Come see the CandyFab 4000 in action on Saturday, July 28 at 1:00 PM (PDT) at the Exploratorium in San Francisco or live online for the Maker Saturday Webcasts.
Make: Magazine is partnering with the Exploratorium to bring weekly webcasts of interviews with makers this summer. If you haven’t been to the Exploratorium yet, use this as an excuse! It is one of our favorite sources of inspiration.
While wandering around San Francisco, we ran across Morrow’s Nut House. There were some very silly decorated walnuts in the window, but that’s not what caught my eye. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the toadstools just outside. These capped-off pipes had been painted red with white spots. Urban art at its finest! Of course, the name of the shop is pretty good, too. Unfortunately for us, it was closed. Next time. In the meantime, you’ve got to check out the reviews people have written about this place!
We attended an aluminum casting class at the TechShop last week and had a great time! It was totally hands-on and absolutely unintimidating. The instructor did an excellent job of getting all the students (all five of us! – perfectly sized class) involved and getting our hands dirty. When I wasn’t busy with tamping sand or other fun tasks, I took some pictures, which are in this flickr set.
The TechShop offers a wide range of classes, and based on our experience as students, they are great. They are having an open house this weekend, so if you’re in the area (Menlo Park, CA), you can check it out for yourself. Open house details can be found on the event schedule.
Maker Faire was a smashing success. The big message of the fair was summarized succinctly and stamped on the back of a card we were given: “Kill Your Television and Make Stuff!”
We had a great time in our little prototyping world off in the corner of the Expo hall by SRL. Near us Bathsheba Grossman had her beautiful sculptures, Fab@Home was printing with cheese and frosting, John Guy had his 3D CNC gantry next to his margarita machine, and Lee Krasnow had an entire workshop for his precision puzzle making. We were also by a couple of exhibitors (as opposed to makers): Epilog and Protopulsion, but I have to say, it seemed like the makers all got a lot more traffic than the corporate folks with their tradeshow-style setups. We were all off behind the Tesla coils, which stole our visitors’ attention hourly. Nobody could compete with the Tesla coils when they were running!
We can’t possibly list all of the cool things we saw, and we didn’t see half of the stuff there, but read on for some of the highlights for us.
Continue reading Maker Faire Bay Area 2007 was fantastic!
Maker Faire is shaping up to be a fantastic event! I’ve taken a few pictures, and I’ll add more to the set as I manage to get them uploaded. Pictured above is a very giggly evil mad scientist operating The Disgusting Spectacle.
Please also check out Scott Beale’s coverage so far. He shot a beautiful portrait of one of our dodecahedrons.
We’re having a blast, and we hope to see you there!
Maker Faire 2007 is this coming weekend, May 19-20, in San Mateo, CA. We’ll be bringing the CandyFab 4000 to show off. Besides the CandyFab, we also have one or two (or maybe even three) other projects at the Maker Faire, depending on how you count, which we’re scurrying to (1) finish up and (2) document sometime this week.
Consequently, our publishing schedule will continue to be a little wonky for the next week– so little to do so much time and all that! So, stay evil and come meet us at the Maker Faire!
April first is the only holiday of the world’s oldest religion and the world’s largest church: The First Church of the Last Laugh. We celebrated the holiday in San Francisco with the church at the 29th annual St. Stupid’s Day parade. The weather was lovely, and the people-watching was excellent. We took a few pictures, which are in this flickr set for your enjoyment.
Some parade highlights:
Scott of Laughing Squid was there with Justin of justin.tv and has already written about the parade and put up a flickr set, too.
Here are some more flickr sets from Steve Rhodes, solsken, dustinj, and a handful of pictures from bellboybob.
The Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market is held monthly, March to October, on Saturday mornings at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. Today (March 10) was the first one of the year, so I made the trip and got there early– by my standards– at 8 AM, by which time the early birds had already left. The market nominally runs from 5 AM – Noon, but it starts to wind down an hour or two earlier than that.
The flea market is very popular but not crowded enough to be annoying, and it’s full of interesting characters. There are people selling things on the ground, under tents, on tables, and out of pickups, big trucks, horse trucks, Hummers, and Prii. The most common things that you’ll find for sale there are classic computers, radio equipment, electronic components (often by the reel), industrial surplus, tools, cables, connectors, books, software, and consumer electronics. Look a little harder to find esoteric components like lasers, as well as stuff that belongs at an entirely different flea market.
Today I picked up three sets of fine tweezers, a giant package of (giant) rubber feet, a small metalworking file, a package of breakaway DIP headers, and two small triple power supplies (+/- 15V @150 mA, +5V @ 300 mA), a total expenditure of $12. I also took my camera with me to document some of the fun, and you can check out the flickr set here, with 61 photos in moderately high resolution. The folks in the photo above are having a great time chatting over some ‘scopes and signal generators.
The next flea market is on April 14, so mark your calendar!
This is my great-uncle’s basement. If there’s any genetic component to being an evil mad scientist, this must be where mine comes from.
My dad took these pictures on a recent visit and now I get to share them with you. I highly recommend clicking on the photos to peruse the details in the full-size versions on flickr. Please bear in mind that lighting in the basement is less than ideal, which causes things to disappear in the shadows. But perhaps that is appropriate in the lair of an evil mad scientist — or in my great-uncle’s basement!
There are three drill presses in this photo, and I think there is one more somewhere else. Also visible are a television antenna box, a heavy industrial press, an outboard motor, a vise, a hacksaw, three coping saws and of course, there is the hulking band saw. Read on to see more amazing machinery and clutter.
photo credit: Marlo C. Edman
Continue reading Evil Mad Scientist Lair
The lab staff is travelling this week. Here’s what I brought with me, which might give you a hint about some of our upcoming projects:
