thought about “tricking out” your terminal, there’s only so much you can do from the terminal application preferences pane. Changing the background and you can go all black window on green text, “super1337haxor living in the Matrix” style, but that’s as exciting as it gets.

Taking a few more steps, you can transform your terminal into a snazzy window, with awesome colors and welcoming ASCII art. This tutorial is aimed at Mac users that have Homebrew installed. If you’re on Linux, I assume you’re smart enough to figure it out.

Here’s how to go from dull to dazzling in your terminal window:

1. Let’s play around a bit. In the terminal, type:
brew install fortune

Once this has installed, in the terminal, type:
fortune

Keep running it and see all the awesome fortunes that you’ll get!

2. Next we’re going to install this awesome program for the terminal called lolcat. This will effectively make anything you type into a beautiful range of colors.

From the terminal, run this command:
brew install lolcat

Once lolcat has installed, try running
fortune | lolcat

Pretty cool, huh!

Let’s take it a step further — ASCII ART!!

Sidenote: This stuff is amazing. ASCII art has been around since the dawn of the computer age (or 1966, according to Wikipedia, when Bell Labs’  Kenneth Knowlton created the first known ASCII art). Originally used to print out images with characters before printers had the ability to print actual graphics, ASCII art has gone the way of the punch card and is largely relegated to the computer graphics graveyard.

Aside from ASCII art being totally rad, it is mad OG and using it in your terminal as I am about to demonstrate gives you about 1000 internet points. So there.

We’re going to be making ASCII art appear in your terminal every time you open up a new window. This is super simple. In fact, the hardest part is going to be deciding what ASCII art to choose. So let’s get started.

First, pick out the ASCII image you like. There are tons of resources online. My favorite is http://www.chris.com/ascii/

There is a plethora of amazing ASCII art. Case in point:

You’ll want to use your mouse to select the art you like. Copy it and move to the next step.

Next, open up your terminal move to you home directory. Type:

ls -a

You’ll notice a bunch of files appear, including a lot of files that are preceded by a dot(.) These are hidden files. Notice you have a file called “.bash_profile” (on Mac). If you’re on Linux (and probably Windows)  it’s “.bashrc”. You need to open up that file in your text editor. I’m using Textmate:

mate .bash_profile

Once you’re in .bash_profile, click on the empty space at the bottom of the page and type in this command exactly as written:

read -r -d '' VAR <<'EOF'

Paste in your ASCII art below this command. Don’t move it around! Even if it looks weird, just keep it as is.

On the line above below your ASCII art, write:

EOF
echo "$VAR" | lolcat

Save your file and then open up a terminal window. You should see your ASCII art in color! If it looks a little wonky, head back into .bash_profile and make minor edits to the ASCII.

Share your art in the comments!

So you want to learn Rails? Well you’re in luck. There are a ton of resources online to help you do just that.

At App Academy we stared by reading the monolithic tome of OMGRAILSLEARNEVERYTHING, otherwise known as Michael Hartl’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial. Hartl’s tutorial is free, completely exhaustive and will definitely have you up and running with a beautiful Rails app. If you’re new to programming, Hartl will take you on a deep dive of Test Driven Development, Rails and putting your application on the web. It’s awesome, but it’s also extremely in depth and probably more than an absolute beginner can grok.

Here’s my advice: start with a  simple app that you can build in an hour. That both gives you the satisfaction of actually doing something and seeing it work AND help you understand the Rails MVC framework.

Try that a couple times and then spend a week or two with Hartl.

Here’s how to get up and running with Rails, from n00b to novice (that’s right, novice. Becoming anything more than that is going to take months of experience).

I’ve structured my advice around increasing order of time and difficulty. You can knock out the first three tutorials in a day. The last two will be more of a time (and brain) commitment:

1. Get down the basics of Ruby. Code School has an awesome and interactive free Ruby tutorial. Go ahead and play with it to learn the basics.

2. Build a URL shortener with Rails. This was a great tutorial and very easy to follow. It goes through the very basics of Rails and will have you up and running with your own URL shortener in about an hour. Warning: It does have a couple typos, so please check out my code on GitHub to see a working version.

3. JumpStartLab has some solid tutorials for learning more about Ruby and/or Rails. I highly recommend checking out the One Day Rails project. You’ll be building a blogger clone.

4. [OPTIONAL] Now that you’ve built that simple URL shortener, head back to Code School and complete their free course called Rails for Zombies. This is still a high level overview of Rails, but it is interactive, so it will test out your skill and help you get a clearer idea of how Rails works. This should take a couple hours to complete.

5. Move onto Rails Guide next. This tutorial may take you the weekend to get through. It’s more in depth and you’ll build a blog. If you’ve already done the JumpStartLabs tutorial, this will extend the features you created in that project.

6. If you’re still in the mood for more, check out Hartl. His guide is exhaustive. You’ll get a lot of information on test driven development (not covered in any of the other tutorials mentioned) and you’ll have built up enough basic knowledge to appreciate the level of detail he provides. Best of all, thousands of people have gone through the Hartl tutorial, so if you get lost or something starts mysteriously breaking, you’ll likely encounter an answer to your exact problem through a Google search.

7. Now go build something of your own! Good luck and happy Railsing!

We’re just starting on our second week at App Academy and I wanted to share some thoughts on the first week.

Days are typically 12 – 15 hours long, with all kinds of coding in between. We started with 20 students and lost 2 (both women) in the first two days. The course is extremely demanding, and the couple days were a huge adjustment. It’s a bummer to see people not make it through the “sink or swim” environment.

The first two days we completed Test First Ruby and then moved onto understand API’s and building our own program to connect with the BART and Google Maps API. The week was rounded out with a deep dive into rails, which is extending into week two. We’ve also begun writing our own tests for our rails application, and learning test driven development has been pretty cool!

After forty hours of pair programming, I am unsure of its usefulness. Having pairs work together that have vastly different levels of experience leads to the more experienced driving the whole exercise. On one hand, it’s awesome because they can solve all your tough problems and get the project done. On the other hand, it’s bad because they can solve all your tough problems and you don’t learn by struggling through the problem (something I believe is imperative to learn). I vastly prefer the idea of working on the same project with others, but doing it by myself, going to the group when I need help. That’s not the philosophy behind App Academy, but I think that should be taken into consideration for the next course.

My social life has gone into hibernation, considering all the classwork I’m doing, so I hosted a Coding Brunch on Sunday with friends from App Academy and elsewhere. We made waffles, coded and had an awesome time!

I am looking forward to the start of week two. We’re switching our hours from 1 – 9pm to 11 – 7pm (yay!) and I’m liking toying around with Rails. We’ll be building a URL shortener using Rails this week, so stay tuned for more news on that.

I’ve been learning Ruby nonstop at App Academy and have noticed some interesting changes happening in my brain. Here are some signs you may be turning into a Ruby developer:

1. Gems are no longer those fancy stones to put in jewelry.

2. Dreaming of hunting down code, slaying arguments and searching for the ultimate treasure — ruby gems!

3. Using while statements and for loops for your everyday life. I often find myself doing this when I’m cooking (“While dinner is cooking, do set the table”)

4. Trying to fall asleep by telling yourself:

gem install "sleepytime"
require "sleepytime"


I’ll add more to the list as they come!