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Archives: Gareth Branwyn

Building your own rocketship

I know we've done a lot of coverage of the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, but it really is an astounding piece and we were thrilled to have it as the centerpiece of the Faire. And, as this mini-documentary shows, it's really an amazing maker story, about a large community of some 60 people coming together to do something with no other motivations than to delight fellow earthlings and to express creativity and the power of collaboration and chutzpah.

More:

• Raygun Gothic Rocket replicas from Alan Rorie
• The Road to Maker Faire: How to launch a rocket...
• The Road to Maker Faire: Greetings Earthlings!
• Maker Faire: Interview with Raygun Gothic Rocketship crew
• How-To: Assemble a Raygun Gothic Rocketship
• Alan Rorie is AlmostScientific

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 26, 2010 09:00 PM
Maker Faire | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

Crabfu's DIY iPad stylus

In response to Collin's DIY iPad stylus video, I-Wei created his own version that's even simpler to build, using a metal-tipped mechanical lead holder as the conductive barrel (and the same type of conducting foam for the nib). I love that he was able to repurpose his favorite (all-metal) lead holder that he hadn't used in years, since going digital in his design work. Nice work, I-Wei!

The Ultimate iPad Stylus

More:
Collin's Lab: DIY iPad Stylus

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 26, 2010 03:30 PM
Arts | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

Printing electroluminescent displays

Jeri Ellsworth talks to Jon Beck at Maker Faire about silk-screening EL displays with electroluminescent ink manufactured by Dupont. Jon is from CLUE, the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics. (How great is that name? Their logo is a question mark where the dot is the ground symbol.) The video is a little hard to hear, with all the ambient noise, but there's more information on the link below.

CLUE

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 25, 2010 11:30 PM
Electronics, Maker Faire | Permalink | Comments (2) | Suggest a Site |

OK Go goes underwater at Maker Faire

One of the more awesomely bizarre things that happened at this year's Maker Faire was the band OK Go performing onstage while inside of WaterBoy, BucketHead, and BubbleHead. These are three water-immersion devices created by Marque Cornblatt. WaterBoy is sort of a full-body water bladder a person climbs into with goggles and a breathing apparatus, and the other two just immerse your head. The band bravely decided to get into these crazy contraptions, and overcome any fears of drowning, and perform before a large crowd, without ever having been inside of them before. They had little more than a ten-minute rehearsal while immersed! The crazed, improvisational insanity of it all was palpable.

It was even decided to put goldfish into WaterBoy, to swim around with lead singer Damian Kulash, which only added to the surrealism. After the show, Maker Relations superconductor Kate Rowe, fearlessly volunteered to climb into the suit, in her jeans and a t-shirt, to scoop out all of the fish to give out to kids at the Faire. As Dale Dougherty joked, his only fear was that they would refuse to change the water because Damian had been in it.

Here are some video highlights of OK Go and WaterBoy, and a link to a piece on PopSci on the making of a "floating head" costume.

More:

• OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!
• OK Go Rube Goldberg machine interactive floor plan
• Behind the scenes of OK Go's Rube Goldberg video at Ignite Los Angeles

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 25, 2010 03:31 PM
Maker Faire | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site |

Mashable highlights Maker Faire

Mashable put together a nice video of highlights from the Faire.

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 24, 2010 02:33 PM
Maker Faire | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

Arc Attack wows Maker Faire crowds

One of the hands-down crowd favorites at this year's Bay Area Faire was Arc Attack, a pair of musical Tesla coils, accompanied by a human band, and lots of twisting, branching arcs of half-a-million volts of electricity that the show's MC orchestrates from within a Faraday suit. In other words, wholesome family entertainment, Maker Faire style!

Here's a short video of a performance, captured by fairgoer LukeTheObscure.

Arc Attack at the 2010 Maker Faire

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 24, 2010 01:31 PM
| Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

Math Monday: Nailbanger's Nightmare

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

In 1995, I designed this hypothetical construction and posted a computer rendering of it online. It is called "Nailbanger's Nightmare" because I thought it was far more complex than any carpenter would ever want to make.

After fifteen years, I was surprised to receive an email from Thomas Guethner of Trostberg, Germany, showing me that he has constructed a physical version of the structure. There are 480 wooden struts (60 in each of 8 slightly different lengths) all held together with 960 screws. The result is half a meter in diameter.

Thomas tells me "I want to thank you very much for this fantastic idea to get rid of some scrap wood."

Then I was surprised again when just a few weeks later I received images of another approach to making Nailbanger's Nightmare, this time from Canada. David Gunderson, at the University of Manitoba Mathematics Department, is developing an approach in which the struts have slots cut into their ends. The image shows how the sticks assemble with a friction fit.

More:

• Math Monday: Recycling soda bottles into icosahedra
• Math Monday: Two-layer geodesic spheres
• Math Monday: What to make with golf balls?
• Math Monday: Knitted cellular automaton tea cosy
• Math Monday: Whittling links and knots
• Math Monday: Magnet constructions
• Math Monday: Hexagonal stick arrangements
• Math Monday: Paper plate geometry
• Math Monday: 3D Hilbert curve from plumbing supplies
• Math Monday: Math-play with your food
• Math Monday: Mathematical art in the lava
• Math Monday: Balloon polyhedra
• Math Monday: Sierpinski tetrahedron
• Math Monday: Skewer hyperboloid
• Math Monday: Morton Bradley sculpture
• Math Monday: Tetraxis puzzle
• Math Monday: Giant burr puzzles
• Math Monday: Fractal polyhedra clusters
• Math Monday: Giant SOMA puzzle
• Math Monday: Tie your bagel in a knot!
• Math Monday: Playing card constructions
• Introducing "Math Monday"

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 24, 2010 12:01 PM
Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site |

Spacing out at Maker Faire

One of the de facto themes of this year's Faire, so perfectly represented by our Gothic Raygun Rocketship design centerpiece, is space and space hacking. This serves as the perfect lead-in to our upcoming DIY Space issues of MAKE. Here, our roving court photographer, Blake Maloof, captures some of the space-related happenings around the Faire.

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 23, 2010 04:55 PM
Maker Faire, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

Maker Faire: "It's the best side of who we are"

The SF Chronicle posted a short piece and nice video clip of yesterday's events at Maker Faire. If you're within land, sea, air (or teleportation) traveling distance, beam on over. Look at all the awesome we're having!

It's been five years since the launch of Make, a magazine for DIYers that I described back then as a publication that hopes to tap the geeky ingenuity in all of us (as well as the inner MacGyver). This year's Maker Faire in San Mateo seems to be further indication that it has most certainly accomplished that.

Maker Faire: Celebration of geekdom

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 23, 2010 10:01 AM
Maker Faire | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

Automakers 2.0 - A Maker Faire webcast

Before Maker Faire switched into high gear, earlier this week, MAKE editor and Maker Faire founder Dale Dougherty sat down with K. Venkatesh Prasad, Technical Leader, Infotronics team in Ford Research & Advanced Engineering, to talk about Ford's American Journey 2.0 project and the networked and open platform car of the future.

American Journey 2.0

Posted by Gareth Branwyn | May 22, 2010 05:31 PM
Maker Faire, Transportation | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site |

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