Maybe we finally DO live in the future. I had to call my mother-in-law a few days ago to deliver the bad news tell her that we wouldn’t be able to make it up to New York/New Jersey for our annual post-Christmas dinner. My son Blake moved to the Bay area this year (to work as a game designer) and is only going to be on the East Coast for a precious few days. “Hey, maybe you could send 3D print-outs of your heads,” she responded, after digesting the bad news. Alright, grandma up on the bleeding edge technology! I thought it was a brilliant idea and we even seriously explored the possibility of doing it. The head of MAKE’s own Nick Normal (above) has been known to make the scene when carbon-based Nick can’t. But there just wasn’t enough time to have our heads scanned, printed, and mailed.

So, we decided to take a slightly lower-tech route to teleporting dinner avatars. Blake made and emailed papercraft versions of us to the family. Papercraft Gar is below. The family will have a little craft project cutting and assembling us before they sit down for dinner (where we will also have places).

Somebody also suggested we could use iPhones and Facetime and set up the phones on our plates. But I don’t think I want to sit through a meal that I don’t actually get to eat.

Click on image for full-size version

If you want to make your own paper versions of yourself to send around for the holidays, you can get the template that we used here. If you want to print out Paper Gar and have him at your table, feel free (just take pictures!). He likes white meat, hold the gray.

Update: We made it to Jersey (and the data traffic was nothing — we flew up there):

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Secret Santa: Nick Normal – 3D Scanner