ArcAtack

Have you ever seen electricity dance, or play music? At the Maker Faire was a group called ArcAttack that plays music through Tesla coils. They also place a volunteer into a metal box in the middle of the coils to amp (nuck nuck) up the excitement...



I hear that sometimes one of them puts on a full chain-mail suit and dances in the middle.
So Cool!

Maker Fiare 2010

The Maker Faire is mostly like what it sounds like. It is a fair where the main attraction is learning how to make things, to look at invention and re-use and odd DIY stuff. It was thoroughly overwhelming and I find now that I'm here uploading that I might have taken all of ten photos throughout the day.

At the beginning of the day we saw this guy demonstrating the theramin... for those who don't know this is the instrument you hear in those 1950's Sci-Fi movies. It's completely electronic and is played somewhat like an air guitar.

I tried to draw a tree with light;


I think a little practice would help... but playing with light exposure photography is easily something I could waste a lot of time with.

The place was covered with all sorts of kenetic scupltures made with re-used items... something I didn't take a photo of that I loved was the display of old computers turned into musical instruments including a game console guitar and mouse maracas...

... interactive sculptures... (better photos HERE)
There was a pond for fighting model ships. There is a club thatmakes 1/44th scale WWII ships that have battles every hour with real ballistics. I imagine it would have been more exciting to be participating rather than just watching from behind this rather wobbly plastic sheeting. We did have to wear protective goggles and sign waivers that said we wouldn't sue for injury.
There was a shipping crate that had been hollowed out and filled with all of this metal sculpture made with reused pieces. I thought my Mom would really have liked this part because my Granddad was a creative welder who would have done things like this...

Steampunks ruled this festival. They had a steampunk villiage where they had skits about their strange Victorianesque "robots" and sold their wares. There were people dressed in steampunk clothes all over the festival and it made me a little sad for the SCA folks who were in rather shabby garb and weren't getting much attention for their fencing at the far end of the festival.
The Steampunks did have some neat inventions... yet again I thought I had taken all sorts of photos of them but in reality I just thought about it and was too overwhealmed by the scale of the festival and number of people to really focus long enough to pull out my camera. Anyway, here is their "steam" powered bike (actaully it runs on gas but that's not nearly as cool).
There were several buildings full of activities and trade show type promotions. In one booth I learned how to solder open pin circuit boards... I made a mini theramin. This booth made me laugh like crazy... "Paper airplanes made easy" Really? Because they're so hard? Wow.
This shot from inside one of the tents was of the ping pong ball LED mobius thingie... it looses a good deal in translation. It strobes through several sets of sequential LEDs and looks like some giant bio-luminescent creature.
Fire sculpture;
At the end one of my favorite new bands(Ok Go) played (separate post to follow) with fishbowls on their heads...
It's hard to sum it all up because it was so overwhelming. There were too many people. There were many vendors who didn't actually have any information or activity beyond telling you to go to their website... there were more vendors than I expected selling DIY kits for more than I thought they were worth. There were also interesting lectures and resources that I had never heard of. There was a Tesla coil band (separate post to follow) that played music amplified through 20' tall tesla coils. The next time I go I think I may take more time quietly listening to NASA scientists in the lecture hall and not trying to see everything there is to see.

Maker Faire processing...

I've been a bad blogger... but this weekend I went to the Maker Faire and I've got it stewing in my brain... so check back in soon and I should have new photos up...

For the next time you're on the I-5

Between LA and the Grapevine is a long stretch of highway. Mostly it just winds along with no hope of stopping until you get to the other side of the hill. Since this is the last leg of my journey from Berkeley to LA I am usually just plowing through but there is this spot in the middle, Pyramid Lake, that always catches my eye.
It's a beautiful lake.

This time I decided to stop. Parking is free. There is a water museum inside created by the municipal water district, also free (I didn't take any photos inside, sorry I totally forgot to, it was rather dry despite the subject matter).

There are amazing views, it's a nice place to stretch cramped legs.
There's a water fountain to fill up your water bottle. The picnic areas were closed but they looked beautiful. Next time I'm going to forget the nasty rest area stops and just aim for the lake.

Dark Humor...

I am a Muppet person. I've always been a Muppet person. Disney is meh, ok... but since I was a small child (my mother claims I loved the Muppet movie from within the womb) I have been a Muppet loving, Roald Dahl reading, Chekhov watching kind of a girl. Its healthy to be able to look into the dark abyss and Laugh maniacally at it. If you despair, that's it, you've lost. When you can laugh at the worst day, you know it has not defeated you. I say dark humor is the best humor, and as proof I offer the following evidence;

Faith v. Hope

This is what the bottom level of the Bay Bridge looks like on a good day... a day I can take a snap shot with my right hand and still be safe.
On a day when it's raining driving under this bridge gets you wetter than driving on the surface streets. On occasion there are random chunks of road that fall from the upper level that you have to drive around. Last year this bridge was closed because a cable snapped... (miraculously nobody was seriously hurt)

the bridge is crumbling; and yet I drive on it...

not so much because I have faith that it will hold up, but mostly I Hope it will. I hope that it's sound enough to stay up and that the authorities will close it again if it's not. I hope that the new span of the Bay bridge will be finished before this old one falls into the bay. It probably will, but I'm not sure.

Sometimes I feel like a lot of life is like this. I don't have any faith that things will turn out for the better, but I hope they will, so I keep on driving that way.

Passive Aggressive Beer

I found the perfect beer to offer as an apology for drinking your roommate's last beer even though they've just finished off all of your ice cream, not replaced the toilet paper and neglected to tell you that you got a package in the mail...

Hang in there Brian, things will get better... I hope.