Wooden signs with AxiDraw

Jonathan sent in pictures of these wooden signs he made with his AxiDraw.

He shared some tips as well:

  • Put plastic wrap over the surface to test font, spacing, and size.
  • For polyurethane and lacquered finishes, if you make mistake with a permanent marker, write over your mistake with a dry erase marker and it comes right off.

It is awesome to see people taking advantage of AxiDraw’s ability to draw on different surface materials. Thank you, Jonathan!

Linkdump: May 2018

Apollo 4 image

Linkdump: April 2018

Bay Area Maker Faire 2018

For this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire we are excited to be collaborating with Eric Schlaepfer and Ken Shirriff. We’ll be bringing decapped chips like the MOS 6502, the 555 timer and 741 op-amp along with microscopes to let visitors see what’s inside of famous and interesting integrated circuits. We’ll also be bringing large scale reference models, including the MOnSter 6502.

Maker Faire is May 18-20 at the San Mateo Expo Center. If you’re looking for us at Maker Faire, our exhibitor number is 65553 and our project name is Uncovering the Silicon. We look forward to seeing lots of you there!

Electronics Flea Market: Now in Sunnyvale

Pile o' instruments

We’ve written about the Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market many times before. Make that many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times before. It’s a great source of inspiration, beautiful objects and interesting conversations.

We’re writing about it now because it has moved locations! The April 14th flea market will be at the parking lot of the Sunnyvale Fry’s. We’ll hope to see you all there this weekend!

Linkdump: March 2018

quick sort

Lemon Ginger Marmalade

It is lemon season here yet again! Given the quantity of fruit my Meyer lemon tree produces, I have many opportunities to remake my marmalade recipes with little adjustments and changes. This time, I added ginger. Quite a bit of ginger. This jam has a bright cheerful flavor with a bit of zing to it which is perfect for the rainy weather we’ve been having.

Ingredients:

  • 8 cups (Meyer) lemon pieces
  • 1 cup lemon juice
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 Tbsp grated ginger
  • 2/3 cup ginger matchsticks
  • 6 cups sugar

First cut up the lemons into small pieces and remove any obvious seeds. After juicing lemons, we’ve found that straining it through a julep strainer holds back the seeds but allows most of the pulp through.

Our favorite tool for grating ginger is a fine microplane. For making matchsticks, a mandoline slicer makes short work of it.

Put the lemon pieces, lemon juice, water, grated ginger, and ginger matchsticks in a pot and simmer until the lemons start to soften. Add the sugar. Stir regularly and cook to the desired consistency. To test consistency, put a spoonful on a plate in the fridge. If it’s too runny after cooling for a few minutes, keep simmering and test again after a few minutes.

Makes about four pints. If you want to can it for longer storage, Ball has a nice introduction to canning on their website.


Other fruit preserves from the Play with your food archives:

Tap List with AxiDraw

The folks at Sac City Brews use an AxiDraw to create their tap list. The AxiDraw plots out the beer name, info and logo onto a piece of acrylic which gets mounted in the tap list above the bar.

Best of all, they’ve mounted the AxiDraw in plain view, so patrons can see it getting ready for the next beer to go on tap. (You can see video of it in action in their Yelp pictures.)

If you’re in Sacramento and are looking to try out a new tap house, check them out. Thank you to Todd for sending us the pictures!