Carview!

CARVIEW

MOTORHOMES

Select Language

HTTP/2 302 server: nginx date: Sun, 03 Aug 2025 06:04:23 GMT content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 content-length: 0 x-archive-redirect-reason: found capture at 20100118103517 location: https://web.archive.org/web/20100118103517/https://blog.makezine.com/archive/events/ server-timing: captures_list;dur=0.478625, exclusion.robots;dur=0.019077, exclusion.robots.policy;dur=0.009188, esindex;dur=0.011228, cdx.remote;dur=11.649685, LoadShardBlock;dur=169.391505, PetaboxLoader3.datanode;dur=60.966970, PetaboxLoader3.resolve;dur=56.714641 x-app-server: wwwb-app223 x-ts: 302 x-tr: 208 server-timing: TR;dur=0,Tw;dur=0,Tc;dur=0 set-cookie: wb-p-SERVER=wwwb-app223; path=/ x-location: All x-rl: 0 x-na: 0 x-page-cache: MISS server-timing: MISS x-nid: DigitalOcean referrer-policy: no-referrer-when-downgrade permissions-policy: interest-cohort=() HTTP/2 200 server: nginx date: Sun, 03 Aug 2025 06:04:24 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 x-archive-orig-date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:35:18 GMT x-archive-orig-server: Apache x-archive-orig-x-powered-by: PHP/4.4.8 x-archive-orig-connection: close x-archive-guessed-content-type: text/html x-archive-guessed-charset: iso-8859-13 memento-datetime: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:35:17 GMT link: ; rel="original", ; rel="timemap"; type="application/link-format", ; rel="timegate", ; rel="first memento"; datetime="Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:48:33 GMT", ; rel="prev memento"; datetime="Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:53:56 GMT", ; rel="memento"; datetime="Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:35:17 GMT", ; rel="next memento"; datetime="Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:53:35 GMT", ; rel="last memento"; datetime="Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:49:38 GMT" content-security-policy: default-src 'self' 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline' data: blob: archive.org web.archive.org web-static.archive.org wayback-api.archive.org athena.archive.org analytics.archive.org pragma.archivelab.org wwwb-events.archive.org x-archive-src: TLA-20100118092854-00387-ia360916-c/TLA-20100118102556-00613-ia360907.us.archive.org.warc.gz server-timing: captures_list;dur=0.601200, exclusion.robots;dur=0.023808, exclusion.robots.policy;dur=0.013448, esindex;dur=0.015683, cdx.remote;dur=62.378665, LoadShardBlock;dur=198.198728, PetaboxLoader3.datanode;dur=167.980118, PetaboxLoader3.resolve;dur=133.609759, load_resource;dur=125.688378 x-app-server: wwwb-app223 x-ts: 200 x-tr: 526 server-timing: TR;dur=0,Tw;dur=0,Tc;dur=0 x-location: All x-rl: 0 x-na: 0 x-page-cache: MISS server-timing: MISS x-nid: DigitalOcean referrer-policy: no-referrer-when-downgrade permissions-policy: interest-cohort=() content-encoding: gzip Make: Online: Events Archives

Events Archive: Events

Events Home | Next >

January 17, 2010

Maker Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin

Today marks the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, a true Renaissance man. After beginning a career in printing, he went on to become a revered scientist, inventor, statesman, author, politician and more. He tried his hand at everything from founding a country to designing a new glass armonica, including the invention of bifocals, and the lightning rod. Happy birthday, Ben!

Everything I need to know I learned from D&D;

Last night I gave a talk at IgniteOKC, Oklahoma City's part of the Ignite series of talking events, called 'All I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Dungeons and Dragons.' I had a ton of fun with it and I think it will be of interest to any fans of roleplaying games in general and D&D; specifically. I am especially proud of my slides, which are all hand drawn by me :)

[via boing boing]

January 15, 2010

Massimo Banzi's Tinker Toolkit workshop at Interaction10

Tinker Toolkit

Massimo Banzi, author of Getting Started with Arduino and co-founder of the Arduino Project, is presenting a workshop at the upcoming Interaction10 conference in Savannah, GA on February 4, 2010:

The Tinker Tookit is a modular system of sensors and actuators being developed at Tinker.it! in London for the past couple of years. It allows designers to prototype and test tangible user interfaces with Arduino very quickly and without any knowledge of electronics. During this workshop we'll explore the basics of Arduino and get to build cool stuff within the first hour. You'll experience first hand accelerometers, touch sensors, colour sensors, and a lot more technology without having to spend a month talking about atoms and electrons.

Bring your laptop (Mac, Windows or even Linux) and your energy.

As a bonus, he'll be joined by Making Things Talk author (and fellow Arduino Project team member) Tom Igoe. It's two Make: Authors for the price of one!

Tangible Interface Prototyping with the Tinker Toolkit
Interaction10 Registration

I'll be covering the Interaction10 conference for Make: Online, so keep an eye out for dispatches from the event.

In the Maker Shed:

Getting Started with Arduino
Our Price: $12.99
This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open source electronics prototyping platform that's taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for projects and helps you get going on them right away. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED. By Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.

Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

SparkFun Free Day... behind the scenes

We got 104 comments on our SparkFun Free Day aftermath post, several of which were rather... lively. This video shows what went on at SparkFun HQ during Free Day.

World's biggest disco ball

Seven-and-a-half metres across, with 1,000 mirrors, suspended 50 metres in the air from a crane, and illuminated by spotlights from all over the city of Paris during this year's annual Nuit Blanche arts festival. The work is La Maîtresse de la Tour Eiffel by French conceptual artist Michel de Broin. [via Dude Craft]

Natalie Jeremijenko - Interactive Architecture: Reinventing Social Spaces @ EXIT ART

Pt 2436
Natalie Jeremijenko @ EXIT ART tonight if you're in NYC. Opening tonight, show is January 9 - February 6, 2010...

Waterpod: Autonomy and Ecology, the sixth exhibition of the SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) program, documents and revisits the Waterpod's five-month voyage around the boroughs of New York. It includes videos, photographs, relics, art works, journal entries, and ephemera that tell the story of this unusual public art project.

The Waterpod was a floating, sculptural structure designed as a futuristic habitat and an experimental platform for assessing the design and efficacy of living systems fashioned to create an autonomous, fully functional marine shelter.

A New York-based multinational team, led by founder and artistic director Mary Mattingly, drew upon the talents of artists, designers, builders, civic activists, scientists, environmentalists, and marine engineers to bring this cross-disciplinary collaboration to fruition in the waterways of New York City. During a global recession and within strict government guidelines, the Waterpod managed to achieve new ways of community outreach, resource sharing, and art creation.

To fortify against the possibility of widespread climate change, desertification, overpopulation, and rising sea levels, the Waterpod offered a pathway to sustainable survival, mobility, and community building through a free, participatory project and event space that visited the five boroughs and Governors Island, for a voyage lasting from June to October 2009. The Waterpod's mission has been to prepare, inform, and offer alternatives to current and future living spaces.

As a self-sufficient, navigable living space, the Waterpod showcased the critical importance of water within the natural world. Collectively embracing the richly-patterned folkways of the five boroughs of metropolitan New York, the Waterpod reified positive interactions between communities: private and public; artistic and societal; scientific and agricultural; aquatic and terrestrial.

Related:
Make Pt0307

MAKE AUDIOZINE - - Natalie Jeremijenko.
Natalie Jeremijenko: The WorldChanging - Interview.
Make - Volume 02 - Maker: Natalie Jeremijenko - (Page 22).
Jeremijenko talks art, activism, - interspecies cooking.

Young Makers

Maker Jon Sarriugarte of Oakland, California raises his daughter Zolle in the air at the 2008 Maker Faire in the Bay Area.

At a higher education conference (dgree.org) last week, I met Marie who told me the following story about her young daughter, Annika.

"I have a son who is a whiz at math. I've kind of understood what he needs and where he's going. My daughter was different and I didn't really understand who she was and what she did. Then I became familiar with MAKE. I recognized that she's the kind of kid who's always off doing something, making something out of parts she finds around the house. I realized she's a maker. I was so happy."

When I wrote Marie asking if it was okay to write about Annika, she responded with a quote from her daughter: "Did you tell him that if you turn your back on me for one minute, I start making?" What a great kid!

I can't tell you how much that means to me. I feel fortunate that we produce a magazine that helped a mother discover her own daughter in a new way. I don't think it's the only such example out there. I wonder how many kids there are that could benefit from being seen as makers.

Young Makers Program

Last summer, Tony DeRose, of Pixar, talked to me about an idea for developing a program for young makers. He and his kids built a Potato Gatling Gun and brought it to Maker Faire last year. They had such a great experience, taking an idea and developing it in their garage shop, and bringing their work to share with others at Maker Faire. Tony felt that more kids should have this kind of experience.

In addition to talking to me, Tony had been talking with folks at the Exploratorium in San Francisco about what he thought then were "two different things: 1) how to use Pixar's cachet to promote science and math education, and 2) his family's love of making." Tony was introduced to Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich who have run the Learning Studio at the Exploratorium for years. (They've organized the Exploratorium's participation in Maker Faire each year.) The Learning Studio is dedicated to the idea that science and math education can be advanced by tinkering and that places like science centers should encourage more creative ways of making and doing. They saw Tony's interests as a way to try out some new ideas at the Exploratorium and work more closely with us at MAKE.

We talked about getting kids to meet makers and demonstrate different modes of making. We wanted to explore projects in areas such as circuit-building, soft circuits, music, and mechanics. Mike and Karen want to have making become a regular part of the Exploratorium experience. We also want to find places where kids can work with mentors to make things. So, we also brought Jim Newton and TechShop in as partners. Together, we've come up with a Young Makers program for the Bay Area, which is now ready for a trial run.

I'll use Tony's words to give an overview of Young Maker program:

People learn in many different ways, but many learn best by building things. Building toys such as Lego blocks offer powerful and open-ended experiences for younger children. Unfortunately, as shop classes have closed over the past few decades, there remains very little infrastructure to nurture older kids and teens who want to expand beyond construction kits.

The Young Makers program is intended to create such an infrastructure. The idea is to create a community, both online and physical, that brings together like-minded kids, adult mentors, and fabrication facilities. Mentors help young makers define a project vision if they don't already have one, and then guide the kids in realizing that vision. Along the way, both kids and their mentors will expose the underlying math, science, and engineering principles behind the projects, explore tool usage and safety, and collectively create a collaborative culture of innovation and experimentation. Maker Faire becomes the deadline, and offers a stage for the resulting projects to be exhibited and explained.

In my view, we'd like to help develop young makers and encourage them to participate in Maker Faire. We'll be creating a special kids area at Maker Faire this year and we will invite kids to exhibit their projects. Our initial focus is on teens from middle school through high school.

Kickoff of Open MAKE at the Exploratorium

As part of the Young Makers program, the Exploratorium will host "Open MAKE" on the last Saturday of the month, beginning January 30th, continuing on February 27th and March 27th and concluding on April 24th.

The goal of the program is to encourage kids to make, show them different things they can learn to make, and work with kids who'd like to bring some of their work to Maker Faire.

On each Saturday, we will start with a "Meet The Makers" program in the McBean Theater from 11am-12pm. From 12:30-3:00 pm, we'll be "In the Studio" where kids can do projects and learn from other makers.

For our first program on January 30th, our theme is making simple circuits for small robots. Our featured makers will be Ken Murphy, maker of Blinkybugs, and Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman of Evil Mad Scientists Labs, who created Bristlebots. Kids will be able to make Blinkybugs and Bristlebots in the studio.

(We're still firming up the list of makers for future dates.)

If you have kids (or can borrow some), please join us at the Exploratorium, January 30th. I'll blog about what we learn from creating this program. We'd hope to see Young Maker programs develop in other communities as well.

January 14, 2010

Maker Faire Newcastle is March 13-14, 2010

We're excited to announce that Maker Faire is coming back to Newcastle this year!

Following the outstanding success of the first UK Maker Faire which was attended by over 7000 visitors, we are thrilled to announce Maker Faire 2010! Once again, Maker Faire will be heading to North East England as part of the Newcastle ScienceFest - a 10 day festival celebrating creativity and innovation.
New to Maker Faire? Maker Faire celebrates things people create themselves -- from James Bond-worthy electronic gizmos to homemade clothes. Inspiration is ubiquitous at the festival and there are surprises around every corner for people of all ages.

"We want people to experience more than just a weekend of creative entertainment, we want them to leave feeling inspired -- that they too can create things, express themselves, and engage the world around them. Our goal is to resuscitate the spirit of creativity and innovation." - Sherry Huss, Event Director

At Maker Faire, technology meets art, science meets fashion, engineering meets crafting and that's just the tip of the iceberg. This DIY festival features cool robots, clever gadgets, garden shed inventions, knitted wonders, renegade fashions, cars and bikes like you've never seen before, the occasional fireball, music-making and much, much more!

Maker Faire Newcastle
Saturday, March 13, 2010 - Sunday, March 14, 2010
Discovery Museum
Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4JA

More:

January 13, 2010

This week in Maker Events

Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

Introduction to Electronics Workshop @Metrix Create:Space
Seattle, WA
Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, 6:30pm - 9pm

Thursday Talk on Twilio at HacDC: Build your own Dial-a-Song!
Washington DC
Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, 7pm - 8:30pm

Train Communications @HackPittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Jan 15, 2010, 7pm - 10pm

Motor Control Lab @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010, 10am - 4pm

Solder Your Own Freeduino Workshop @LVL1
Louisville, KY
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010 1pm - 4pm

Arduino Night @the Transistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010, 1:30pm - 4pm

Junk Guitar Workshop @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010, 4pm - 6pm

Public Arduino Night @theTransistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010, 1:30pm - 4pm

Fun Kits @HacDC
Washington, DC
Sunday, Jan 17, 2010 - 2pm - 5pm

CPUs 0b1100101: Intro to computer processors @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Jan 17, 2010, 1pm - 3pm

Start planning for:

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Jan 19, 2009, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Jan 19, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

PULSE: Art and Technology Festival
Savannah, GA
Wednesday, Jan 20 - Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 10am - 8pm

Mechatronic Art, Design and Fabrication @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Thursday, Jan 21, 2010, 7pm - 9:30pm, then repeats

Rockland Robotics Club Meeting
Nanuet, NY
Friday, Jan 22, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Make: PDX January Meeting
Beaverton, OR
Saturday, Jan 23, 2010, 3pm+

Public Arduino Night @theTransistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jany 23, 2010, 1:30pm - 4pm

Fire the Lazzzor! Learn to rapid prototype using the 35 Watt Epilog Laser @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Jan 24, 2010, 12pm - 4pm

Introduction to Electronics @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 1pm - 4pm

January 10, 2010

Art sled rally

Minneapolis' third annual Art Sled Rally will be held on January 30th at 2pm.

Art Sled: any contraption built to slide down a snowy slope in the most fashionable, ridiculous or artistic way. Outrigger sleds, monster sleds, rocket sleds, tandem sleds, sleds from the High Veldt, leopard-skinned or snake-linked sleds, sleds that fly, hop, or go uphill, and sleds that do a few other things.

Last year's rally (video above) featured some awesome 'sleds' like a tumbling giant icosahedron and a Sisyphus rolling a fake boulder up a hill. If you need help building your sled, they're holding a free workshop the weekend before.

More:

January 7, 2010

SparkFun Free Day aftermath

As I write this (11am CST) I'm repeatedly hitting Apple-R on my keyboard to refresh my browser. That's right, I'm one of the thousands of giddy electronics fans trying to cash in on SparkFun's Free Day. Last I saw, almost 92% of the funds remain, mainly due to people DDOSing the server with their frantic reloads.

OK, hands off the keyboard. Let's take a deep breath, step back a moment and consider a question: in the final analysis, is this $100,000 free-for-all -- the nerd equivalent of 10,000 soccer moms battling over a limited number of Teddy Ruxpins on Black Friday -- really a good idea for SparkFun? Ultimately will it help or hurt them? I asked two hardware hackers, Garrett Mace and MAKE's own John Edgar Park, to weigh in. Bear in mind that they wrote these opinions last night.

First, Garrett Mace says negatory, bad idea:

It just seems like a bad move for SparkFun. More of a risk, actually. They are definitely getting a lot of publicity from Free Day, but I don't know if it will outweigh the negatives. Their site has been slow all month, bad for any online business. They're losing $100,000 of income, or about $20,000-$50,000 in costs. About 1,000 people will get their free stuff, but many thousands more will fail to do so, for various reasons. The people who didn't get their free stuff will somehow feel cheated, either by SparkFun or by the ones who did get the free stuff. There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of emails to SparkFun support complaining, or begging for special consideration because a computer crashed, the power went out, etc. And I think that many of the lucky 1,000 will be those only looking for something free, instead of those who would fully appreciate and use the hardware. I expect that a lot of the free stuff will end up in the bottom of a drawer forever. There are definitely 1000 electronic hobbyists out there who would truly appreciate SparkFun's gesture and would put the hardware to good use, but there's no way to select for them. I think SparkFun would get much closer to what they're trying to accomplish here if they held smaller giveaways throughout the year, with a more selective approach (design contests, quizzes, etc). Regardless of what happens, we're not going to hear any misgivings from SparkFun after the fact...they have to play it off as a grand event now that they've committed to it, so we'll hear upbeat reports with lots of words like "amazing", "exciting", "overwhelmed", "community" and so on.

I hate to be negative, since the actual intention behind the idea is great. I'm just speaking from experience seeing other giveaways; hackaday and "i want this book", the Woot.com Bag Of Crap, etc.

For the counterpoint, J. Edgar says yea:

SparkFun's Free Day is a great idea for a number of reasons. Foremost, they're getting a ton of free publicity for it. I won't claim to have run any numbers, but I'd guess that this kind of advertising is worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars (remember, $100K of merchandise will cost them between $25-50K at cost, and they ain't paying for shipping). Why is this stunt worth so much? Because it's not limited to a single ad in a few print publications or banners on websites. It's the juicy kind of advertising that's hard to buy; it's buzz. People are tweeting about it, blogging about it, excited about it. Not only are the major hacking/building/making sites writing about it, but so are the deal sites, the forums, and so on. They've even got 274 comments on their original blog post announcing this -- when people make the effort to become part of the conversation you know they'll remember you the next time they need to buy a breakout board.

Next, their stated reasons are sound. They want to stress test their new servers. This'll do that. They want to engender good will to their customers. Engendered. They have excused themselves from shipping it all immediately, so they won't need to hire extra hands or crush the existing staff.

Sure, most people will be turned away at the door, and some people will send email to complain about that, but in the long run this is a terrific move. SparkFun has great products and a winning personality, so anything they can do to get their name out to a wider audience will benefit them in the end. [Full disclosure, SparkFun distributes ScrewShield kits, of which I'm a co-creator.]

What are your thoughts, readers? Did you successfully battle your way to the checkout window? What loot did you score or not score? Leave your comments but please keep them rational and courteous.

Swimming robot snake

Creepy-cool snakey water robot goodness. Not much info about the maker, here; all I know is that the video was taken at the Odense RoboDays festival in the summer of 2007. If you know whodunnit, feel free to enlighten us in the comments. [via Boing Boing]

More:

January 6, 2010

This week in Maker Events

Coming up this week:

Introduction to Electronics Workshop @Metrix Create:Space
Seattle, WA
Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, 6:30pm - 9pm

Thursday Talk on Twilio at HacDC: Build your own Dial-a-Song!
Washington DC
Thursday, Jan 14, 2010 7pm - 8:30pm

Motor Control Lab @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010, 10am - 4pm

Solder Your Own Freeduino Workshop @LVL1
Louisville, KY
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010 1pm - 4pm

Arduino Night @the Transistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jan 16, 2010, 1:30pm - 4pm

Fun Kits @HacDC
Washington, DC
Sunday, Jan 17, 2010 - 2pm - 5pm

PULSE: Art and Technology Festival
Savannah, GA
Wednesday, Jan 20 - Sunday, Jan 31, 2010

Start planning for:

Mechatronic Art, Design and Fabrication @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Thursday, Jan 21, 2010, 7pm - 9:30pm, then repeats

Rockland Robotics Club Meeting
Nanuet, NY
Friday, Jan 22, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

January 4, 2010

Twin Cities Maker needs your help

Last month we profiled Twin Cities Maker, a maker collective that just rented a small warehouse for use as a communal workshop. One of the clauses of the lease was that they were allowed to rent only part of the warehouse, but if someone came by who wanted to rent the entire space, Twin Cities Maker would be out on the street. Well, guess what happened? They have to lease the entire space or lose it, but that means recruiting a lot more members in a short amount of time.

TCM president Mike Hord sent out a plea:

Here's what we need from you: we need 31 more of you to pay your $50 in dues for the month of January by this Wednesday. Pretty simple, right? Some of you have paid your dues already, and for that we thank you. Others of you intended to pay at our meeting last week, but were stymied by a technical fault, and for that we apologize. But, the long and short of it is we need to KNOW how many people we can expect to pay dues this month, and next month, and the month after that.

If we can't get this member support now, this venture stands a good chance of failing. If you want to see a hackerspace open in the Twin Cities, now is the time to step up and make it happen. We need YOU.

This Wednesday at 7pm, TCM will be having an electronics salvage & share event at the hackerspace. Not sure if you want to join? Show up with a screwdriver and an old printer and make some friends! See Mike's post for more information.

Maker Birthdays: Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643 (died March 31, 1727). While this astoundingly-talented English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and natural philosopher is clearly one of the most influential scientists in human history, most of what's generally known about him is more iconic/symbolic than real (think: countless Saturday morning cartoon depictions of apples falling on heads). In fact, Newton was an extraordinarily complex person with many interests beyond science and Enlightenment philosophy. As readers of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle are well aware, later in life, he became Master of the Royal Mint, and initiated a complete recoining of the nation's currency.

As much as William Blake and others wanted to make him into a poster child for scientific reason and the death of the imagination/magic/spirit (what Blake dubbed "Newton's sleep"), Newton was deeply religious (though, like Blake, unorthodoxly so) and actually wrote more about alchemy and religion than he did about the sciences. Ironically, upon his death, large amounts of mercury were found in his system, likely thanks to his years of alchemical practice. Many people use this fact as an explanation for some of his more eccentric views and behaviors later in life.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on Newton.

January 3, 2010

Help build a wireless Rube Goldberg machine

For the third straight year, Minneapolis makers' collective Studio Bricolage will hold a Rube Goldberg building event. (The video above shows last year's machine.) But there's a twist -- the machine's transitions will involve wireless, rather than mechanical technology!

The Studio Bricolage 3rd Annual causation machine build will focus upon wireless connections and mechanical devices. Start planning your piece of the machine today and bring it to the event.

Wireless, in our minds, means a remote controlling a VCR which pulls the tape which... or a cell phone which is called and vibrates down a slide which... or a motion detector which detects the bowling ball that rolled by which turns on a ... or a Clapper (R) which hears a clap and turns on a ... or a garage door clicker that makes the garage door opener start turning which ...You get it. Use of sound and light get bonus points!

We will have some of these devices on hand but please scrounge some and make them run before hand. Honestly we don't think there will be enough time to to put together a somewhat complicated machine like that.

The event will be held at Leonardo's Basement on February 5th from 7-10pm. The fee is $10 per participant.

December 28, 2009

Happy birthday, Linus!

Today is the birthday of Linus Torvalds. Linus is the creator of Linux, the free software kernel that helped make the open source software revolution happen. Happy birthday, Linus!

In addition to being a grandmaster hacker, he also has a great sense of humor:

GFDL-licensed image from Wikipedia

Second image by Picasa user Chris.

December 21, 2009

ITP 2009 Winter Show

The ITP Winter Show, showcasing projects designed by students in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, opened last night in Manhattan. I had the pleasure of attending, and grabbed some photos of my favorite projects. The show is open tonight as well, so if you happen to be in town then you should check it out!

Projects featured above (clockwise from top left): Swig & Jig, The interactive triangle matrix, Organic Veals, Human Wind Chime

Update: Tom Igoe has posted an excellent set of photos from the show.

December 18, 2009

Thanks for coming out to the webcast!

Thanks to all who joined our live 3D printing webcast where we used my MakerBot CupCake CNC machine to print out Sean Ragan's animal pentominoes puzzle pieces! Over 250 of you stopped by over the course of the hour, and it was so fun chatting with you! We'd like to do more live events in the future, including a maker show-and-tell type of meeting, but online. If you missed the webcast, you can watch it in the Ustream archive. If you have suggestions for live events you'd like to see Make: Online produce, please post 'em up in the comments!

More:

CupCake CNC build, part 5: Pulley & enclosure finishing

Reminder: live 3D printing webcast with MAKE and MakerBot at 1pm

Have you seen the rad pentominoes animal puzzle that Make: Online Contributing Writer Sean Ragan made using OpenSCAD? Check out his tutorial for this open solid 3D modeling software and then join us on Ustream at 1pm EST (10am PST) where we'll be printing the puzzle pieces in a live webcast. Sean and I will be in the chat window answering questions and taking music requests (anything you want as long as it's Daft Punk). Please join us!

Live 3D printing with MAKE and MakerBot
Friday, December 18 1-2pm EST
Becky's Ustream channel

Events Home | Next >

Void your warranty, violate a user agreement, fry a circuit, blow a fuse, poke an eye out. Make: The risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things... Welcome to Make: Online!

Check out more videos from MAKE.

Connect with MAKE

	MAKE on Facebook Visit our Facebook page and become a fan of MAKE!
	MAKE on Twitter Follow our MAKE tweets!
	MAKE on Flickr Join our MAKE Flickr Pool!

make_tips on Twitter

Why advertise on MAKE?
Read what folks are saying about us!

Click here to advertise on MAKE!

Make: Online editors and authors!

Gareth Branwyn
Editor-in-Chief

Phillip Torrone
Senior Editor
| AIM | Twitter

Becky Stern
Associate Editor
| AIM | Twitter

Marc de Vinck
Contributing Writer
| AIM | Twitter

John Park
Contributing Writer
| Twitter

Sean Ragan
Contributing Writer
| Twitter

Matt Mets
Contributing Writer
| AIM | Twitter

Dale Dougherty
Editor & Publisher
| Twitter

Shawn Connally
Managing Editor
| Twitter

Goli Mohammadi
Associate Managing Editor

Kip Kay Kip Kay
Weekend Projects
| AIM | Twitter

Collin Cunningham
Contributing Writer
| AIM | Twitter

Adam Flaherty
Contributing Writer
| AIM | Twitter

John Baichtal
Contributing Writer
| AIM | Twitter

More contributors: Mark Frauenfelder (Editor-in-Chief, MAKE magazine), Kipp Bradford (Technical Consultant/Writer), Chris Connors (Education), Diana Eng (Guest Author), Peter Horvath (Intern), Brian Jepson (O'Reilly Media), Robert Bruce Thompson (Science Room)

Suggest a Site!

Current Podcast

Weekend Project: Personal Portable Heater Keep warm this winter with an easy to make portable heater you can stick in your pocket, under your hat or anywhere for some extra heat. To download The Portable Heater video click here and subscribe in iTunes. Subscribe... More...