RSS
Archive: Makers
May 9, 2008
Steampunk Maker Faire wrap-up
The steam mechanics, oilpunks, contraptors, neo-Victorians cosplayers, retro-futurists, post-apocalyptic Playa pirates, New Dandies, and electric cowboys were all out in force at this year's Bay Area Maker Faire. There was the Victorian castle on wheels, the steam-powered runabout, the steam-effects scooter, the fire-spewing bar with vaudeville side-stage, the radio-tubed Theremin, and the outdoor Victorian sitting room with a disgorged cabinet of wonders of brassy computer mods, rayguns, clockwork guitars, and a light-spewing violin covering several tables. There were also at least three airship crews.
One of the coolest things about all this is that many of these artisans were already great virtual friends, even collaborators, but had never actually met in person. Seen above is a drawing, by the amazing Suzanne Forbes, of the inimitable Jake von Slatt (left) and Datamancer (right). This is the first time these two well-known steampunk makers had met in meatspace. Here they're seen building a special Maker Faire Contraptors' Lounge keyboard (which we'll likely give away here on the blog at some point). More of Suzanne's drawings from the Lounge can be seen after the jump.
Sitting in the Lounge: Crewmembers of the HMS Chronabelle, Magpie of Steampunk Magazine. In the background (left) Captain Robert of Abney Park and Jake von Slatt, (center) MAKE photographer Sam Murphy and me (the bald dude -- and I swear I'm NOT picking my nose), (right) David S. Dowling (black vest). Seen on the table is Molly Freidrich's Sinister Device and one of her rayguns.
One of the tables in the Lounge, this one mainly featuring work by Jake von Slatt, including his clockwork guitar, his copper-plated etched mint tins, his telegraph sounders, and a phone project he's currently working on. Also seen is the new Steampunk Anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and a portfolio of Molly Freidrich's work.
Tom Sepe's steam-assisted motorbike.
Jake von Slatt: You've just been "steampunked" (by Meredith Scheff).
Read full storyPosted by Gareth Branwyn |
May 9, 2008 11:05 AM
Maker Faire, Makers, Retro |
Permalink
| Comments (5)
May 6, 2008
More on the Maker's Notebook
People have been asking for more details about the Maker's Notebook. It hasn't been officially released yet and is not yet available in the Maker Shed (our new online store), so all will be revealed after we've recovered from the most amazing Maker Faire to date.
In the meantime, here are a few more pics from the Notebook Modding Station that Becky Stern and I (and some awesome volunteers -- Hey Alex. Hey Matt!) ran in the Maker Shed at the Faire. This maker (whose name I didn't get) sat down and went to town on his book, adding a pen holder at the top, a button and string closure, a pocket in the back for his business cards, lots of stickers from the Maker's Notebook sticker sheets, and stamps from the Ink Blot Experiment line, kindly provided to us by Stampington. In the coming weeks, we'll have a webpage for the Notebook with images of other people's modded books and how-tos on adding your own pockets, closures, making your own stamps, stickers, and other add-ons.
Here are a few pages from the Reference section to give you an idea of what's included:
Related:
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
May 6, 2008 07:30 PM
MAKE Store, Maker Faire, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (5)
Rube Goldberg 2008: The Makers and Their Machines (Video)
Here's a video of my visit to the 2008 National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at Purdue University last month. It was a lot of fun to hear the participants talk about their creations and to see them running their machines. Not since the classic 1982 video game BurgerTime has the task of making a burger been so wonderfully complicated and urgent.
Video:
Related:
Posted by Mike Dixon |
May 6, 2008 11:50 AM
Events, Interviews, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
April 26, 2008
Molly "Porkshanks" Friedrich at Maker Faire
"Pandimensional importer/exporter" Molly "Porkshanks" Friedrich will be showing off some of her otherworldly wares in the Contraptors' Lounge at the Maker Faire next weekend. When not winking in and out of the spacetime continuum, Molly fashions really cool wearable art/jewelry and retro-futuristic gadgetry and sells them via Dangerous Detritus. [Photo of Molly by Libby Bulloff, who is also co-hosting the Lounge]
The Contraptors' Lounge is an outdoor Victorian sitting room and cabinet of curiosities being set up at Maker Faire. Such steampunk/retro-tech icons as Jake von Slatt, Datamancer and Abney Park will play host. As one of the on-site activities, Datamancer and Jake von Slatt will be double-teaming the build of a special Maker Faire edition retro/steampunk keyboard in the Lounge. It may be raffled off or auctioned for charity at the end of the Faire. The two will also be giving a talk, on the main stage, about their work.
Related Contraptors' Lounge posts:
Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset May 3rd and 4th at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, CA (Upcoming.org). It's for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things. Buy tickets now and save, discount ticket sales end on April 25th, 2008.
If you're in the Bay Area, or plan to attend Maker Faire add "makerfaire" to your Twitter, we'll be giving away tickets and will have updates before and during Maker Faire!
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Apr 26, 2008 03:00 PM
Arts, Crafts, Maker Faire, Makers, Retro |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
April 24, 2008
Two shows at Arizona State University
Next Tuesday there will be two events at ASU which should be interesting to us maker-folks. One is the exhibition from the Vizproto class, which is about 3D visualization and rapid prototyping in an arts context. Projects range from robot chassis to RFID tags embedded in acorns (above photo) and used in interactive installations to antique mechanical movements printed in 3D. Entitled Protoduction, the show's opening reception will be on Tuesday the 29th from 3-6pm.
The other is the Arts, Media and Engineering departmental open house where students will showcase current projects which range from gesture-recognizing immersive environments (above photo) to collaging software to my knitted Body-Technology Interfaces and Electronic Embroidery. The open house is also on Tuesday the 29th from 6-9pm.
I'll be at both of these events, and I hope all of you in the area will make it, as well!
Above mechanical simulation by Alex Schlegel.
Related:
Posted by Becky Stern |
Apr 24, 2008 07:00 PM
Arts, Electronics, Events, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
April 21, 2008
Revisiting Claude Paillard's triodes
One of the most enthusiastic responses we've ever gotten to a Make: Blog post was for the video of French radio ham Claude Paillard's built from scratch vacuum tubes. If you haven't seen the video yet, you're in for a real treat. It still triggers passionate and effusive praise, such as this comment from a former Hughes Research Labs employee:
Dear Mr. Paillard,
I worked at Hughes Research Labs (now, HRL) for over 30 years and, vividly recall how skilled and talented the technical staff was. As a physicist, I relied immensely on our technical staff to fabricate the devices that we invented, without which, nothing would have become practical. It is magnificent to see and evaluate actual devices --- made with such precision (as you so beautifully demonstrated) --- evolve from our calculations and sketchy drawings. Your brilliant work brought back such fond and wonderful memories (you would have been hired on the spot!). In our laboratories, experimental and prototype lasers were made from scratch, just as you beautifully demonstrated with the triode. The gas discharge lasers required many of the skills that you posses, for this class of laser could be thought of as a "vacuum tube" with optical windows at both ends, and filled with a specified amount of spectroscopic purity, low pressure atomic or molecular gas(es), such as helium, neon, carbon dioxide, argon, xenon, etc. Moreover, such lasers require the vacuum-tube equivalent of a filament, cathode and anode to maintain a stable electric discharge, which is used to excite the active laser's gaseous medium. In many cases, a "getter" was "flashed" in the tube (using external RF to heat it up as you so eloquently performed), and, the evaporated material such as cesium (the shiny coating one sees along the inner walls of the tube) is used to absorb contaminants (e.g., oxygen) that would otherwise render the device useless.
To those readers that have never worked in a research environment, it is easy to overlook all the fine skills that are necessary to actually fabricate a triode, each aspect of which is a specialty in itself: metal forming and machining, instrument design, vacuum technology, materials processing, high-power RF technology, glass blowing (including forming and annealing), understanding of the detailed device properties of a triode and how to characterize its electronic performance. Your work is excellent and, viewing your video is refreshing and inspiring, for you make an extremely difficult labor of love appear so effortless --- true genius! Bravo to you!!
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Apr 21, 2008 11:00 AM
Makers, Retro, Science |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
April 11, 2008
Stanford Cool Products Expo
At first glance, Stanford's Cool Products Expo looked like a regular college career fair. That is, until I saw the solar-powered car, tilting trike, Tesla car and BMW's hydrogen car parked on the lawn. Inside the packed hall, instead of suits touting companies there were dozens of, well, cool products. They ranged from a design student's clever silicone vegetable steamer to Belkin's newest remote control energy-saving surge protector. I loved that there was a broad mix of stuff, ranging from out-there prototypes to quite polished final products already on the market. (The most fun to look at were of course the former.)
How did they choose what to include? As Tom Nguyen, one of the organizers, put it in an email: "Well, they have a cool-factor that requires no explanation (you'll know it when you see it), they're radically new rather than improvements on existing products, and they represent an essential combination of design form and function." (By the way, that's him up above with Joe Wilcox's fun-to-ride Tilting Trike.)
Here are a few of the things that really stuck in my mind (and more in my Flickr set).
Brent Teal is a total maker--he built this Glide Cycle prototype in his garage after a friend of his wanted to continue jogging despite his bad knees. It's like a cross between an elliptical machine and a bicycle--the demo video is hypnotic. Elliptigo
I've fantasized about wireless chargers for years, so it was a thrill to see one in action. You buy WildCharge cases for your various devices, and then you lay them down on the charging pad. Voila! Maybe not the most efficient way to go, but it is cool.
Speaking of chargers, this one was also nice: the HY Mini, which allows you to charge up your cellphone with either a tiny solar cell or a mini fan. Jason Wang was manning the table when I stopped by, and he said he charges his cellphone as he drives to work by sticking the fan on his car.
On the non-commercial side of the spectrum was the Embrace Infant Thermoregulator, which replaces expensive incubators with a simple, portable $25 sleeping bag with a phase-change material insert.
And I totally loved MagnoGrip's awesome magnetic belt clips, tool pouches, carpenter belts, and other construction accessories. Suspenders are cool again!
Posted by Arwen O'Reilly |
Apr 11, 2008 12:33 AM
Electronics, Events, Gadgets, Makers, Wireless |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
April 5, 2008
National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest 2008
Today I attended the annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest finals at Purdue University. This year the task was to make a hamburger in no less than 20 steps, and the Purdue Armory was full of great, laboriously contrived burger-making machines.
I had the opportunity to interview quite a few of the participants, so look forward to a video piece on these makers (from both the high school and college competitions) and their machines in action once we get that edited together. For more pictures, you can check out my flickr set of the event.
Posted by Mike Dixon |
Apr 5, 2008 01:47 PM
Events, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (8)
March 31, 2008
Ant Farm retrospective
We make money not art has a piece about a retrospective on Ant Farm, the American media art collective from the 1970s. Ant Farm is most famous for their Cadillac Ranch installation in Amarillo, Texas.
I had the pleasure of meeting and becoming friends with Ant Farm co-founder Doug Michels in the early '90s. He was as delightfully crazy as ever, drawing up designs for spheres of water floating through space filled with dolphins, a Japanese sex theme park, a giant couch, called the National Sofa, in the park across from the White House, where people could come and interact with the First Family via the National TV set. This was definitely not a guy who liked to paint inside the lines. Sadly, Doug died in a freak climbing accident in 2003.
The Ant Farm retrospective is at The Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla, Spain.
Ant Farm retrospective in Sevilla
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 31, 2008 11:00 AM
Arts, Culture jamming, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
March 28, 2008
Xeni joins the cupcake 1%-ers
There's something divinely surreal about giant cupcakes tooling around with human heads poking out of their centers. We had the cupcake cars at last year's Bay Area Maker Faire and I had a laugh every time they trundled by the MAKE booth.
In this BBtv video, Xeni rides with the Cupcake Cutthroats (shiver me sprinkles!) and gets a guided tour of their motorized muffins. Think: Russ Myers meets Hostess.
Cupcake Cutthroats: muffin-shaped electric art cars gone wild
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 28, 2008 01:00 PM
Maker Faire, Makers, Transportation |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
March 24, 2008
Playing the stand-up Bidet
In response to our posting of mint tin guitar, a reader pointed us to this Argentine group called Les Luthiers which repurposes everyday objects into instruments. Unfortunately, none of the site is in English.
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 24, 2008 08:00 PM
Makers, Music |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
March 21, 2008
Dean Kamen on Colbert Report
Here's the video of last night's Colbert Report with Dean Kamen talking about his vapor compression distiller.
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 21, 2008 02:00 PM
Green, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
March 20, 2008
Manure launching security system
Reader Erica points out this story about a resourceful British maker -
A British businessman fed up with being targeted by vandals has installed a 30-foot Roman-style catapult on the premises to hurl bucket loads of chicken manure at culprits attacking his rural offices.Wow, I wonder if he's considered writing an instructable for that setup.
[...]
The defense arrangements, which include priming the catapult with chicken droppings from a nearby farm, include 32 closed-circuit TV cameras, security fencing and motion-sensor lights -- all guarded by a no-nonsense sign that reads:"WARNING: These premises are protected by smart poo ..."
Read more - Ex-stuntman targets vandals with nasty catapult
Related:
Robotic security officer is menacing, sprays water
HOW TO - Build a torsion catapult
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Mar 20, 2008 03:00 PM
Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
Synth demo from robotmaker Stanley
Robot-turned-Synthmaker Stanley gives an awesomely quirky video demo of his new sound-making device. (WARNING: contains a little cursing, smoking, and lovable condescension)
Stanley Povoda, the worldfamous "Robot Man" is now creating all kinds of sound-devices for Metamorphosis. He built countless robots in his life and just recently decided to take again a more musical direction, by designing and contstructing his own synthesizers. His devices are built into old tapemachines, solariums, telephones, whatsoever.- Metamorphosis
If you're curious about Mr. Povoda's adventures in robotics, read more @ Prague.tv
and don't miss this 360 degree pic of Stanley at home with some of work.
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Mar 20, 2008 01:00 PM
Makers, Music, Robotics |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
Custom turntables
Mike Disher makes custom acrylic turntables -
About 5 years ago I decided to try my hand at building a custom turntable. Turntables and mechanical watch and clock movements fascinate me. I view them as functional pieces of kinetic art. I based my turntable design on the legendary Rega P3, and I created a new, custom acrylic plinth and a set of feet. I also devised a way to hide the motor, and I improved the motor mounting system. The plinth rests on small silicone dots, providing added isolation. The result was a very modern looking table. I called it the P3 Skeleton. Skeleton is a watchmaking term for a movement in which material is removed from the plates and bridges to reveal the inner workings. A fellow audio enthusiast saw this table at my house and offered to buy it on the spot. I did not sell it, but I was happy that others appreciated my work.Beautiful work - love to see some pics of his build process as well.
Related:
DIY Turntable
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Mar 20, 2008 05:00 AM
Makers, Music |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
March 19, 2008
Maker Faire documentary
Makers - A short-subject documentary about the Do-It-Yourself Counterculture from Brian Boyko on Vimeo.
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 19, 2008 11:00 AM
Maker Faire, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
March 17, 2008
More Dorkiness: Pittsburgh
J. Eric Townsend, of Dorkbot Pittsburgh, wanted to make sure folks here knew about their March meeting: March 20, 2008, 7:30-9:30pm. They meet at Brillobox, located at 4104 Penn Ave (at Main) in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA.
Jia Ji, Touchtown. Jia is the Director of Product Management for Dancetown, a dance-based digital fitness system developed for seniors. Using a computer and dance pads, people of all ages are able to participate in healthy intergenerational play through the Dancetown system. Jia is a Stanford University alumnus and actively supports grassroots technology efforts in the Pittsburgh area. He currently serves as Technology Director for NAAAP Pittsburgh, volunteers on the local game developers board, and helps organize the Pittsburgh PodCamp conference series. Prior to joining Touchtown, Jia was president and founder of Flying Fish Media. He has also worked for a variety of technology companies and startups such as Guru.com, Pittsburgh.com, Dreamwork Soft, Inecom Entertainment, Interactive Media Systems, Ripple Effects Interactive, and eGenesis.
Jim Jen, AlphaLab. Jim is the Executive in Residence at AlphaLab, a six month program for software startups that provides companies with funding, free office space, services, and access to investors and advisors. Jim works closely with the management teams of startup technology companies to identify and address critical business issues facing those companies. Previously, Jim built and managed software businesses at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Agile Software (acquired by Oracle), and Instill Corporation (Mayfield-funded, privately held). As a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, Jim advised executive management of Fortune 500 companies on marketing, strategic planning, and organizational issues. Jim holds a BA and MA in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 17, 2008 03:00 PM
Announcements, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
March Dorkbot DC
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
7 PM - 9 PM (ET)
ALWAYS FREE!
Location:
Smith Hall of Art, Room 114
George Washington University
801 22nd St NW
Washington, DC 20037
Tom Lee : Cheaper Arduino Wifi
Bringing ethernet connectivity to the Arduino for around fifty dollars, Lady Ada's XPort Shield has gotten people understandably excited. But with a little elbow grease and a custom firmware, you can do even better: a $10 component can bring Ethernet, wifi and a full Linux environment to your microcontroller project. Not bad, right? Tom Lee will explain how, and show a simple Arduino-based ambient display that uses the approach to show Metro schedule information.
Tom Lee is a DC web developer and technologist who contributes to DCist, Techdirt and whatever other blogs will have him.
Gareth Branwyn : Jack Parsons: The Original Burning Man 
Gareth will present a "Maker Profile" on under- appreciated American rocketry pioneer Jack Parsons, based on "Darkside Rocketeer," his piece on Parsons running in MAKE Volume 13.
Jack Parsons is one of the most important figures in the history of American rocketry and space development. He invented the JATO (jet-assisted take-off) motor-- America's first rocket program, co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laborartory and Aerotech Corporation, and created the formulations for solid rocket motors still in use today. Unfortunately, Parsons' controversial private life -- as a practitioner of ceremonial magick, a follower of infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley, and as a devout hedonist -- has caused many of his technical achievements to be shoved into the closet of history. Parsons' untimely death in a mysterious home lab explosion, has only added to the sordid nature of his story.
Gareth will talk not only of Parsons, but the group of fellow amateurs and CalTech students he worked with, known as The Suicide Squad, and the amazing intellectual backdrop of Pasadena and CalTech in the 1920s and '30s.
Gareth Branwyn is a writer on technology and fringe culture. He is a contributing editor to MAKE, writes for the Make: Blog, and is an editor for O'Reilly's Make: Books imprint.
From the Pages of MAKE
Read this article in MAKE: 13: Magic, Page 94. To get MAKE, subscribe or purchase single volumes. Subscribers--read this article now in your digital edition!
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 17, 2008 01:00 PM
Announcements, Arduino, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (4)
March 14, 2008
Gertrude: An Led Drawing Machine by Chris McDonald
Chris McDonald made this extra-great, 2-axis drawing machine for doing time-lapse photography.
Here's the info from his website vanita phone company:
Gertrude uses two stepper motors to move an LED in a very high resolution x/y plane. The movement of the LED is photographed using exposures usually between 30 and 90 seconds. Gertrude can either be programmed to "print" a design automatically ("Christopher & Daniil", the Hell Yup!: Scanlines shots) or controlled live via a joystick (Open&Close portrait series). ...more info
II: Christopher & Daniil not talking (pt. 2 in a series of 2)
Hell Yup!: Scanlines 3 (Self-Portrait)
Posted by Eric Michael Beug |
Mar 14, 2008 07:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Gadgets, Imaging, Makers, Photography, Robotics |
Permalink
| Comments (10)
March 10, 2008
Steve Lodefink on D+R
MAKE contributor Steve Lodefink is guest blogging on Mister Jalopy and Mark Frauenfelder's Dinosaurs and Robots blog. Sample post:
This 1955 Popular Science article shows us the dawn of the CNC machine tool age. Sure, the history is super interesting, but I can't stop looking at the cute little tape-munching computers in the opening spread.The comic depicts a home shop machinist sitting in an easy chair in his woodshop, enjoying a book while he waits for the machines to spit out a perfectly carved wooden furiture leg. The author of the article can't quite decide if such a machine will ever be made small enough for home use, but as we have seen, indeed it has.
MIT's Experimental 1955 CNC Mill - Link
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Mar 10, 2008 12:00 PM
Makers, Retro |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
Features and more @ MAKE!
Add MAKE to iGoogle - GoogleGoogle.Add MAKE to your RSS reader - Real simple.
Why advertise on MAKE?
Read what folks are saying about us!
Click here to advertise on MAKE!
Phillip Torrone
Senior Editor
Tel: 707-827-7311
Gareth Branwyn
Robot Maker
Kip Kay
Video Maker
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Researcher
Natalie Zee Drieu
Senior Editor
CRAFT
Becky Stern
Culture jammer
Collin Cunningham
Sound Maker
Marc de Vinck
CNC Maker
Current Podcast
The Best of Maker Faire 2008
Check out all the fun and excitement at this year's Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. People from all over the world came to experience this amazing event. Take a look at some of the highlights and make plans...
More...
